[389] See next chapter.
[390] I wonder whether any one else has noticed that Thackeray, in the very agreeable illustration to one of not quite his greatest "letterpress" things, A New Naval Drama (Oxford Ed. vol. viii. p. 421), makes the press-gang weep ostentatiously in the picture, though not in the text, where they only wave their cutlasses. It may be merely a coincidence: but it may not.
[391] There are reasons for thinking that Marmontel was deliberately "antidoting the fanfreluches" of the older tale-teller.
[392] In the original, suiting the rest of the setting, it is rideaux.
[393] "Explanations" is quite admirable, and, I think, neither borrowed from, nor, which is more surprising, by others.
[394] She declares that she has never actually "stooped to folly"; but admits that on more than one occasion it was only an accidental interruption which "luckily" (heureusement) saved her.
[395] It is necessary to retain the French here: for our "likes" is ambiguous.
[396] Cf. the stories, contradictory of each other, as to our brown-coated philosopher's appearance in France. (Boswell, p. 322, Globe ed.)
[397] Cf. again the bestowal of this title by Horace Walpole, in his later days, on Edward Jerningham, playwright, poetaster, and petit maître, who, unluckily for himself, lived into the more roughly satirical times of the Revolutionary War.
[398] "The sylphishness of Le Mari Sylphe is only an ingenious and defensible fraud; and the philtre-flasks of Alcidonis are little more than "properties.""