Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/33

Rh University of Lille, to whom the reproduction is due, calls it, 'un monument tres venerable et un document tres precieux.' For reasons already in part exposed, it is all but useless to those who seek a dictionary for general purposes: to the student of what has been called the Augustan period of French literature it is invaluable. The language with which it deals is that of the acknowledged masters of French style, and the prophecy of Fénelon, in his 'Lettre à l'Académie,' is to a great extent fulfilled:—

"In this respect even it is far from complete. Purely academic in origin, it has the fault of much academic work of omitting those current locutions which are most apt to change in form, the preservation of which is most to be desired. One has only to compare with the dictionary the special lexicons of authors who have come to be regarded as classic which are numerous in France. That or rather those to Molière are scarcely in point. Molière's writings were of course accessible, and he himself had been a score years dead at the time when his language was noted. A lexicon composed by the early Academicians was, however, little likely to pay attention to the utterances of an actor and a playwright. One has only to look at the list of Academicians prefixed to the work to see what ecclesiastical influence was arrayed against the actor to whom the rites of Christian burial were denied. True, the list includes Jean de la Fontaine, Nicolas Boyleau Despreaux, Thomas Corneille, Bernard de Fontenelle, François de la Mothe Fenelon, and others of equal eminence in literature. Ecclesiastical and aristocratic influences were, however, sure to prevail. Few words employed by Molière, and to be found in the 'Lexique' of M. Livet or that of MM. Despois and Mesnard, are missing, though among those which do not appear is 'canons,' so frequent during the seventeenth century in a particular sense: 'Sont-ce ses grands canons qui vous le font aimer?' ('Le Misanthrope,' II. i.) Loret, 'La Muze Historique,' under the date 1656, speaks of a man

The word 'canons' was applied to several different portions of dress appertaining to the leg. About 1668 this sense of it fell, according to Richelet, into disuse, and at the time when the dictionary first saw the light was supposedly obsolete. It should, of course, have been retained, as is attested by its appearance in later editions. From modern dictionaries of to-day it has almost disappeared