University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXX.
Bite—bamboozle—all the rage—quiz—
quizzical—bore—horrid bore—I. owe
you one—that's a good one.

THERE are certain scoria floating on
the English language, too light and heterogeneous
to incorporate with the mass, but
which appear and remain until skimmed
off by the hand of fashion. These cant
words, or quaint expressions, are not peculiar
to the present day. They were
noticed and ridiculed by Shakespear, and
even foisted into the plays of Ben Jonson.
Sir Richard Steele and Dr. Arbuthnot
mention bite and bamboozle in their time.

The cant of later times has been exhibited
in certain unmeaning words, and quaint
phrases, introduced without the least regard
to application or propriety, as expletives
in discourse. Some years since
“all the rage” was the cant, and an Englishman
asserted that universal philanthropy
and peace were “all the rage.”
To this succeeded “quiz” and “quizzi
“cal;” every man of common sense was
a quiz, and every blockhead quizzical.
To these succeeded “bore;” every thing
animate, and even inanimate, was a “bore,”
a “horrid bore!” I am not certain that I
give you the correct order of succession,
for, indeed, I am not ambitious of correctness
in the genealogy of nonsense. The
cant expressions now in vogue are, “I
“owe you one,” and “that's a good one;”
and if, in the warmth of friendly fervour,
you should communicate a pathetic tale
to an English friend—tell him, with tears
in your eyes, of the loss of an affectionate
wife, or blooming babes—of all bereaved
“at one fell swoop,” you might expect
to have your deadly griefs consoled with,
“well, that's a good one.” But, besides
these evanescent vulgarisms of fashionable
colloquy, there are a number of words now
familiar, not merely in transient converse,
but even in English fine writing, which are
of vulgar origin and illegitimate descent,
which disgust an admirer of the writers of
their Augustan age, and degrade their
finest modern compositions by a grotesque
air of pert vivacity. Among these is the
adjective clever; a word not derived from
those pure and rich sources which have
given all that is valuable to the English
language—a word not used by any English
prose writer of eminence until the reign
of George the Third, nor ever introduced
into a serious poem until adopted by
Cowper—a word which, if we may judge
of adjectives as we do of men, by their
associates, shows the baseness of its origin
by the company it keeps, being generally
coupled with fellow, a term I conceive of
no respect except in courts and colleges.
Englishmen, from the peer to the peasant,
cannot converse ten minutes without introducing
this pert adjunct. The English
do not, however, use it in the same sense
we do in New-England, where we apply
it to personal grace, and call a trim, well-built
young man, clever—which signification
is sanctioned by Bailey's and the
elder English Dictionaries; nor do they
use it in our secondary sense, when applying
it to the qualities of the mind; we
intend by it good-humoured, they use it
to signify skilful, adroit; and the man
who breaks a dwelling-house, a prison, or
a neck adroitly, is clever. I heard a reverend
prebend, in company with several
clergymen of the episcopal church, (after
having magnified the genias of the prelate,)
pronounce the Archbishop of Canterbury
a very clever fellow. A native of
England may be distinguished as readily
by the frequent use of the adjective clever
as the native of New-England by that of
the verb guess. It was not until I had
been some months in London that I discovered
how often I exposed myself to
ridicule by the repeated use of this verb.
My new friend B******, of the Inner
Temple, who has a profound knowledge
of every subject but the law, as he is one
of those assiduous benchers described by
Pope,
pointed out to me this provincialism, as
he styled it. What is the reason, he inquired,
that you New-Englandmen are
always guessing? I replied, coolly, because
we imagine it makes us appear
very clever fellows. Now, here, to my
astonishment, B****** was in the same
predicament as myself; although he had
repeated clever and clever fellow perhaps
twenty times in this interview, he had not
noticed it: he was a gentleman of too refined
a taste to advocate this Alsatia term,
but would hardly be persuaded of its exuberant
use until I had drawn his attention
to it in conversation with several of his
countrymen—and was at length obliged to
send him half a sheet of extracts, in prose
and verse, to convince him of its absurd
recurrence in the modern English fine
writing. But B****** is really a clever
fellow, learned and candid, terms seldom
united by a London copula, and we agreed
to assist each other in devesting our style
of these silly colloquisms. Soon after,
B****** said to me, with earnestness,
“now you have read Boswell, you must
“acknowledge Dr. Johnson to have been
“a very clever fellow.” “I guess he was,”
I replied.

If, however, I should be requested to
note some shibboleth to distinguish an Old
from a New-Englandman it would not be
like the Israelites in pronunciation, nor yet
in expression or accent—not in words but
in mode. An Englishman puts and answers
a question directly, a New-Englandman
puts his questions circuitously and

ways answers a question by asking another.
I am indebted, in some measure, to
B****** for this distinction, who, in
early life, spent a winter in Hartford,
Connecticut, but which your own observations,
even in Boston, will abundantly
confirm. When my friend, the Templar,
first noticed this local peculiarity, I was
inclined to dispute its universality among
us; B****** offered to risk the decision
of our dispute upon the reply of the
first New-Englandman we should chance
to accost—and, as an Englishman who is
opposed to you in argument always has a
bet or a blow at your service, he offered
a small wager that he would propose a
direct question to him, and the Yankey
should reply by asking another. We were
strolling in St. James's Park, and who
should approach, very opportunely, but
Charles ********, of Salem. After the
first salutations, B****** said, “pray,
“Mr. ********, what time of the day
“is it by your watch?” “Why, I can't
“say, what o'clock is it by yours?” This
was followed by a hearty laugh: but when
the affair was explained to Charles, he insisted
it was merely fortuitous, and might
not happen again in a thousand instances,
and, finally, when B******, in the pride
of victory, offered to double the bet, and
repeat the experiment, he took him up.
B****** said, select your man—but here
comes your countryman, Dr. ***; you
will allow him to be as correct a speaker
as any in New-England; all shall be fair;
I will put the question in such a way as
shall preclude the possibility of his being
taken by surprise. Charles acknowledged
Dr. *** was the very man he would have
selected. The doctor, by this time, joined
our party. “Pray, doctor, (said B******
“very deliberately,) what is the reason
“you New-Englandmen always reply to
“a question by asking another? “Why,
“is that the case, sir?”

As you are a very clever fellow and I
guess you are wearied by this time, I will
conclude my letter, lest you should not
be in a humour to say “that's a good
“one.”