[To the Editor of the SrEcrieroa.]
Sm,—Doubtless some of the witty sentences attributed to Lord Rosebery in your interesting article, were genuine, but " Only Pretty Fanny's way "
is certainly a quotation..
I remember my mother telling me some sixty years ago how Lord Derby, or possibly Lord North, replying to a bitter personal attack in the. House of Lords , had used it with scathing effect, I can recollect, the mincing utterance with which she tried to reproduce the anecdote as told to her, possibly when the incident was fresh in the narrator's mind. The quotation must have keen familiar, or it would not have gone home. Perhaps it may be found in one of the volumes of plays of that period.
I apologize to the writer of the article for, ubi plura nitent, calling attention to this "incuria."—I am, Sir, &c., WATHIN H. WILLIAMS.
The Athenmum.
[Lord Rosebery's wit, of course, consisted in his happy application of the tag. The writer did not think it necessary to explain that this was a quotation. The words are from Thomas Parnell, An Elegy to an Old Beauty—and were used also, we understand, in a translation by Leigh Hunt.— En. Spectator.]
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