1pFFjZK

BRUNET1ERE 4 21
Walloons or to little Picards that a bonnet blanc is a white
cap, and that a blanc bonnet is a woman, in their patois, without
their deriving some profit even from this pastime or playing
on words. Need I speak of the rules of our participles,
- those participles which, as the vaudeville says, are always
getting one into a muddle,* so much apparent fancifulness
and caprice there is in their agreements; and is it necessary for
me to show that the most delicate analysis of the relations of
ideas is implied in these very rules ? The whole question here
is
not whether our farmers or our workingmen have need of
all this knowledge, whether it would not be more profitable
for them to learn other things, and whether they might not
give less time to picking up the peculiarities of orthography
or the exceptions of French grammar. I am not passing
judgment; I am simply taking cognizance of the facts, and
trying to arrive at an explanation. Whatever qualities, then,
are to be peculiarly admired in French, we may say without
hesitation, are due less to the language itself,
to its
original nature, than to the intensive cultivation which it
has always received at every step of our educational system,
and which, for my part, I hope it may long
recci
continue to
Not that this cultivation may not have and has not had
its dangers, like those to which " euphuism," "Marinism,"
and "Gongorism
"
have, in their time, exposed English,
Italian, and Spanish. So much importance must not be
'led to form as to lead to the sacrifice of substance;
more than one writer in French could be named who has
fallen into this mistake, for it is a mistake. They are the
writers to whom we have given the name of prtcieux.
Howbefore
condemning them in
a lump on the authority of
quel parti prendre.