Antedating of James Joyce quote

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/16/2010 09:59 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Unless all members of the group expired on its final day (a consummation
>DTBW), I would say, regrettably, that they had failed their master.

If you look at the illustration to the Boston Globe article, they
must have died happy.  (Present in the New England Weekly Journal's
1736 Drinkers Dictionary, but cut by Franklin to fit his page.  And,
I note, the OED has not taken notice yet -- for "happy", still a 1989
entry, its earliest citation, sense 6, is 1770.)

Joel

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