Sia,—In your article on " Gentlemanliness " in the Spectator
of the 10th inst. your writer has not given what always seems to me one of the most compressed definitions in literature of the attributes of a gentleman, that is, from the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," where the Knight is spoken of as " Trathe and honodr, freedom and courtoisie."
Also does Mr. Platt in his " .Alia" give " to go before the Beak" as coming from the Latin Rostrum ? So far as I can follow, " to take the cake " is undoubtedly not classical, but purely negro-American from the cake-walk contests. Another to ponder over is the schoolboy slang, "the whole dolop," familiar to me in the days of my youth. Is this the " Omnes Dolopes " of Virgil P-1 am, Sir, &c., E. S. H.
P.S.—How, also, about this for a gentleman P- " For thou bast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks."
Previous page
