Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton was an English clergyman and writer whose one enduring book, Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words, is a collection of numbered aphorisms — Volume I appeared in 1820, Volume II in 1822. He was known as much for his eccentricity as his prose: a wine dealer, gambler and collector who eventually left England for Paris. His own works are now almost forgotten, and he survives mainly through quotation anthologies — which is precisely how his lines end up drifting onto other people’s names.