Note 564 — XI. OF MANKIND.

All the “Keys” say this refers to the Dictionnaire de lʼAcadémie, but its first edition only appeared in 1694, and this paragraph was published four years before. See page 9, note 46. It alludes probably to those encyclopedias called Traités sur toutes les sciences, très abrégés à lʼusage de la noblesse, or to some collection of anecdotes, a kind of omnium gatherum, entitled Bibliothèque des gens de cour; perhaps it might also apply to some verses then in vogue, and called vers abécédaires, of which the first line began with an “a,” the second with a “b,” and so on. Those “sports of wit,” which our author calls by the name of jeux dʼesprit, witticisms, also existed later in England, e.g., “The Foundling Hospital for Wit.”