Doing badly what should not be attempted?

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sun Sep 10 19:12:53 UTC 2006


Thanks; this is (close to) the original, as also provided by a
correspondent on another list.  I only note that Rutgers --
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/blj63.html -- has "hind"
instead of "hinder".

Joel

At 9/10/2006 12:14 PM, you wrote:
>On Sat, 9 Sep 2006, Barbara Need wrote:
>
>>I believe the original of the bear/dog version was Johnson's comment
>>about women preaching. (Not at hand, of course, so the details are a
>>little shaky.)
>
>A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs.  It is not
>done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
>        Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, _Life of Samuel Johnson_
>(1791) (entry for 31 July 1763)
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
>Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
>   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
>Yale Law School                             forthcoming
>e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list