has not. A term, however, expressive and precise. Corneille happily introduced invaincu in a verse in the Cid, Vous êtes invaincu, mais non pas invincible. Yet this created word by their great poet has not sanctioned this fine distinction among the French, for we are told that it is almost a solitary instance. Balzac was a great inventor of neologisms. Urbanité and féliciter were struck in his mint. "Si le mot féliciter n'est pas française, 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 si mauvais gout, et corrigé l'amertume de la nouveauté qui s'y peut trouver, nous nous y accoutumerons comme aux autres que nous avons emprunté de la même langue." Balzac was, however, too sanguine in some other words; for his délecter, his sériosité, &c. still retain their "bitterness of novelty." Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is wanting in our language; "J'ai fait prosateur à l'imitation de l'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'Albancourt 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 impardonnable, which, after having been rejected, was revived, and is equivalent to our expressive unpardonable. Molière ridiculed some neologisms of the Précieuses of his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new, and which we often adopt when it becomes old. Molière laughed at the term s'encanailler, to describe one who assumed the manners of a blackguard; the expressive word has remained in the language. The meaning is disputed as well as the origin is lost of some novel terms. This has happened to a word in daily use-Fudge! It is a cant term not in Grose, and only traced by Todd not higher than to Goldsmith. It is, however, no invention of his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There was, sir, in our time, one Captain Fudge, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, You fudge it!" It is singular that such an obscure byword among sailors should have become one of the most popular in our familiar style; and not less, that recently at the bar, in a court of law, its precise meaning perplexed plaintiff and defendant and their counsel. I think it does not signify mere lies, but bouncing lies, or rhodomontades. 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 glorie; 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 le principal but de l'evangile c'est la bienfaisance, c'est-àdire 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." happy word was at first criticised, 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 législateur, dont la plume féconde Fit tant de vains projets pour le bien du monde, The Petits grammairiens, grands précepteurs de sots, The French revolutionists, in their rage for innovation, almost barbarised the pure French of the Augustan 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, clubiste, comité, jure, juge de paix, blend with their terrorisme, lanterner, a verb active, lévee 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 arrière 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! 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, characterises 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 lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in England-to liberalise; the noun has been drawn out of the verb-for in the marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now a sect; and to liberalise was theoretically introduced before the liberals arose. It is curious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our lan * *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 liberalise the views."Dissert. 2nd part, p. 138. It was 66 a guage a very opposite meaning to its recent one. synonymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have 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 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, petulant, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as philosophism, and the philosophers themselves as philosophistes. He would have designated them 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 dillettante 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 coinage 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, and the word is now common. A lady has even composed both the words and the air of a song on "Fatherland." 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 MOTHERTONGUE. 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 FATHER-LAND! If we acknowledge that the creation of some neologisms 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 recovered 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: the cry of the grasshopper is pit! pit! pit! quickly repeated. 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, in the prospectus of his proposed Dictionary, 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. Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake ! We have lost many exquisite and picturesque expressions through the dulness of our lexicographers, or by the 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. The genius that throws its prophetic eye over the language, 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 workmen 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 |