"You're another!" may be conveyed in a mild tone and manner. For instance:—"The right honorable gentleman seems not to apprehend the points of the argument: he says he does not understand how so and so is so and so. We can only supply him with arguments level to the meanest capacity, not with brains. Nature having been sparing in her endowments to the honorable gentleman, must be matter of deep regret to those who are under the painful necessity of listening to the oft-times-refuted assertions and so-called arguments which he has advanced upon this very question."
The honorable gentleman, thus delicately alluded to, replies, "My honorable and learned friend (if he will permit me to call him so) complains that his arguments are not understood; the simple reason being that they are unintelligible. He calls them arguments level to the meanest capacity, and let me assure him they are level to the meanest capacity only, for they are his own. Let me hasten to relieve his anxiety as to the remarks which I have felt it my duty to make upon the question under discussion, by assuring him that they have been understood by those who have intelligence to appreciate them, though I am not prepared to vouch as much for my honorable and learned friend on the other side of the House." Thus,
Each lolls the tongue out at the other,
And shakes his empty noddle at his brother.
One honorable member accuses another of stating that which is the "reverse of true"—the other responds by a charge of "gross misrepresentation of the facts of the case." Coalheavers would use a shorter and more emphatic word to express the same thing, though it would neither be classical nor conformable to the rules of the House. The Frenchman delicately defined a white lie to be "valking round about de trooth." We know what honorable members mean when they talk in the above guise. It is, "You're another!"
Dr. Whiston accuses the Chapter of Rochester with applying for their own purposes the funds bequeathed by pious men of former times for the education of the poor. The reply of the Chapter is—"You Atheist!" and they deprive the doctor of his living. Sir Samuel Romilly once proposed to alter the law of bankruptcy, and to make freehold estates assets appropriable for debts, like personal property. The existing law he held to be pregnant with dishonesty and fraud against creditors. Mr. Canning immediately was down upon him with the "You're another" argument. "Dishonesty!" he said, "why, this proposal is neither more nor less than a dangerous and most dishonest attack upon the aristocracy, and the beginning of something which may end, if carried, like the French Revolution."
Worthy men are often found differing about some speculative point, respecting which neither can have any more certain knowledge than the other, and they wax fierce and bitter, each devoting the other to a fate which we dare not venture to describe. One calls the other "bigot," who retorts by calling out "idolater," or perhaps "fanatic;" and the phrases are bandied about with the gusto and fervor of Billingsgate—the meaning of the whole is, "You're another!"
Literary men have frequently ventured into this bandying about of strange talk. Rival country editors have sometimes been great adepts in it; though the fashion is gradually going out of date. There is nothing like the bitterness of criticism now, which used to prevail some fifty years ago. Godwin mildly assailed Southey as a renegade, in return for which Southey abused Godwin's abominably ugly nose. Moore spoke slightingly of Leigh Hunt's Cockney poetry, and Leigh Hunt in reply ridiculed Moore's diminutive figure. Southey cut up Byron in the Reviews, and Byron cut up Southey in the Vision of Judgment. Scott did not appreciate Coleridge, and Coleridge spoke of Ivanhoe and The Bride of Lammermoor as "those wretched abortions."
You often hear of talkers who are "good at a retort." It means they can say "You're another!" in a biting, clever way. The wit of many men is of this kind—cutting and sarcastic. Nicknames grow out of it—the Christian calls the Turk an Infidel—as the Turk calls the Christian a Dog of an Unbeliever. Whig and Tory retort on each other the charge of oppressor. "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat, the lawyer beknaves the divine." It all means "You're another!" Phrenologists say the propensity arises in the organ of combativeness. However that may be, there is need of an abatement. Retort, even the most delicately put, is indignation, and indignation is the handsome brother of hatred. It breeds bitterness between man and man, and produces nothing but evil. The practice is only a modification of Billingsgate, cover it with what elegant device we may. In any guise the "You're another" style of speech ought to be deprecated and discountenanced.