The anecdotes chosen for the instruction of the unfortunate Portuguese youth are almost more unintelligible than the rest of the book, and probably the following two anecdotes could not be matched in any other printed book:—
``The Commander Forbin of Janson, <p 208>being at a repast with a celebrated Boileau, had undertaken to pun upon her name:—`What name, told him, carry you thither? Boileau: I would wish better to call me Drink wine.' The poet was answered him in the same tune:— `And you, sir, what name have you choice? Janson: I should prefer to be named John-meal. The meal don't is valuable better than the furfur.'''
The next is as good:—
``Plato walking one's self a day to the field with some of their friends. They were to see him Diogenes who was in water untill the chin. The superficies of the water was snowed, for the rescue of the hole that Diogenes was made. Don't look it more told them Plato, and he shall get out soon.''
A large volume entitled Polugl<o^>ssos was published in Belgium in 1841, which is even more misleading and unintelligible than the Portuguese School Book. The English vocabulary contains some amazing words, such as agridulce, ales of troops, ancientness sign, bivacq fire, breast's pellicule, chimney black money, infatuated compass, <p 209>iug (vocal), window, umbrella, etc. At the end of this vocabulary are these notes:—
``Look the abridged introduction exeptless for the english editions, foregoing the french postcript, next after the title page. Just as the numbers, the names of cities, states, seas, mountains and rivers, the christian names of men and woman, and several synonimous, who enter into the composition of many english words, suppressed in the former vocabulary, are explained by the respective categorys and appointed at the general index, look also by these, what is not found here above.''
``Version alternative. See for the shorter introduction exeptless for the english editions, foregoing the french postscript next after the title page. Just as the numbers &c. . . . their expletives are be given by the respective categorys, and appointed at the general index, to wich is sent back!''
We are frequently told that foreigners are much better educated than we are, and that the trade of the world is slipping <p 210>through our fingers because we are not taught languages as the foreigners are. This may be so, but one cannot help believing that the dullest of English clerks would be able to hold his own in competition with the ingenious youths who are taught foreign languages on the system adopted by Senhors Fonseca and Carolino, and by the compiler of Polugl<o^>ssos.
Guides to a foreign town or country written in English by a foreigner are often very misleading; in fact, sometimes quite incomprehensible. A contributor to the Notes and Queries sent to that periodical some amusing extracts from a Guide to Amsterdam. The following few lines from a description of the Assize Court give a fair idea of the language:—
``The forefront has a noble and sublime aspect, and is particularly characteristical to what it ought to represent. It is built in a division of three fronts in the corinthic order, each of them consists of four raising columns, resting upon a general basement from the one end of the forefront to the other, and supporting <p 211>a cornish, equalling running all over the face.''[15]