fearfully flat-footed fashion. The French dramatist finds his task
made easy, as his language can suggest simply without definitely
stating, more easily than can be done in English."

This opinion is surprising. It would be amazing if it were correct,
seeing the enormous wealth of our language in words and forms of
expression, and the fact that for the best part of a century our
dramatists lived chiefly on "hints," upon suggesting more than they
durst say. The very word "hint" is significant. We use it frequently;
who can find a word in the French language that exactly represents it?
One may add that we have English equivalents for most, perhaps all, of
the French phrases that have to serve for our handy word "hint." When
one recollects the hundreds of adaptations of more or less indelicate or
indecent French plays seen on our boards, the idea that it is difficult
for the English expert to say nasty things nicely seems absurd. Our
journalists have used more often the incorrect phrase _double entendre_
than the French critics the phrase _double entente_, which is the term
that our writers intend to employ.

Were it otherwise, one would be amazed. The French always have been, and
still are, very candid in the use of language; whilst we for a long time
past have been prudish to an extent sometimes comic. Readers of Laurence
Sterne can hardly deny that the English tongue enables one to be
indelicate in idea whilst decent in expression, and it is noteworthy
that this writer, so often censured for the immodest salt of his wit, is
one of those who comment with surprise upon the simple frankness of the
French of his time. There is an episode in "Tristram Shandy," or "The
Sentimental Journey" concerning a lady, the author and a carriage drive,
which shows this very well; but the printers would strike if asked to
set it up in these chaste pages.

Our own native prudery, enriched by a quantity imported from the United
States, has led to an immense hypocrisy of language, and consequently to
an extraordinary facility in hinting unseemly ideas which on the French
stage would be expressed bluntly. It is true that, so far as love is
concerned, the French have invented a funny little language of prudery
for the benefit of schoolgirls, and countless books have been printed,
and received the benediction of Monseigneur l'Archeveque de Tours, in
which the word _tambour_ is printed instead of the word _amour_, and so
on. By-the-by, it is r