matic English she had ever heard,
threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our
present fashionable vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have
lived to hear the vulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room
circles.[25] To _lunch_, now so familiar from the fairest lips, in her
youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of
late among our young ladies, _a nice man_, whatever it may mean, whether
that the man resemble a pudding or something more nice, conveys the
offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up! When I was a boy, it
was an age of _bon ton_; this _good tone_ mysteriously conveyed a
sublime idea of fashion; the term, imported late in the eighteenth
century, closed with it. _Twaddle_ for a while succeeded _bore_; but
_bore_ has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new
edition of his "Polite Conversation." A dictionary of barbarisms too
might be collected from some wretched neologists, whose pens are now at
work! Lord Chesterfield, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's
Dictionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should
add as an appendix, "_A neological dictionary_, containing those polite,
though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases commonly
used, and sometimes understood by the _beau-monde_."[26] This last
phrase was doubtless a contribution! Such a dictionary had already
appeared in the French language, drawn up by two caustic critics, who in
the _Dictionnaire neologique a l'usage des beaux Esprits du Siecle_
collected together the numerous unlucky inventions of affectation, with
their modern authorities! A collection of the fine words and phrases,
culled from some very modern poetry, might show the real amount of the
favours bestowed on us.

The attempts of neologists are, however, not necessarily to be
condemned; and we may join with the commentators of Aulus Gellius, who
have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has
descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to
all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered
forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as
authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were
imagined to have debased.

The true history of men's minds is found in their actions; their wants
are indicated by their contrivances; and certain it is that in highly
culti