Anon.
In some of Dugdale's MS. volumes in this College is the following, written by himself:
"Maledictus sit qui abstulerit."
Thomas W. King, York Herald.
College of Arms.
THE DRUMMER'S LETTER.
(Vol. vii., p. 431.)
Mr. Forbes rightly describes the Drummer's Letter in the Sentimental Journey as "not only correctly but elegantly written." There is, moreover, in two or three places, a play upon words, which indicates an intimate acquaintance with the idiomatic turns of the language. But all these circumstances are, to my mind, only so many grounds for the belief that the French of the letter is not Sterne's.
If we are to judge of Sterne's French from the samples to be met with in Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journal, there is ample evidence that his knowledge of that language was somewhat superficial. I shall give a few examples.