A CHESNUT.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7782, 9 February 1891, Page 3

A CHESNUT.

The gentleman who complained' oj " Macbeth'* " being bo full of quotations— or did he make his objection after having been " Hamlet V— was not the only indivi. dual whose memory stored sentences while it forgot plots, or, at any rate, was ignorant of them. Those brief borrowings from Shakeaperq are generally made Jbe* cause they serve to express in the tersest and most concise manner the grandest philosophy that was ever compressed within such convenient limits. But all quotations that contrive to command exceptional lougeyity do not owe ebeir prolonged popularity to their intrinsic* vru> or wieaom. Sayings, now and again " catch on "—to help ourselves from an American idiom—from external causes, from their frequent repetition in a play, oi even from their attractiveness oi sound. In Thomas Morton's once popular comedy of "Speed -the Plough" occurs that well-worn inquiry " What will Mrs Grundy say V The question haa become representative in a way, but it can hardly be said to be used strictly iti its 1 original sense, nor can its merit claim an exUteuce which seems to promise to last as long an the language. How we mis« apply «*enee when »ye are guided by Round may be enown In the distortion of the noble proverb that "Charity begins at home," but that has had bo long an undisturbed being that it has become 'polarised,' a<* the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table would phrase it. We were some time in allowing the word " chestnut" to pass for the meaning here which it exprexsed on the other side of the Atlantic First we did not know know what people meant when they said it; then, with au explanation on that head, we did not understand why an old joke should be called a chestnut ; and, finally, we were inclined to despise what we did not comprehend. But the word had too much vitality for us, and now, whenever a bore wearies his company and strains politeness by compelling people to lUten to jokes that are as threadbare a« they are old, the dissyllable would not be hissed in His ear without his being quite aware what it meant. Rip Van Winkle Jefferson some years ego gave the seurce Oad etymology of the word. In the old drama of "The broken Sword" there is a boasting Baron Munchausen, Captain Bobadil class of character, a Captain Zavier, whose stories should al wave be received cum grano saXis. One of the Captain's narratives is overheard by the low comedy merchant Pablo, #ho interrupts the storyteller in this wise :— "I entered the woods of Galloway, when suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork tree " A chestnut, Captain, a chestnut, interpolates Pablo. " Bah I" replies the Captain. "Booby,l say a cork tree I" But Pablo is not' silenced. " A chestnut," he reaffirms. " I should know as well as you, having heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times." This speech of Pablo s was afterwards applied by William Warren, an American comedian (who had oftenispoken it on the stage), when a postprandial orator was letting off some ancient anecdote," A chestnut," muttered Warren, in a stage whisper, "I have heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times.' Thus an almost forgotten play has lived'to bequeath this salientsaying fo« posterity.