isms. It must be owned that, to comply
probably with the humour of Charles, or from an affectation of the
fashionable court dialect, the poet-laureate employed such words as
_fougue, fraicheur_, etc., instead of the corresponding expressions in
English; an affectation which does not appear in our author's later
writings. But even the learned and excellent Sir David Dalrymple was led
to carry this idea greatly too far. "Nothing," says that admirable
antiquary, "distinguishes the genius of the English language so much as
its general naturalisation of foreigners. Dryden in the reign of Charles
II., printed the following words as pure French newly imported: _amour,
billet-doux, caprice, chagrin, conversation, double-entendre,
embarrassed, fatigue, figure, foible, gallant, good graces, grimace,
incendiary, levee, maltreated, rallied, repartee, ridicule, tender,
tour_; with several others which are now considered as natives.--
'Marriage a la Mode.'"[23] But of these words many had been long
naturalised in England, and, with the adjectives derived from them, are
used by Shakespeare and the dramatists of his age.[24] By their being
printed in italics in the play of "Marriage a la Mode," Dryden only
meant to mark, that Melantha, the affected coquette in whose mouth they
are placed, was to use the _French_, not the vernacular pronunciation.
It will admit of question, whether any single French word has been
naturalised upon the sole authority of Dryden.

Although Dryden's style has nothing obsolete, we can occasionally trace
a reluctance to abandon an old word or idiom; the consequence, doubtless
of his latter studies in ancient poetry. In other respects, nothing can
be more elegant than the diction of the praises heaped upon his patrons,
for which he might himself plead the apology he uses for Maimbourg,
"who, having enemies, made himself friends by panegyrics." Of these
lively critical prefaces, which, when we commence, we can never lay
aside till we have finished, Dr. Johnson has said with equal force and
beauty,--"They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the
first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never
balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance,
though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the
whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little is gay, what is
great is splendid. He may be thought to mention himself too frequently;
but wh