"MODERN MEN OF LETTERS."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Will you kindly permit me to state that the Belgian Minister, to whom the above book was dedicated, had not read one line of it before it was published, and was wholly ignorant of the nature of its contents ? This will be but an act of justice to. the gentleman whose name in some newspaper articles was men- tioned, as, I think, quite unnecessarily, in connection with that of which he was wholly ignorant.—I am, &c., J. HAnz FRISWELL.
P.S.—May I add, in reference to your last impression, that I never said that Mr. Sala was blind in one eye ; that I never knew he was, nor do I know so now ; and that I never could by any means refer to a personal defect. The word I used was goguenard,, which, as the Lord Chief Justice remarked and produced a French dictionary to prove, means "jovial," "bantering," "merry." "La nuit venue, noes voila tons a gogueizarder," "Night being_ come we all began to crack jokes," is a sentence quoted by Hamilton ; and Legros and Boyer's great French Dictionary, of 150 years ago, gives the same meaning. I never knew, and do. not know now, after much- reference to dictionaries and resorting to French friends that the word was susceptible of any other meaning, and certainly I only used it in the pleasant sense it bears. in modern French conversation and ordinary books.
Previous page
