2 DECEMBER 1882, Page 13

" CUIRE DANS SON JUS."

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—Pray allow me to supply "Ii. J. V." with a missing link between Chaucer and Prince Bismarck. When Louis Philippe surrounded Paris with fortifications—not without exciting sus- picion that lie had an eye to controlling civil insurrection, no less than resisting foreign invasion—every one was crediting Count Pozzo di Borgo with the good saying that "Paris would now fry ,in its own gravy." But only a few old men like myself can remember those days,—Consule Planco, or, at least, Consuls Thie;s. And when the German armies were beleaguering Paris, who more fit than Count Bismarck to reproduce the old saying, in application to the new circumstances P But still—if I, too, may quote Chaucer—" Out of the olde fieldes, as men saith, cometh the newe come, year by year," and Mr. Courtney seems to be taking the place of Bismarck, as Bismarck succeeded Pozzo di Borgo, and Pozzo di Borgo Chaucer. I wish, how- ever, that the now generation would, like the old one, render " jus " by "gravy," and not "juice," or even by Chaucer's