me excellent
instances of the same sort. "Your Enormity" is a delightful variant on
"Your Excellency;" and there is something really pathetic in the Baboo's
benediction, "You have been very good to us, and may Almighty God give
you tit for tat." But to deride these errors of idiom scarcely lies in
the mouth of an Englishman. A friend of mine, wishing to express his
opinion that a Frenchman was an idiot, told him that he was a
"cretonne." Lord R----, preaching at the French Exhibition, implored his
hearers to come and drink of the "eau de vie;" and a good-natured
Cockney, complaining of the incivility of French drivers, said, "It is
so uncalled for, because I always try to make things pleasant by
beginning with 'Bon jour, Cochon.'" Even in our own tongue Englishmen
sometimes come to grief over an idiomatic proverb. In a debate in
Convocation at Oxford, Dr. Liddon, referring to a concession made by the
opposite side, said, "It is proverbially ungracious to look a gift horse
_in the face._" And, though the undergraduates in the gallery roared
"Mouth, sir; mouth!" till they were hoarse, the Angelic Doctor never
perceived the unmeaningness of his proverb.

Some years ago a complaint of inefficiency was preferred against a
workhouse-chaplain, and, when the Board of Guardians came to consider
the case, one of the Guardians, defending the chaplain, observed that
"Mr. P---- was only fifty-two, and had a mother running about."
Commenting on this line of defence, a newspaper, which took the view
hostile to the chaplain, caustically remarked:--"On this principle, the
more athletic or restless were a clergyman's relatives, the more
valuable an acquisition would he himself be to the Church. Supposing
that some Embertide a bishop were fortunate enough to secure among his
candidates for ordination a man who, in addition to 'a mother running
about,' had a brother who gained prizes at Lillie Bridge, and a cousin
who pulled in the 'Varsity Eight, and a nephew who was in the School
Eleven, to say nothing of a grandmother who had St. Vitus's Dance, and
an aunt in the country whose mind wandered, then surely Dr. Liddon
himself would have to look out for his laurels."

The "Things one would rather have expressed differently" for which
reporters are responsible are of course legion. I forbear to enlarge on
such familiar instances as "the shattered libertine of debate," applied
to Mr. Bernal Osborne, and "the roaring loom of the _Times_" when