Swift, “Miscellanies,” vol. x., p. 206.
Another.
“Dan’s evil Genius in a Trice
Had strip’d him of his Coin at Dice;
Chloe observing this Disgrace,
On Pam cut out his rueful Face.
By G⸺, says Dan, ’tis very hard,
Cut out at Dice, cut out at Card!”
G. R⸺d, Sculp.
Now, Swift died in 1745, and may be said to have died to literature some years earlier. Silhouette’s cheese-paring economy was, we are told, induced by the deficit entailed “by the ruinous war of 1756,” consequently it could not have been before 1760 that his name would have become synonymous with cheapness. We thus have evidence that the art was in use at the least twenty years before his name could have been applied to it; and it does not at all appear that it was new then, as Mrs. Pyburg cut William and Mary’s portrait out of black paper in 1699. This nomenclature must, therefore, have been caused by his adoption of it as a pastime, and not by the reason given by I. D’Israeli and the Dict. Hist. This is an instance of how easily false derivations may be published even within so short a time of the events for which they profess to account.