II. TERRE, TERRE CHÉRIE.... - III. LE RAT DE VILLE ET LE RAT DES CHAMPS.

L. 3. _Romans_, a town in the department of Drôme where the States General of Dauphiné were held in 1788 as a prelude to the Revolution.

Translated from Horace, _Sat._ II. vi. 80. Compare the much freer imitation or rather adaptation of Pope, p. 444 of Globe edition.

L. 10. _une dent dédaigneuse._ Horace's 'Dente superbo.'

L. 16. _ici près_, a feature of colloquialism very much in place. In the same way does Molière use 'ici dessous, _L'Êt._, I. iv., 'ici dedans,' _Pré._ vii., 'ici autour,' _D. Juan_, III. ii.

L. 19. _Les grands ni les petits._ Grammarians find fault with sentences in which _ni_ is not repeated before each of the subjects or objects, but usage is against them. Haase, § 140, Rem. iii. Ayer, § 263, 3. LITTRÉ, _ni_, 1°, observes that the instances he quotes are in verse, but that they might be imitated in prose.

L. 22. _et d'aller._ For the French historic infinitive see Meyer-Lübke, t, iii. p. 592, who does not think it a continuance of the Latin historic infinitive, but a new thing, as the various Romance languages follow in this sensibly different ways. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese using the infinitive with the preposition _à_ (which occurs in quite isolated cases in French: 'et bon prestre _à_ soy-retirer,' _Cent Nouvelles nouvelles_) Is the verb 'to begin' understood? Meyer-Lübke thinks that the infinitive with _de_ is used only because it was more generally employed, at the time when this turn of phrase originated, than the simple infinitive.

L. 31. _S'empresse de servir, ordonner, disposer._ Observe the rapidity imparted to the sentence by the omission of _de_ before the last two infinitives, a departure from the more common and regular practice.

L. 32. _excuser._ Used absolutely = 'be indulgent.'

L. 35. _La tristesse...._ This rapid review of the Country Rat's grievances--all nouns and no verb--reminds one of a similar turn in La Fontaine's _La Mort et le Bûcheron_, when the poor wood-cutter sees at a glance all his past life: 'Point de pain quelquefois, et jamais de repos.'

L. 38, _et de rire._ See note to l. 22.