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The question was, therefore, submitted to a learned member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, M. Littre, in fact, whose Dictionnaire etymologique de la Langur Francaise is consulted with respect by the whole literary world, and to a young magistrate, M. Picot, to whom the Acacdemie des Sciences morales et politiques but lately assigned the first prize for his great work on the question it had propounded, as to the history and influence of states-general in France; and here are inserted, textually, the answers given by two gentlemen of so much enlightenment and authority upon such a subject.
French slang is no exception to this, theory: the two hundred and thirty double-columned pages of M. Larcher's Dictionnaire historique, etymologique et anecdotique de l'argot parisien tell us that the two grand sources and inspirations of our American slang are entirely wanting: there is not a humorous word or phrase from beginning to end; and hardly an instance of that incongruous exaggeration which is so salient a picture of our best-known and most original slang phrases.
The author of the excellent Lexique de la Langue de Corneille claims the same merit for him and for his great contemporaries or immediate successors: Faire rendre aux mots tout ce qu'ils peuvent donner, en varier habilement les acceptions et les nuances, les ramener a leur origine, les retremper frequemment a leur source etymologique, constituait un des secrets principaux des grands ecrivains du dix- septieme siecle.
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