Mirror of Literature,  11 (1828), 396–97.

A Few Londonisms

Anon

Genre:

Extract, Miscellaneous, Drollery

Publications extracted:

Monthly Magazine

Subjects:

Natural History, Sex, Botany, Zoology, Universities, Exploration, Aeronautics

Institutions mentioned:

University of London


    Repudiates the pleasures of nature in favour of those of Metropolitan life. Observes that no-one 'that has a soul in him' could care about 'the billet-doux which the bee carries from the male ash to the female; the leers and loving looks of a couple of jacks, or gudgeons, or red mullets [...]. Put a hook in the jaws of the rascals; drag them out; bring them to London; send them to school at Bleadon's [possibly an inn or hotel], or to the professor at the proper London University in St. James's-street [possibly a reference to one of the clubs for which that street was celebrated], till they be fit for appearing in genteel-company' (396–97). Advises: 'course over every land; sail over every sea; be frozen with Parry, roasted with Clapperton [...]; be a traveller who has more glory than name; go up in balloons—down in diving-bells; fly over the Alps, or tunnel it under the Atlantic;—why, what do you get by that? Pain—sheer unmingled pain—without an atom of pleasure' (397).



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