a£iUmf;** contrasts Horace's fHtrefrix' and moA^ona, scurra
and amicus; remarks as to a certain group of synonyms *^haua
equidem invideo; miror tnagis ; " speaks of " a London journal
or two that might well stand for the Cloaca Maxima; " and all
this on pages that lash the penny-a-liner's alienisms, and ''cry
up** Anglo-Saxon English. Nor does Mr. Oliphant mend
the matter by his deprecatory remark, " I must apologize to
those of my readers who are unlearned for the Latin [and
Greek ? ] in my text ; the truth is, that there are so many shades
of meaning in our words, that I can not thoroughly explain
myself without falling back upon the foreign tongue.** Shade
of the myriad-minded Shakspere, who cotUd explain himself
in English — and that Elizabethan English, far poorer in vocabu-
lary than the English of to-day !

1 1 8. The Alienism is most objectionable, of course,
when the foreign words are many, when they form whole
sentences, or when they are woven into the very structure
of the native speech. One can often guess at the mean-
ing of a strange word or even a phrase, the context
giving light enough ; but a knowledge of French ia
required to understand the following ; —

** I did not tell you Mr. Lydgate was haughty ; but il y en a
pour touts les gduts, as little Mamselle used to say.** *

"Or suppose we adopt the genteel rose-water style. *The
Marquis of Osborne has just despatched his petit tigre with a
billet doux to the Lady Amelia. The dear creature has received
it from the hand of her femme de chambre, Mademoiselle
Anastasie. " Dear Marquis I what amiable politeness ! His
lordship's note contains the wished-for invitation to Devon-
shire House.'* "Who is that monstrous fine girl,'* said the
SemUlant Prince G . . . rge of C . . . mbr . . . dge, at a
mansion in Piccadilly the same evening . . . "Her name, Mon-
seigneur, is Sedley.*' ** Vous avez alors un bien beau «^w,'»said
the young prince, turning . . . , and treading on the foot of
an old gentleman ..." Trente mille tonnerresf*^ shouted the
victim, writhing under the agonie du moment,^ *' '

' George Eliot, Middlemarch. For Mamselle^ see g 119, below.
