What can be done against a race of beings not capable of being touched even by ridicule? What can we hope when the infant bore and his trainers have stood against the incomparable humour of “Thinks I to myself?” In time--and as certainly as the grub turns in due season into the winged plague who buzzes and fly-blows--the little reciting bore turns into the _dramatic_ or _theatric_ acting, reading, singing, recitative--and finally into the everlasting-quotation-loving bore--Greek, Latin, and English. The everlasting quotation-lover doats on the husks of learning. He is the infant reciting bore in second childishness. We wish in vain that it were in mere oblivion. From the ladies’ tea-tables the Greek and Latin quoting bores were driven away long ago by the Guardian and the Spectator, and seldom now translate for the country gentlewomen. But the mere English quotation-dealer, a mortal tiresome creature! still prevails, and figures still in certain circles of old blues, who are civil enough still to admire that wonderful memory of his which has a quotation ready for every thing you can say--He usually prefaces or ends his quotations with--“As the poet happily says,” or, “as Nature’s sweetest woodlark justly remarks;” or, “as the immortal Milton has it.” To prevent the confusion and disgrace consequent upon such mistakes, and for the general advantage of literature, in reclaiming, if possible, what has gone to the bores, it might be a service to point out publicly such quotations as are now too common to be admitted within the pale of good taste. In the last age, Lord Chesterfield set the mark of the beast, as he called it, on certain vulgarisms in pronunciation, which he succeeded in banishing from good company. I wish we could set the mark of the bore upon all which has been contaminated by his touch,--all those tainted beauties, which no person of taste would prize. They must be hung up viewless, for half a century at least, to bleach out their stains. I invite every true friend of literature and of good conversation, _blues_ and _antis_, to contribute their assistance in furnishing out a list of quotations to be proscribed. Could I but accomplish this object, I should feel I had not written in vain. To make a good beginning, I will give half a dozen of the most notorious. “The light fantastic toe,” has figured so long in the newspapers, that an editor of taste would hardly admit it now into his columns. “Pity is akin to love,”--sunk to utter contempt; along with--“Grace is in all her steps;” and “Man never _is_, but always _to be blest_;”--“Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm;”--no longer safe on a boating party. The bourgeois gentilhomme has talked prose too long without knowing it. “No man is a hero to his _valet de chambre_,”--gone to the valets themselves. “Le secret d’ennyer est celui de tout dire,”--in great danger of the same fate,--it is so tempting!--but, so much the worse,--wit is often its own worst enemy.