Once upon a time, I was a Classics student, and even in the 1980s and 1990s, people still got a lot of mileage out of Housman stories and quotations. (He died in 1936.)

Apparently, after he died, they found notebooks in his office that he had filled with long elaborate, witty, hurtful insults -- aimed at nobody in particular. When he wrote a review, he would tweak the pre-fab insults as needed and voila. A sick, twisted person, but fascinating. (If you're really curious, check out Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love.)