with thousands of French terms. Like the Lycian, whom Zeus bereft of wit, we took brass for gold. Thanks to this process, Chaucer had most likely as great a wealth of words at his beck as Orrmin had, two hundred years earlier. But, though we long ago repaired with brick the gaps made in our ruined old stone hall, it does not follow that we should daub stucco over the brick and the stone alike. What a scholar mourns, is that our daws prank themselves in peacocks' feathers: that our lower press and our clergy revel in Romance words, brought in most needlessly after Swift and Addison were in their graves. What, for instance, do we want with the word exacerbate instead of the old embitter? The former is one of the penny-a-liner's choicest jewels. Is not the sentence, workmen want more pay, at least as expressive as the tawdry operatives desiderate additional remuneration? At the same time, no man of sense can object to foreign words coming into English of late years, if they unmistakeably fill up a gap. Our hard-working fathers had no need of the word ennui; our wealth, ever waxing, has brought the state of mind; so France has given us the name for it. The importer, who first bestowed upon us the French prestige, is worthy of all honour, for this word supplied a real want. Our ships sail over all seas; English is the chosen language of commerce; we borrow, and rightly so, from the uttermost shores of the earth; from the Australians we took kangaroo; and the great Burke uses taboo, which came to him from Otaheite.[1] What our ladies, priests, sol-
- ↑ Burke (the friend of Hare, not the friend of Fox) has given us a new word for suppress. Another famous Galway house has given us a name for irregular justice executed upon thieves and murderers.
