y of dullness" in Pope's _Dunciad_:

"De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,
And here the groaning shelves _Philemon_ bends"--

very unjustly; the authors whom he has translated are all more or
less important, and his versions of them a mine of genuine
idiomatic English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought
to a considerable extent, and with eminent advantage by Richardson;
yet capable, as it seems to me, of yielding much more than they
hitherto have yielded.

{49} And so too in French it is surprising to find of how late
introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language
could never have done without. 'Desinteressement', 'exactitude',
'sagacite', 'bravoure', were not introduced till late in the
seventeenth century. 'Renaissance', 'emportement', 'scavoir-faire',
'indelebile', 'desagrement', were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours);
'indevot', 'intolerance', 'impardonnable', 'irreligieux', were
struggling into allowance at the end of the seventeenth century,
and were not established till the beginning of the eighteenth.
'Insidieux' was invented by Malherbe; 'frivolite' does not appear
in the earlier editions of the _Dictionary of the Academy_; the
Abbe de St. Pierre was the first to employ 'bienfaisance', the
elder Balzac 'feliciter', Sarrasin 'burlesque'. Mad. de Sevigne
exclaims against her daughter for employing 'effervescence' in a
letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voila un mot dont je
n'avais jamais oui parler). 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by
Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before
any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne
had introduced 'diversion' and 'enfantillage', though not without
being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last.
Desfontaines was the first who employed 'suicide'; Caron gave to
the language 'avant-propos', Ronsard 'avidite', Joachim Dubellay
'patrie', Denis Sauvage 'jurisconsulte', Menage 'gracieux' (at
least so Voltaire affirms) and 'prosateur', Desportes 'pudeur',
Chapelain 'urbanite', and Etienne first brought in, apologizing at
the same time for the boldness of it, 'analogie' (si les oreilles
francoises peuvent porter ce mot). 'Preliber' (praelibare) is a
word of our own day; and it was Charles Nodier who, if he did not