Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1883-09-22 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

PEDANTRY. (SELICCTED.) To display the least symptom of learning, or to seem to know more than your footman, is become an offence against the rules of politeness, and is branded with the name of pedantry and ill-breeding. The very sound of a Roman or a Grecian name, or a hard name, as the ladies call it—though their own, perhaps, is barter by half—is enough to disconcert the temper of a dozen countesses, and to strike a whole assembly of fine gentlemen dumb with amazement.  This srmeamishness of theirs is owing to their aversion to pedantry, which they understand to be a sort of mustiness that can only be contracted in a recluse and a studious life, and  a foible peculiar to men of letters. But if a strong attachment to a peouliar subject, a total ignorant* of every other, an eagerness to introduce that subject upon all occasions, and a confirmed habit of declaimingupon it without either wit or discretion be the marks of a pedantic' character, as they certainly are, it belongs to the illiterate as well as the learned; and St. Jaines's itself may boast of prodacing as arrant pedants as were ever sent forth from a oollege. I know a woman of fashion who is perpetually employed in remarks upon the weather, who observes from morning to noon that it is likely to rain, and from noon to night that it spits, that it missies, that it is set in for a wet evening; end, being incapable of an other discourse, is as insipid a companion, and just as pedantic, as he who quotes Aristotle over his tea or talks Greek at a card-table. A gentleman of my acquaintance is • constant attendant upon Parliamentary business, and I have heard him entertain a large circle, by the boar, with the speeches that were made in a debate upon mum and perry. He has a wonderful memory, and a kind of oratorical tone in his elocution that serves him instead of an emphasis. By those ratans he has acquired the reputation of having a deal to say for himself ; but as it consists entirely of what others have said for themselves before him, and if he should be deaf during the sessions he would certainly be dumb in the intervals, I must needs set him down for a pedant. But the most troublesome, as well as most dangerous character of this sort that I am so unhappy as to be connected with is a stripling who spends his whole life in a fencing school. This athletic young pedant is indeed a most formidable creature. His whole conversation lies in quart and fsirce. If you meet him in the street be salutes you in the gymnastic manner, throws himself back upon his left hip, levels his cane at the pit of your stomach, and looks as fierce's a prize-tighter. In the midst of a discourse upon politics he starts from the table on a sudden, and splits himself into &monstrous lounge against the wainscot. Immediately he puts a foil into your hand, insists upon teaching you his murdering thrust, and if in the course of his instructions he pushes out an eyo or a front tooth, be tells you that you flapped !isms point or dropped yoesr wrist, and imputes all the mischief to the awkwardnese of his pupil. The musical pedant, who, instead of attending to the discourse, diverts himself with humming an air, or if he speaks expresses himself in the language of the orchestra; the Newmarket pedant, who has no knowledge but what he gathers upon the turf; the female pedant, who is an adept in nothing but the patterns of , silks and flounces ; and the coffee-house pedant, whose whole erudition lies within the margin of a newspaper, are nuisances so extremely common that it is almost unnecessary to mention them. Yet, pedants as they are, they shelter themselves under the fashionableness of their foible, and, with all the properties of the character, generally escape the imputation of it. In my opinion, 'however, they deserve our censure more than the merest bookworm imaginable. The man of letters is usually confined to his study, and having but little pleasure in conversing with men of the world, does not intrude himself into their company. These unlearned pedants, on the contrary, are to be met with everywhere; they have nothing to do hut to run about and be troublesome, and are universally the be of agreeable conversation.