_delecter_, his _seriosite_, &c. still retain their "bitterness of
novelty."

Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is wanting in our
language; "J'ai fait _prosateur_ a l'imitation de l'italien _prosatore_,
pour dire un homme qui ecrit 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_. Moliere ridiculed some neologisms of the _Precieuses_ of
his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new, and which we
often adopt when it becomes old. Moliere 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 Abbe de Saint
Pierre, who passed his meritorious life in the contemplat