NUTS TO CRACK.
Nuts to Crack: or Quips, Quirks, Anecdote and Facete of Oxford and Cambridge scholars. By the author of Facetiæ Cantabrigienses, etc. etc. etc. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey & A. Hart.
Although this little volume is obviously intended for no other eyes than those of the 'Oxford and Cambridge scholar,' and although it is absolutely impossible for any American to enter fully into the spirit of its most inestimable quizzes, oddities and eccentricities, still we have no intention of quarrelling with Carey & Hart, for republishing the work on this side of the Atlantic. Never was there a better thing for whiling away a few loose or unappropriated half hours—that is to say in the hands of a reader who is, even in a moderate degree, imbued with a love of classical whimsicalities. We can assure our friends—all of them who expect to find in these excellent 'Nuts to Crack' a mere rifacimento of stale jests—that there are not more than two or three anecdotes in the book positively entitled to the appellation of antique. Some things, however, have surprised us. In the first place what is the meaning of Anecdote and Facete? In the second what are we to think of such blunders, as "one of honest Vere's classical jeu d'esprit," (the jeu d'esprit printed too in Long Primer Capitals) in a volume professing to be Anecdote and Facete (oh!—too bad) of Oxford and Cambridge scholars? And thirdly is it possible that he who wrote the Facetiæ Cantabrigienses is not aware that the "cutting retort attributed to the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, when a student of Trinity Hall, Cambridge" may be found among the Facetiæ of Hierocles—not to mention innumerable editions of Joe Miller?
We have already said enough of the Nuts to Crack, but cannot, for our lives, refrain from selecting one of its good things for the benefit of our own especial readers.
The learned Chancery Barrister, John Bell, K. C., "the Great Bell of Lincoln," as he has been aptly called, was Senior Wrangler, on graduating B.A., at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1786, with many able competitors for that honor. He is likewise celebrated, as every one knows, for writing three several hands; one only he himself can read, another nobody but his clerk can read, and a third neither himself, clerk, nor any body else can read. It was in the latter hand, he one day wrote to his legal contemporary and friend, the present Sir Launcelot Shadwell, inviting him to dinner. Sir Launcelot, finding all his attempts to decypher the note about as vain, as the wise men found theirs to unravel the cabalistic characters of yore, took a sheet of paper, and having smeared it over with ink, folded and sealed it, and sent it as his answer. The receipt of it staggered even the Great Bell of Lincoln, and after breaking the seal, and eyeing it, and turning it round and round, he hurried to Mr. Shadwell's chambers with it, declaring he could make nothing of it. "Nor I of your note," retorted Mr. S. "My dear fellow" exclaimed Mr. B. taking his own letter in his hand, "is not this as plain as can be,—Dear Shadwell, I shall be glad to see you at dinner to day?" "And is not this equally as plain," said Mr. S. pointing to his own paper, "My dear Bell, I shall be happy to come and dine with you?"