Page:Impressions of Theophrastus Such - Eliot - 1879.djvu/187

 X.

DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY

"Il ne faut pas mettre un ridicule oy il n'y en a point: c'est se gbter le go&ucirc;t, c'est corrompre son jugement et celui des autres. Mais le ridicule qui est quelque part, il faut l'y voir, l'en tirer avec grbce et d'une manihre qui plaise et qui instruise."

I am fond of quoting this passage from La Bruyhre, because the subject is one where I like to show a Frenchman on my side, to save my sentiments from being set down to my peculiar dulness and deficient sense of the ludicrous, and also that they may profit by that enhancement of ideas when presented in a foreign tongue, that glamour of unfamiliarity conferring a dignity on the foreign names of very common things, of which even a philos-