20 JUNE 1829, Page 9

LONGBOW APPROPRIATION OF JOKES.

WE too often have occasion to marvel at the stupid impudence of facetious persons who describe ancient Joe Miller jokes as occurring to themselves. A writer in the Quarterly Review is wickedly addicted to thia sort of mendacity. In the article on Judge HALL'S Letters from the West, the critic instances the Judge's ignorant speculations on the derivation of the French word chute, applied to a fall, or rapid current of water, and concluding with this sage remark, insinuating its corrup- tion from " shoot"— " In point of fact, it is applied to channels through which a boat may be said to shoot with the swiftness of an arrow."—Hall's Letters.

Hereupon the Reviewer writes- " To shoot a fall, we must admit, is an ingenious and happy suggestion, though we . helieve neither Greek' nor ' Kentuckian ;' nor is it quite new ; for we remember hearing the old steward of the household, when showing the portrait' of Sir Francis Drake, and carefully paintiug out to, the pistol which the gallant admiral holds in his hand,-gfa.Vely•assurea group of tourists that 'that there pistol was the very pistol with which the admiral shot the Gulf of Florida.'" The story is not told of DRAKE, but of FROBISHER, and is one of the most ancient in our English jest-books. To what class of falsehood does this mendacious. claim to partyship in jokes belong ? 'We want some classification a fibs similar to SHERIDAN'S classification of puffs. It is •pleasant to see one ignoramus sitting as above on another. The American is at a loss for the derivation of the word chute, and searches for it in all dictionaries except the French, in which he would have found it. The Quarterly, following in the wake of all the literary weekly journals, quizzes the eipbsure for the hundredth time, bat moreover ridicules the phrase of " shooting a fall," which is in fact strictly technical.