[E5] "Boziana," Spirit of the Times, Feb. 17, 1842

Boziana.

            Well—the Boz fever is subsiding at last.  Thank Heaven for that!  The froth of the small beer excitement has evaporated, and the elements of the hops have settled down into lees, flat, stale, and unprofitable.  The Boz ball, no doubt, was the most extraordinary affair of the kind, that has ever occurred in any age of the world.  A greater congregation of fools, blockheads, and literary donkies was never, in all probability, before collected together.  But let that pass.  Our object is now to notice a system of humbuggery, which we think highly disreputable to the American press, and which proves the American people the most gullible of any other on the face of the earth.  The extras published in New York, purporting to give an account of the Boz Ball, are made up of the most contemptible dishwater stuff we ever read, while the wood cut embellishments, have served to season a thousand and one dishes of the vile twaddle heretofore.  Every old engraving that could be raked up from the drawer of the engravers, or found on the printer's musty galleys, has been re-produced, to set off the account of the Boz Ball, and to make the extras sell the more readily.  The "Picture Galleries" of the Atlas, Aurora, Brother Jonathan, and other prints, have all been levied upon and made to contribute their quota to the Boz humbug.  The picture heretofore called "the apple Woman," has been transformed into a likeness of "Mrs. Boz," and the soap-lock dandy, who had more hair than brains, dignified with the name of Charles Dickens, Esq., and so throughout the grand account of the farce.

            The whole affair has eventuated in a complete burlesque of the American character, and our entire nation must now come under the lash of foreign lampooners, because of the egregious buffoonery of our literary monkeys, par excellence.