refrained with difficulty from rushing into print when I saw,
in one of the last volumes of his Diary, Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff's garbled resuscitation of an ancient French "chestnut," attributed by him to 011endorff, whom he curiously causes to expire in French. Mr. A. M. Sharp's hazy following correction in last week's Spectator of the text: "Jo m'en vais on je m'en va [sic], ear l'un Cu rautre se dit on se dise [sic]," handed down to him by "an old French lady," possibly so old that she had forgotten her own language, makes me take up my pen. It is Vaugelas who is credited with having said, when dying: " Je m'en vais on je m'en vas, car l'un on Ventre, ou run et rautre se dit on se disent." This .classical French anecdote is probably an eighteenth-century ben trovato meant to illustrate the pedantry, strong in death, of the celebrated grammarian.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A YOUNGER FRENCH LADY.
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