Where does ‘stuff’ come from?

Pelham, the hero of the novel of the same name (which came out in 1828, the first year of The Spectator’s existence), visiting his old friend Glanville, is conducted by ‘the obsequious and bowing valet’ into a room where his host sits ‘opposite to a toilet of massive gold’. (Yes, words change meaning. This toilet would not have resembled the lavatory of gold on display at Blenheim Palace, to the theft of which a man has pleaded guilty.) The narrator declares: ‘I had never seen so perfect a specimen of masculine beauty.’

The anonymous reviewer in The Spectator attributed the book to Benjamin Disraeli. He was wrong. It was by Edward Bulwer Lytton, as had to be acknowledged later in the year. But the reviewer satisfied himself in the meantime by quoting an absurd incident where the hero of the novel takes control of an enraged horse. Periodically the reviewer inserts in the quoted matter remarks in square brackets, ‘Stuff!’ and ‘Oh, what stuff!’, concluding: ‘Will any critic properly chastise the writer of such pestilent stuff?’