Reading and writing in the dark

Master Abraham is thinking of turning his learned tomcat Murr into a caged performer:

E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999).

Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity” : “My little right paw”

[“Smell of the lamp”: “Said of a literary production manifestly laboured. Plutarch attributes the phrase to Pytheas the orator, who said, ‘The orations of Demos′thenēs smell of the lamp,’ alluding to the current tale that the great orator lived in an underground cave lighted by a lamp, that he might have no distraction to his severe study”: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1895). Notice the help with pronunciation. Brewer’s also glosses “inkhorn terms”: “This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which smell of the lamp.”]