“De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,
And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends”—
very unjustly; the authors whom he has translated are all more or less important, and his versions of them a mine of genuine idiomatic English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought to a considerable extent, and with eminent advantage by Richardson; yet capable, as it seems to me, of yielding much more than they hitherto have yielded.
[49] And so too in French it is surprising to find of how late introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language could never have done without. ‘Désintéressement’, ‘exactitude’, ‘sagacité’, ‘bravoure’, were not introduced till late in the seventeenth century. ‘Renaissance’, ‘emportement’, ‘sçavoir-faire’, ‘indélébile’, ‘désagrément’, were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours); ‘indévot’, ‘intolérance’, ‘impardonnable’, ‘irréligieux’, were struggling into allowance at the end of the seventeenth century, and were not established till the beginning of the eighteenth. ‘Insidieux’ was invented by Malherbe; ‘frivolité’ does not appear in the earlier editions of the Dictionary of the Academy; the Abbé de St. Pierre was the first to employ ‘bienfaisance’, the elder Balzac ‘féliciter’, Sarrasin ‘burlesque’. Mad. de Sevigné exclaims against her daughter for employing ‘effervescence’ in a letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voilà un mot dont je n’avais jamais ouï parler). ‘Demagogue’ was first hazarded by Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced ‘diversion’ and ‘enfantillage’, though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last. Desfontaines was the first who employed ‘suicide’; Caron gave to the language ‘avant-propos’, Ronsard ‘avidité’, Joachim Dubellay ‘patrie’, Denis Sauvage ‘jurisconsulte’, Menage ‘gracieux’ (at least so Voltaire affirms) and ‘prosateur’, Desportes ‘pudeur’, Chapelain ‘urbanité’, and Etienne first brought in, apologizing at the same time for the boldness of it, ‘analogie’ (si les oreilles françoises peuvent porter ce mot). ‘Préliber’ (prælibare) is a word of our own day; and it was Charles Nodier who, if he did not coin, yet revived the obsolete ‘simplesse’.—See Génin, Variations du Langage Français, pp. 308-19.
[50] [Resuscitated in vain by Charles Lamb.]
[51] J. Grimm (Wörterbuch, p. xxvi.): Fällt von ungefähr ein fremdes wort in den brunnen einer sprache, so wird es so lange darin umgetrieben, bis es ihre farbe annimmt, und seiner fremden art zum trotze wie ein heimisches aussieht.
[52] Have we here an explanation of the ‘battalia’ of Jeremy Taylor and others? Did they, without reflecting on the matter, regard ‘battalion’ as a word with a Greek neuter termination? It is difficult to think they should have done so; yet more difficult to suggest any other explanation. [‘Battalia’ was sometimes mistaken as a plural, which indeed it was originally, the word being derived through the Italian battaglia, from low Latin battalia, which (like biblia, gaudia, etc.) was afterwards regarded as a feminine singular (Skeat, Principles, ii, 230). But Shakespeare used it as a singular, “Our battalia trebles that account” (Rich. III, v. 3, 11); and so Sir T. Browne, “The Roman battalia was ordered after this manner” (Garden of Cyrus, 1658, p. 113).]
“And old heroës, which their world did daunt”.
Sonnet on Scanderbeg.
[54] [By J. H(ealey), 1610, who has “centones ... of diuerse colours”, p. 605.]