' Imagine the
dullness that would convert a jocose saying of this kind into an
unconscious utterance of grave absurdity."[1] In his index may be
read: "Mrs. Piozzi's absurd instance of Goldsmith's absurdity." Mrs.
Piozzi does not quote the saying as an instance of absurdity; nor set
it forth solemnly. She repeats it, as an illustration of her
argument, in the same semi-serious spirit in which it was originally
hazarded. Sydney Smith took a different view of this grave gravy
question. On a young lady's declining gravy, he exclaimed: "I have
been looking all my life for a person who, on principle, rejected
gravy: let us vow eternal friendship."
[Footnote 1: Life of Goldsmith, vol. ii. p. 205. Mr. Forster allows
her the credit of discovering the lurking irony in Goldsmith's verses
on Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 203.]
The "British Synonymy" appeared in 1794. It was thus assailed by
Gifford:
"Though 'no one better knows his own house' than I the vanity of this
woman; yet the idea of her undertaking such a work had never entered
my head; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To
execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare
combination of talents, among the least of which may be numbered
neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common
accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a
jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter
incapability of defining a single term in the language, and just as
much Latin from a child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance
she so anxiously labours to conceal.
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