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ANNUAL REGISTER For the YEAR 1772.

epistle to Sylla, Marius or Carbon remaining, nor yet to their wives or mistresses. I do suppose, however, that there might be a few bad verses presented to Lucullus and Pompey; but, thank God, none of them are preserved. What a grand spectacle was it, to see Cicero, the equal of Caesar in dignity, pleading before him like an advocate in behalf of a king of Bithynia and Little Armenia, called Dejotarus, accused of having conspired against him. Cicero begins with confessing, that he finds himself confounded in his presence; he calls him the conqueror of the world (victorem orbis ter arum); he flatters him, it is true; yet his adulation does not descend to meanness; he retained some sense of shame. It was with Augustus, that no measure first began to be observed. The senate decreed him an apotheosis during his life-time. This flattery became afterwards nothing but a thing in course: no one can possibly be flattered to a greater degree, than when the greatest extravagance in the power of adulation becomes the most common.
 We have not had in Europe any grand monuments of flattery until Lewis XIV; his father Lewis XIII. had very little incense paid to him; he is taken notice of only in one or two odes of Malherbe: he is indeed called  a king, the greatest of kings, just as the Spanish poets style the king of Spain; and as the English poets-laureat style the kings of England; and the greatest part of the commendations of that age were bestowed on Cardinal Richelieu. But as for Lewis XIV, he was overwhelmed with a deluge of flattery; yet he did not resemble the man, who, as they pretend, was smothered with the rose leaves thrown upon him: he became the better for adulation. When flattery has some plausible foundations for it, perhaps it is not so pernicious, as they say; it encourages sometimes to grand designs; but the excels of it is certainly as vicious as an excess in satire. Fontaine has said, and pretended also to say it after Aesop, 
One cannot praise too much three sorts of persons,
The gods, one's mistress, and one's king:
Aesop said so before, I subscribe to the same;
They are maxims always good.

Nevertheless Aesop never said any such thing; nor can be found to have flattered any king, or any woman. Neither can it be supposed, that kings receive satisfaction from all the flatteries heaped upon them; for the greater part never come to their knowledge. It was the height of reproach for Ovid to have flattered Augustus, in his letters dated from Pontus, where he had been sent into exile. And it is the heighth of ridicule to see the compliments which court-preachers address to the king, when they have the honour of acting before their majesties. Observe the common direction to them, To the rev. rev. father Gaillard, preacher to the king. Ah! reverend father, are you a preacher only for the king? What, are you like a monkey at a fair, which never tumbles 3except for their majesties the king and queen? 
Derivation of the word BLESSED, by M. Leibnitz, and of other old Words.

BLESSED, not only in English, but also in the Scandinavian language used in Iceland, signifies benedictus; but originally it signified only signatus, marked; that is, signed with the mark of a cross: and antiently all persons so marked were esteemed to be benedicti. It comes from the old Gothic or German word bläessen, which means to mark; hence the mark on the faces of horses are still called blaessen in Germany. Blazeny also, in the Bohemian and Russian languages, signifies benedictus. Hence the word to blazon, in heraldry, namely, to mark the arms on a shield.
 Doubtless from the same root is derived the modern French word blesser (to wound or hurt) being the remains of the old Francic tongue. It is wonderful then, that Voltair in his Questions fur l'Encyclopedie, should derive this word from the Greek blapto, to hurt; and allow it to be one of those transmitted down from the Greek colony settled at Marseilles. To several other pure Francic words he gives the same false origin as affrieux, which, together with its relations affright, affray, in English, come from the Gothic, and not from the Greek aphronos. Also agacer (to egg, or exasperate) has too much similitude to the English phrase, to egg on, and edge (sharpen) not to see, that they are all relations derived from the Gothic, and not from anaxein; which, however, must be an error of the press for aganastein (to be in indignation). Bas (low) is the same word with base in English, and both have a Gothic origin; not from the Greek bathys. Cuisse seems only a diminutive of cu, and not from ischis. Fier has the same Gothic origin with fierce, and not from any such Greek word. Bouteille, bottle, not from bouttis, if there be such a word, but from the definitive of boute, bout, a bunch, in old English bote, bot; whence the old words in antient grants of house-bote, hedge-bote, fire-bote, &c. meaning a permission of cutting such bunches of wood as suffice for repairing the houses, the hedges, and for firing: hence in French bout came to mean the end, or extremity of a thing, as it often terminates in a bunch. Boot, in English, comes from the same word bote; for the first boots were bunches of straw tied round the legs, as the first bottles were hollow bunches of leather. A Talbot, the name of a species of dog, comes also from taille-bote; that is, a dog, whose bunch at the tail's end is cropt, from tailler, (to cut); and perhaps hence our word tail itself. It is a common error, when readers meet with words in French and English, similar to Greek or Latin ones, to suppose they are all derived from those languages, without enquiring whether the Saxons and Francs had not the same roots originally in their Gothic language; and that the Greeks and Romans derived these words from their own ancestors, who spoke a language which was a kind of dialect of the Gothic, or else of the Celtic; hence many roots run through almost every language antient and modern. See Questions, &c. Leibnitz, p. 329. vol. 6. Mr.

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