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he seems rather to have relieved them than himself. t if he got only a few florins at Rotterdam, the same uvelles litteraires' sometimes secured him valuable ends at London; for in those days, which perhaps are urning on us, an English author would often appeal to a eign journal for the commendation he might fail in obning at home; and I have discovered, in more cases an one, that, like other smuggled commodities, the forgn article was often of home manufactory!

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I give one of these curious bibliopolical distresses. auzet, a bookseller at Rotterdam, who judged too criti lly for the repose of his authors, seems to have been ways fond of projecting a new Journal; tormented by he ideal excellence which he had conceived of such a ork, it vexed him that he could never find the workmen! Once disappointed of the assistance he expected from a writer of talents, he was fain to put up with one he was shamed of; but warily stipulated on very singular terms. le confided this precious literary secret to Des Maizeaux. translate from his manuscript letter.

I send you, my dear Sir, four sheets of the continuaion of my journal, and I hope this second part will turn but better than the former. The author thinks himself a very able person; but I must tell you frankly, that he is a man without erudition, and without any critical discrimination; he writes pretty well, and turns passably what he says; but that is all! Monsieur Van Effen having failed in his promises to realize my hopes on this occasion, neecessity compelled me to have recourse to him; but for six months only, and on condition that he should not, on any account whatever, allow any one to know that he is the author of the journal; for his name alone would be sufficient to make even a passable book discreditable. As you are among my friends, I will confide to you in secrecy the name of this author; it is Monsieur De Limiers.* see how much my interest is concerned that the author should not be known! This anecdote is gratuitously presented to the editors of certain reviews, as a serviceable -hint to enter into the same engagement with some of their own writers; for it is usually the De Limiers who expend their last puff in blowing their own name about the town.

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In England, Des Maizeaux, as a literary man, 'made himself very useful to other men of letters, and particularly to persons of rank; and he found patronage and a pension,-like his talents, very moderate! A friend to literary men, he lived amongst them, from 'Orator' Henley, up to Addison, Lord Halifax, and Anthony Collins. I find a curious character of our Des Maizeaux in the hand-writing of Edward, Earl of Oxford, to whose father (Pope's Earl of Oxford) and himself, the nation owes the Harleian treasures. His lordship is a critic with high Tory principles, and high-church notions. This Des Maizeaux is a great man with those who are pleased to be called Free-thinkers, particularly with Mr Anthony Collins, collects passages out of books for their writings. His life of Chillingworth is wrote to please that set of men.' The secret history I am to unfold relates to Anthony Collins and Des Maizeaux. Some curious book-lovers will be interested in the personal history of an author they are well acquainted with, yet which has hitherto remained unknown. He tells his own story in a sort of epistolary petition he addressed to a noble friend characteristic of an author, who cannot be deemed unpatronized, yet whose name, after all his painful labours, might be inserted in my Calamities of Authors.'

In this letter he announces his intention of publishing a dictionary like Bayle; having written the life of Bayle, the next step was to become himself a Bayle; so short is the passage of literary delusion! He had published, as a specimen, the lives of Hales and Chillingworth. He complains that his circumstances have not allowed him to

* Van Een was a Dutch writer of some merit, and one of a Ierary knot of ingenious men, consisting of Sallengre, St Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c, who carried on a smart review for those days, published at the Hague under the title of Journal Litteraire. They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the first translations of our Guardian, Robinson Crusoe, and the Tale of a Tub, &c. He did something more, but not better; he attempted to imitate the Spectator, in his Le Misanthrope,' 1726, which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation, whom he could not make very lively.

De Limiers has had his name slipped into our biographical dictionaries. An author cannot escape the fatality of the alphabet: his numerous misdeeds are registered. It is said, that if he had not been so hungry, he would have given proots of possessing some talent.

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A work of that nature requires a steady application, free from the cares and avocations incident to all persons obliged to seek for their maintenance. I have had the misfortune to be in the case of those persons, and am now reduced to a pension on the Irish establishment, which, deducting the tax of four shillings in the pound, and other charges, brings me in about 401. a year of our English money." This pension was granted to me in 1710, and I owe it chiefly to the friendship of Mr Addison, who was then secretary to the Earl of Wharton, lord lieutenant of Ireland. In 1711, 12, and 14, I was appointed one of the commissioners of the lottery by the interest of Lord Hali

fax.

And this is all I ever received from the government, though I had some claim to the royal favour; for in 1710, when the enemies to our constitution were contriving its ruin, I wrote a pamphlet entitled 'Lethe,' which was published in Holland, and afterwards translated into Eng lish, and twice printed in London; and being reprinted at Dublin, proved so offensive to the ministry in Ireland, that it was burnt by the hands of the hangman. But so it is, that after having showed on all occasions my zeal for the royal family, and endeavoured to make myself ser viceable to the public by several books published; after forty years' stay in England, and in an advanced age, I find myself and family destitute of a sufficient livelihood, and suffering from complaints in the head and impaired sight by constant application to my studies.

I am confident, my lord,' he adds, that if the queen, to whom I was made known on occasion of Thuanus's French translation, were acquainted with my present dis tros, she would be pleased to afford me some relief.'t

Among the confidential literary friends of Des Mai- . zeaux he had the honor of ranking Anthony Collins, a great lover of literature, and a man of fine genius; and who in a continued correspondence with our Des Maizeaux treated him as his friend, and employed him as his agent in his literary concerns. These in the formation of an extensive library, were in a state of perpetual activity, and Collins was such a true lover of his books, that he drew up the catalogue with his own pen. Anthony Collins wrote several well-known works without prefixing his name; but having pushed too far his curious inquiries on some obscure and polemical points, he incurred the odium of a free-thinker, a term which then began to be in vogue, and which the French adopted by translating it in their way, a strong thinker, or esprit fort. Whatever tendency to liberalise' the mind from dogmas and creeds prevails in these works, the talents and learning of Collins were of the first class. His morals were immaculate, and his personal character independent; but the odium theologicum of those days contrived every means to stab in the dark, till the taste became heredi trary with some. I shall mention a fact of this cruel bigotry which occurred within my own observation on one of the most polished men of the age. The late Mr. Cumberland, in the romance entitled his Life,' gave this extraordinary fact, that Dr Bentley, who so ably replied by his Remarks,' under the name of Phileleutherus Lipsien sis, to Collins's Discourse on Free-thinking,' when many years after he discovered him fallen into great distress, conceiving that by having ruined Collins's character as a writer for ever, he had been the occasion of his personal misery, he liberally contributed to his maintenance. In vain I mentioned to that elegant writer, who was not curious about facts, that this person could never have been Anthony Collins, who had always a plentiful fortune; and when it was suggested to him that this A. Collins, as he printed it, must have been Arthur Collins the histori. cal compiler, who was often in pecuniary difficulties, still he persisted in sending the lie down to posterity, totidem

I find that the nominal pension was 38, 6d, per diem on the Irish civil list, which amounts to above 631. per annum. If a pension be granted for reward, it seems a mockery that the income should be so grievously reduced, which cruel custom still prevails.

This letter, or petition, was written in 1732. In 1743 he procured his pension to be placed on his wife's life, and he died

in 1745.

He was sworn in as gentleman of his majesty's privy chamber in 1722.-Sloane's MSS, 4289.

There is a printed catalogue of his library.

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verbis, without alteration in his second edition, observing to a friend of mine, that the story, while it told well, might serve as a striking instance of his great relative's generosity; and that it should stand, because it could do no harm to any but Anthony Collins, whom he considered as little short of an atheist.' So much for this plouз fraud! but be it recollected that this Anthony Colins was the confidential friend of Locke, of whom Locke said, on his dying bed, that Collins was a man whom he valued in the first rank of those that he left behind him.' And the last words of Collins on his own death-bed were, that he was persuaded he was going to that place which God had designed for them that love him.' The cause of true religion will never be assisted by using such leaky vessels as Cumberland's wilful calumnies, which in the end must run out, and be found, like the present, mere empty fictions!

An extraordinary circumstance occurred on the death of Anthony Collins. He left behind him a considerable number of his own manuscripts, and there was one collection formed into eight octavo volumes; but that they might be secured from the common fate of manuscripts, he bequeathed them all, and coufided them to the care of our Des Maizeaux. The choice of Collins reflects honour on the character of Des Maizeaux, yet he proved unworthy of it! He suffered himself to betray his trust, practised on by the earnest desire of the widow, and perhaps by the arts of a Mr Tomlinson, who appears to have been introduced into the family by the recommendation of Dean Sykes, whom at length he supplanted, and whom the widow to save her reputation, was afterwards obliged to discard.* In an unguarded moment he relinquished this precious legacy of the manuscripts, and accepted fifty guineas as a present.

But if Des Maizeaux lost his honour in this transaction, he was at heart an honest man, who had swerved for a single moment; his conscience was soon awakened, and he experienced the most violent compunctions. It was in a paroxysm of this nature that he addressed the following letter to a mutual friend of the late Anthony Collins and him

self.

January 6, 1730.

Sir, I am very glad to hear you are come to town, and as you are my best friend, now I have lost Mr Collins, give me leave to open my heart to you, and to beg your assistance in an affair which highly concerns both Mr Collins's (your friend) and my own honour and reputation. The case, in few words, stands thus: Mr Collins by his last will and testament left me his manuscripts. Mr Tomlinson, who first acquainted me with it, told me that Mrs Collins should be glad to have them, and I made them over to her; whereupon she was pleased to present me with fifty guineas. I desired her at the same time to take care they should be kept safe and unhurt, which she promised to do. This was done the 25th of last month. Mr Tomlinson, who managed all this affair, was present.

Now, having further considered that matter, I find that I have done a most wicked thing. I am persuaded that I have betrayed the trust of a person who for 26 years has given me continual instances of his friendship and confidence. I am convinced that I have acted contrary to the will and intention of my dear deceased friend; showed a disregard to the particular mark of esteem he gave me on that occasion; in short, that I have forfeited what is dearer to me than my own life-honour and reputation.

These melancholy thoughts have made so great an impression upon me, that I protest to you I can enjoy no rest; they haunt me every where, day and night. I earnestly beseech you, Sir, to represent my unhappy case to Mrs Collins. I acted with all the simplicity and uprightness of my heart; I considered that the MSS would be as safe in Mrs Collins's hands as in mine; that she was no less obliged to preserve them than myself; and that, as the library was left to her, they might naturally go along with it. Besides, I thought I could not too much comply with the desire of a lady to whom I have so many obligations. But I see now clearly that this is not fulfilling Mr Collins's will, and that the duties of our conscience are superior to all other regards. But it is in her power to forgive and mend what I have done imprudently, but with a good intention. Her high sense of virtue and generosity will not, I am sure, let her take any advantage of my weakness; and the tender regard she has for the memory of the best of men, and the tenderest of husbands, will not suffer that his intentions

This information is from a note found among Dos Majzeaux's papers; but its truth I have no means to ascertain.

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should be frustrated, and that she should be the instrument of violating what is most sacred. If our late friend had designed that his MSS should remain in her hands, he would certainly have left them to her by his last will and testament: his acting otherwise is an evident proof that it was not his intention.

All this I proposed to represent to her in the most respectful manner; but you will do it infinitely better than I can in this present distraction of mind; and I tatter my self that the mutual esteem and friendship which has continued so many years between Mr Collins and you, will make you readily embrace whatever tends to honour his

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March 10, 1786-7.

Sir, I have thus long waited in expectation that you would ere this have called ou Dean Sykes, as Sir B. Lucy said you intended, that I might have had some satisfaction in relation to a very unjust reproach, viz., that I, or somebody that I had trusted, had betrayed some of the transcripts or MSS, of Mr Collins into the Bishop of London's hands. I cannot therefore, since you have not been with the dean as was desired, but call on you in this manner, to know what authority you had for such a reflection; or on what grounds you went on for saying that these transcripts are in the Bishop of London's hands. I am determined to trace out the grounds of such a report; and you can be no friend of mine, no friend of Mr Collins, no friend to com mon justice, if you refuse to acquaint me what foundation you had for such a charge. I desire a very speedy answer to this, who am, Sir, Your servant,

To Mr Des Maizeaux, at his lodgings next door to the Quaker's bu rying ground, Hanover-street, out of Long Acre.

To Mrs Collins.

ELIZ. COLLINE.

March 14. 1736. I had the honour of your letter of the 10th, inst, and as I find that something has been misapprehended, I beg leave to set this matter right.

Being lately with some honourable persons, I told them it had been reported that some of Mr C's MSS were fallen into the hands of strangers, and that I should be glad to receive from you such information as might enable me to disprove that report. What occasioned this surmise, or what particular MSS were meant, I was not able to discover; so I was left to my own conjectures, which, upon a serious consideration, induced me to believe that it might relate to the MSS in eight volumes in 8vo, of which there is a transcript. But as the original and the transcript are in your possession, if you please, madam, to compare them together, you may easily see whether they be both entire and perfect,or whether there be any thing wanting in either By this means you will assure yourself, and satisfy your friends, that several important pieces are safe in your hands, and that the report is false and groundless. All this I take the liberty to offer out of the singular respect I always professed for you, and for the memory of Mr Col lins, to whom I have endeavoured to do justice on all occa sions, and particularly in the memoirs that have been made use of in the General Dictionary; and I hope my tender concern for his reputation will further appear when I publish his life.

of them.

April 6, 1757.

Sir, My ill state of health has hindered me from acknowledging sooner the receipt of yours, from which I hoped for some satisfaction in relation to your charge, in which I cannot but think myself very deeply concerned. You tell me now, that you was left to your own conjectures

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what particular MSS were reported to have fallen into the Jands of strangers, and that upon a serious consideration you was induced to believe that it might relate to the MSS in eight vols. 8vo, of which there was a transcript.

I must beg of you to satisfy me very explicitly who were the persons that reported this to you, and from whom did you receive this information? You know that Mr Collins left several MSS behind him; what grounds had you for your conjecture that it related to the MSS in eight vols. rather than to any other MSS of which there was a transcript? I beg that you will be very plain, and tell me what strangers were named to you? and why you said the Bishop of London, if your informer, said stranger to you? I am so much concerned in this, that I must repeat it, if you have the singular respect for Mr Collins which you profess, that you would help me to trace out this reproach, which is so abusive to,

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I flattered myself that my last letter would have satisfied you, but I have the mortification to see that my hopes were vain. Therefore I beg leave once more to set this matter right. When I told you what had been reported, I acted, as I thought, the part of a true friend, by acquainting you that some of your MSS had been purloned, in order that you might examine a fact which to me appeared of the last consequence; and I verily believe that every body in my case would have expected thanks for such a friendly information. But instead of that, I find myself represented as an enemy, and challenged to produce proofs and witnesses of a thing dropt in conversation, a hear-say, as if in those cases people kept a register of what they hear, and entered the names of the persons who spoke, the time, place, &c, and had with them persons ready to witness the whole, &c. I did own I never thought of such a thing, and whenever I happened to hear that some of my friends had some loss, I thought it my duty to acquaint them with such report, that they might inquire into the matter, and see whether there was any ground for it. But I never troubled myself with the names of the persons who spoke, as being a thing entirely needless and unprofitable.

Give me leave farther to observe, that you are in no way concerned in the matter, as you seem to be apprehensive you are. Suppose some MSS have been taken out of your library, who will say you ought to bear the guilt of it? What man in his senses, who has the honour to know you, will say you gave your consent to such thing-that you was privy to it? How can you then take upon yourself an action to which you was neither privy and consenting? Do not such things happen every day, and do the losers think themselves injured or abused when they are talked of? Is it impossible to be betrayed by a person we confided in ?

You call what I told you was a report, a surmise; you call it, I say, an information, and speak of informers as if there was a plot laid, wherein I received the information: I thought I had the honour to be better known to you. Mr Collins loved me and esteemed me for my integrity and sincerity, of which he had several proofs; how I have been drawn in to injure him, to forfeit the good opinion he had of me, and which, were he now alive, would deservedly expose me to his utmost contempt, is a grief which I shall carry to the grave. It would be a sort of comfort to me, if those who have consented I should be drawn in were in some measure sensible of the guilt towards so good, kind, and generous a man.

Thus we find that seven years after Des Maizeaux had inconsiderately betrayed his sacred trust, his remorse was still awake; and the sincerity of his grief is attested by the affecting style which describes it: the spirit of bis departed friend seemed to be hovering about him, and, in his imagination, would haunt him to the grave.

The nature of these manuscripts; the cause of the earnest desire of retaining them by the widow; the evident unfriendliness of her conduct to Des Maizeaux; and whether these manuscripts, consisting of eight octavo volumes with their transcripts, were destroyed, or are still existing, are all circumstances, which my researches have hitherto not ascertained.

HISTORY OF NEW WORDS.

Neology, or the novelty of words and phrases, is an in

novation, which, with the opulence of our present language, the English philologer is most jealous to allow; but we have puritans or precisans of English, superstitiously nice! The fantastic coinage of affectation or caprice will cease to circulate from its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore of fine workmanship and solid weight? There is no government mint of words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring expression unauthorized by Mr Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established word, otherwise he is but an ignorant pretender!

Julius Cæsar, who, unlike other great captains, is authority in words as well as about blows, wrote a large treatise on Analogy,' in which that fine genius counselled to 'avoid every unusual word as a rock !'* The cautious Quintilian, as might be expected, opposes all innovation in language. If the new word is well received, small is the glory; if rejected, it raises laughter.' This only marks the penury of his feelings in this species of adventure! The great legislator of words, who lived when his own language was at its acmé, seems undecided, yet pleaded for this liberty. Shall that which the Romans allowed to Cæcilius and to Plautus be refused to Virgil and Varius? The answer to the question might not be favourable to the inquirer. While a language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. But this is to imagine that a perfect language can exist! The good sense and observation of Horace perceived that there may be occasions where necessity must become the mother of invented words:

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This præsens nota, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new coinage of words; for many received at a season have perished with it. The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest enemy-Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his grave before he can enter the dictionary.

In Wille's address to the reader, prefixed to the collection of voyages published in 1577, he finds fault with Eden's translation from Peter Martyr, for using words that smelt too much of the Latine.' We should scarcely have expected to find among them ponderouse, portentouse, despicable, obsequious, homicide, imbibed, destructive, prodigious. The only words he quotes, not thoroughly naturalized, are dominators, ditionaries, (subjects,) solicitute, (careful.)

The Tatler, No, 230, introduces several polysyllables introduced by inilitary narrations, which, (he says,) if they attack us too frequently, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear;' every one of them still keep their ground.

Half the French words used affectedly by Melantha, in Dryden's Marriage à-la-mode, as innovations in our language, are now in common use, naiveté, foible, chagrin, grimace, embarras, double entendre, equivoque, eclaircisse. ment, ridicule, all these words which she learns by heart to use occasionally, are now in common use. A Dr Russel called Psalm-singers Ballad-singers, having found the song of Solomon in an old translation, the Ballad of Ballars, for which he is reproached by his antagonist for not knowing that the signification of words alters with time; should I call him knave, he ought not to be concerned at Aulus Gellius, lib. i, c. 10. + Instit. lib. i, c. 5. This verse was corrected by Bentley procudere nummum, instead of producere nomen, which the critics agree is one of his happy conjectures.

it, for the Apostle Paul is also called a knave of Jesus Christ.

Unquestionably, NEOLOGY opens a wide door to innovation; scarcely has a century passed since our language was patched up with gallic idioms, as in the preceding century it was piebald with Spanish, and with Italian, and even with Dutch. The political intercourse of islanders with their neighbours has ever influenced their language. In Elizabeth's reign Italian phrases and Netherland words were imported; in James and Charles the Spanish framed the style of courtesy; in Charles the Second the nation and the language were equally Frenchified. Yet such are the sources whence we have often derived some of the wealth of our language!

There are three foul corrupters of a language; caprice, affectation, and ignorance! Such fashionable cant terms as theatricals,' and 'musicals,' invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity of frivolity. A lady eminent for the elegance of her taste, and of whom one of the best judges, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth, observed to me that she spoke the purest and most idiomatic English she had ever heard, threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our present fashionable vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have lived to hear the vulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room circles. To lunch, now so familiar from the fairest lips, in her youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of late among our young ladies, a nice man, whatever it may mean, whether the man resemble a pudding, or something more nice, con. vevs the offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up! When I was a boy, it was an age of Bon ton; this good tone mysteriously conveyed a sublime idea of fashion; the term imported late in the eighteenth century, closed with it. Twaddle for awhile succeeded bore; but bore has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new edition of his Polite Conversation.' A dictionary of barbarisms too might be collected from some wretched neologists, whose pens are now at work! Lord Chesterfield, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's Dictionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should add as an appendix A neological Dictionary, containing those polite, though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases commonly used, and sometimes understood by the beau monde.' This last phrase was doubtless a contribution! Such a dictionary had already appeared in the French language, drawn up by two caustic critics, who in the Dictionnaire neologique a l'usage des beaux Esprits du Siecle, collected together the numerous unlucky inventions of affectation, with their modern authorities! A collection of the fine words and phrases culled from some very modern poetry, might show the real amount of the favours bestowed on us.

The attempts of neologists are, however, not necessarily to be condemned; and we may join with the commentators of Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter, of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined to have debased.

The true history of men's minds is found in their actions; their wants are indicated by their contrivances; and certain it is that in highly cultivated ages we discover the most refined intellects attempting neologisms. It would be a subject of great curiosity to trace the origin of many happy expressions, when, and by whom created. Plato substituted the term Providence for fate; and a new system of human affairs arose from a single word. Cicero invented several; to this philosopher we owe the term of moral philosophy, which before his time was called the philosophy of manners. But on this subject we are perhaps more interested by the modern than by the ancient languages. Richardson, the painter of the human heart has coined some expressions to indicate its little secret movements which are admirable: that great genius merited a higher education and more literary leisure than the life of a printer could afford. Montaigne created some bold expressions, many of which have not survived him; incuriositie so opposite to curiosity, well describes that state of negligence where we will not learn that of which we are ignorant. With us the word incurious was described

by Heylin, in 1656, as an unusual word; it has been appropriately adopted by our best writers; although we still want incuriosity. Charron invented etrangete unsuccessfully, but which, says a French critic, would be the true substantive of the word etrange; our Locke is the solitary instance produced for foreignness' for remoteness or want of relation to something. Malherbe borrowed from the Latin insidieux, securité, which have been received; but a bolder word devoulior, by which he proposed to express cesser de vouloir, has not. A term, however, expressive and precise. Corneille happily intoduced invaincu in a verse in the Cid,

Vous etes invaincu, mais non pas invincible. Yet this created word by their great poet has not sanctioned this fine description among the French, for we are told that it is almost a solitary instance. Balzac was a great inventor of neologisms. Urbanité and feliciter were struck in his mint. Si le mot feliciter n'est pas Français

il le sera l'année qui vient so confidently proud was the neologist, and it prospered as well as urbanité, of which he says, Quand l'usage aura muri parmi nous un mot de st s'y peut trouver, nous nous y accoutumerons comme aux mauvais gout, et corrigé l'amertume de la nouveauté qui autres que nous avons em prunté de la meme langue.' Bal zac was, however, too sanguine in some other words; for his delecter, his seriosité, &c, still retain their bitterness of novelty.'

Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is want. ing in our language: J'ai fait prosateur à l'imitation de P'Italien prosatore, pour dire un homme qui écrit en prose." To distinguish a prose from a verse writer we once had a proser.' Drayton uses it; but this useful distinction has unluckily degenerated, and the current sense is so daily urgent, that the purer sense is irrecoverable.

When D'Ablancourt was translating Lucian, he invented in French the words indolence and indolent; to describe a momentary languor, rather than that habitual indolence, in which sense they are now accepted; and in translating Tacitus, he created the word turbulemment, but it did not prosper, any more than that of temporisement. Segrais invented the word impardonable, which, after having been rejected, was revived, and is equivalent to our expressive unpardonable. Moliere ridiculed some neologisms of the Precieuses of his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new and which we often adopt when it becomes old. Moliere laughed at the term s'encannailler, to describe one who assumed the manners of a blackguard; the expressive word has remained in the language.

There are two remarkable French words created by the Abbé de Saint Pierre, who passed his meritorious life in the contemplation of political morality and universal benevolence-bienfaisance and gloriole. He invented gloriole as a contemptuous diminutive of gloire; to describe that vanity of some egotists, so proud of the small talents which they may have received from nature or from accident. Bienfaisance first appeared in this sentence: L'Esprit de la vraie religion et la principal but d l'evangile cest la bienfaisance, c'est-a-dire la pratique de la charité envers le prochain. This word was so new, that in the moment of its creation this good man explained its necessity and origin. Complaining that the word "charity" is abused by all sorts of Christians in the persecution of their enemies, and even heretics affirm that they are practising Christian charity in persecuting other heretics, I have sought for a term which might convey to us a precise idea of doing good to our neighbours, and I can form none more proper to make myself understood than the term of bienfaisance, good-doing. Let those who like, use it; I would only be understood, and it is not equivocal.' The happy word was at first critised, but at length every kind heart found it responded to its own feeling. Some verses from Voltaire, alluding to the political reveries of the good abbé, notice the critical opposition; yet the new word answered to the great rule of Horace.

'Certain legislateur, dont la plume feconde

Fit tant de vains projects pour le bien du monde,
Et qui depuis trente ans écrit pour des ingrats,
Viens de creer un mot qui manque a Vaugelas :
Ce mot est Bienfaisance, il me plait, il rassemble
Si le cœur en est cru, bien des vertus ensemble.
Petits grammairiens, grands precepteurs de sots,
Qui pesez la parole et mesurez les mots,
Pareille expression vous semble hazardée,
Mais l'univers entier doit en cherir l'idée !

The French revolutionists, in their rage for innovation, almost barbarized the pure French of the Augustean age of their literature, as they did many things which never before occurred; and sometimes experienced feelings as transitory as they were strange. Their nomenclature was copious; but the revolutionary jargon often shows the danger and the necessity of neologisms. They form an appendix to the Academy Dictionary. Our plain English has served to enrich this odd mixture of philology and politics; Club, clubists, comité, juré, juge de paix, blend with their terrorisme, lanterner, a verb active, levée en masse, noyades, and the other verb active Septembriser, &c. The barbarous term demoralisation is said to have been the invention of the horrid capuchin Chabot; and the remarkable expression of arriere pensée belonged exclusively in its birth to the jesuitic astuteness of the Abbé Sieyes, that political actor who, in changing sides, never required prompting in his new part!

may sometimes produce the beautiful, the revival of the dead is the more authentic miracle; for a new word must long remain doubtful, but an ancient word happily recover. ed, rests on a basis of permanent strength-it has both novelty and authority! A collection of picturesque words, found among our ancient writers, would constitute a precious supplement to the history of our language. Far more expressive than our term of executioner is their solemn one of the deathsman; than our vagabond their scatterling; than our idiot or lunatic their moonling; a word which Mr Gifford observes should not have been suffered to grow obsolete. Herrick finely describes by the term pittering the peculiar shrill and short cry of the grasshopper.* Envy 'dusking the lustre' of genius, is a verb lost for us, but which gives a more precise expression to the feeling than any other words which we could use.

The late Dr Boucher, of whose prejected Theasurus of our ancient English language we only possess the first letter of the alphabet, while the great and precious portion is suffered to moulder away among his family, in the prospectus of that work, did me the honour, then a young writer, to quote an opinion I had formed early in life of the purest source of neology-which is in the revival of old words,

A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term which, though unknown to the language, conveys a collective assemblage of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of genius; new words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterizes these hirelings; he called them answer-jobbers. We have not dropped the fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of perception in our iexicographers, The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has been of late warmly adopted in France as well as in England-The genius that throws its prophetic eye over the language,

to liberalise; the noun has been drawn out of the verb-
for in the marquis's time, that was only an abstract con-
ception which is now a sect; and to liberalise was the
oretically introduced before the liberals arose.*
It is cu-
rious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our
language a very opposite meaning to its recent one.
was synonymous with libertine or licentious,' we have' a
Liberal villain' and a most profane and liberal counsellor,'
we find one declaring I have spoken too liberally.' This
is unlucky for the liberals, who will not-

Give allowance to our liberal jests
Upon their persons-'

It

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. My learned friend Archdeacon Nares in his valuable Glossary has supplied a variety of instances.

Dr Priestley employed a forcible, but not an elegant term, to mark the general information which had begun in his day; this he frequently calls the spread of knowledge.' Burke attempted to brand with a new name that set of pert, petulent, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy, the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as philosophism, and the philosophers themselves as philosophistes. He would have designated thein as literators, but few exotic words will circulate; new words must be the coinage of our own language to blend with the vernacular idiom. Many new words are still wanted. We have no word by which we could translate the otium of the Latins, the dilettante of the Italians, the alembiqué of the French, as an epithet to describe that sublimated ingenuity which exhausts the mind, till, like the fusion of the diamond, the intellect itself disappears. A philosopher, in an extensive view of a subject in all its bearings, may convey to us the result of his last considerations, by the comage of a novel and significant expression as this of Professor Dugald Stewart-political religionism. Let me claim the honour of one pure neologism. I ventured to introduce the term of father-land to describe our natale solum; I have lived to see it adopted by Lord Byron and by Mr Southey. This energetic expression may therefore be considered as authenticated; and patriotism may stamp it with its glory and its affection. Father-land is congenial with the language in which we find that other fine expression of mother-tongue. The patriotic neologism originated with me in Holland, when, in early life, it was my daily pursuit to turn over the glorious history of its independence under the title of Vaderlandsche Historie-the history of fatherland!

If we acknowledge that the creation of some neologisms The Quarterly Review recently marked the word liberalise in Italics as a strange word, undoubtedly not aware of its origin. It has been lately used by Mr Dugald Stewart, 'to Iberalise the views.' Dissert. 2d part, p. 128.

'Words, that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake! We have lost may exquisite and picturesque expressions through the dulness of our lexicographers, or by that deficiency in that profounder study of our writers which their labours require far more than they themselves know. The natural graces of our language have been impoverished!

and the taste that must come from Heaven, no lexicographer imagines are required to accompany him amidst a library of old books!

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS.

In antique furniture we sometimes discover a convenience which long disuse had made us unacquainted with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have found the labour of the workman to have been as admirable as the material itself, which is still resisting the mouldering touch of Time among those modern inventions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put together with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly into pieces when brought into use. We have found how strength consists in the selection of materials, and that, whenever the substitute is not better than the original, we are losing something in that test of experience, which all things derive from duration.

Be this as it may! I shall not unreasonably await for the artists of our novelties to retrograde into massive greatness, although I cannot avoid reminding them how often they revive the forgotten things of past times! It is well known that many of our novelties were in use by our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely from their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity, and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our patient inventions.

By the title of the present article the reader has anticipated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude. I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be called the philosophy of PROVERBS-a topic which seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, indeed, always been acquired even by some of their admirers; but my observations, like their subject, must be versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indulgence for an attempt to illustrate a very curious branch of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten.

PROVERBS have long been in disuse. A man of fashion,' observes Lord Chesterfield, never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms;' and since the time his lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they appear to have withered away under the ban of his anathema. His lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs, and would unquestionably have smiled on those men of fashion' of another stamp, who, in the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them; would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce them in their learned or their statesman-like correspondence. Few, *The cry of the grasshopper is pit! pit! pit! quickly repeated.

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