THE WORD "STUFF. "
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
sra,—May I draw attention to the way in which a word in our language appears to have changed its meaning entirely in
the course of one hundred and ten years ? To do so I place two passages side by side :— Arthur Young's "Travels in Spectator, October 27th, 1900.
France," 1790. "The amount of stuff' he
"How strange that we should [Dickens] put into each novel read an author's book with great is something prodigious. The pleasure, that we should say, modern novelist may remorse- this man has no stuff in him, lessly conduct his hero from the
all is of consequence cradle to the grave, but yet his and after this to meet the garb work will appear thin and of so much littleness." attenuated beside that of Dickens."
Do we owe the change to the influence of Carlyle ?—I am
Buckhurst Hill, Essex.
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