The tome is a little weary and beaten with age, a massive work in terms of both scholarship and weight. It was used in French institutions of higher learning in order to educate their youth in the ways of the English. And luckily for those in England, where this book was recently obtained by the My-Lynx Associates book acquisition staff, it has an English to French portion as well.

We can almost imagine some proper Victorian gentleman in London perhaps studying this at his leisure, in a drawing room with the over-stuffed furnishings of the time, reclining on a massive sofa in a fine wool suit as the flickering light of a gas lamp illuminated the ceiling overhead. Perhaps it was a famous personage, a member of Parliament, or a famous writer of riveting detective stories. It could have been a dissolute English rascal, an imbiber of decadent laudanum and the now-outlawed absinthe, who wished to have his manly way with the high-kicking dancers, singers, entertainers and other worldly Parisian ladies of  the time by seducing them with just the right word and his knowledge of how those words might be used in just the right way in eloquent phrases.

We found the advertisement for the the book printed in the middle of the book in English. The wording is a little pedantic, as was keeping with the era, and shows the careful thought and choice of words that would be proper for a more restrained era, when mothers would worry about the salacious words that might be contained in a more common language dictionary Those words could have a malicious influence on their tender daughters and needed reassurance that the vulgar and common words used in the streets certainly not be included in a dictionary destined for the children of people of means and breeding.

A book of this sort would certainly be of use to anyone interested in the subtleties of language in that long-ago era, especially writers of fiction and students of the evolution of language. One might be interested in the French meaning of the English word trollop, and so forth, which while still in literary use, in today's politically correct environment might never be heard by the younger members of the current generation, let alone understood. Language has evolved, some would say "devolved" or descended from a previous era, when clarity of speech, choice of a precise word, and knowledge of both French and English were considered to be part of the minimum standards of participation in polite society. The inclusion of Greek and Latin personages of classical antiquity, with their proper names rendered in the Romance language of France would also be considered essential since it might be necessary, to render a memorized phrase of Cicero or Caesar or even Plato in colloquial French as a kind of  "bon mot" in a conversation over a glass of champagne as one descried the cities new landmark and condemned, or perhaps even more rarely,  even supported the strangely awesome merits of Gustave's Eiffel's new massive steel structure that loomed over Paris.

It is available at the my-lynx-associates.com book site, also on Amazon, AbeBooks, Alibris, Biblio. The unique ASIN identifier for locating it on Amazon is: B002YFVJYA

That is a unique identifier for this edition of the book, this is currently the only book available for this particular edition, an exclusive, in other words. The title is English And French Dictionary by L. Smith and H. Hamilton. However it is listed as such because of the peculiarities of the catalog system on Amazon which has trouble with the ampersand symbol "&"

The Title on the spine reads English & French Dictionary, but the official title is on the title page as The International English And French Dictionary with an extraordinary long subtitle of (all in capital letters): CONTAINING ALL WORDS IN COMMON USE OR TO BE FOUND IN POLITE LITERATURE,WITH THEIR ETYMOLOGY AND AFFINITIES; THE PHRASEOLOGY EMPLOYED IN TRADE,COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES; TERMS OF ART AND SCIENCE; MILITARY AND NAVAL TERMS, AND GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL PROPER NAMES; THE IRREGULAR FORMS OF VERBS, ETC.; THE PREPOSITIONS GOVERNED BY VERBS AND ADJECTIVES; A FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE USE OF THE ADVERBIAL PARTICLES;THE GRAMMATICAL DIFFICULTIES RESOLVED AND THE IDIOMS AND PROVERBS CLASSED UNDER THEIR RESPECTIVE SENSES; THE WHOLE EXEMPLIFIED BY COPIOUS CITATIONS FROM THE BEST WRITERS, BOTH ANCIENT AND MODERN, WITH THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS AFFIXED. THE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION FIGURED FOR THE FRENCH.



The Advertisement found in the Dictionary:

Since the publication of the first volume of this Dictionary, many important works on French lexicography have been published and others are preparing for the press.

These works, which attest the great importance attached at the present day to the study of the French language, have compelled us to extend our researches, and, in order to secure the conscientious fulfillment of our undertaking, have required on our part the most scrupulous care and attention.

The nomenclature has been enriched with nearly all the terms used in modern science, and, as far as concerns the language in a purely literary point of view, we have adopted many neologisms, the employment of which by writers of high merit has constituted sufficient authority, arid we have even admitted certain slang terms and expressions which, of late years, have become of familiar usage.

To afford room for so many new words, we have omitted a great number of others, vulgar or little used, and, in order that even the most scrupulous mother should be able to place our dictionary in the hands of her daughter, we have carefully expunged all those expressions winch have but too long sullied the pages of dictionaries in general use.

The pronunciation based on the authority of the of our day, has been “figured “ for the English reader on the same principle as that employed in the first volume, and the literary men of the two countries whom we have consulted, are of opinion that the relative exactitude of the different sounds is as nearly perfect as possible.

We have taken particular pains with the etymology in the English-French part, on account of the great variety of sources from which the words are derived; we have also given the origin of the Radicals and their affinity with modern languages; but in the French-English part, where nearly all the non-scientific words are derived from the Latin, it has, in most cases,been found sufficient to give only the origin of the word itself.

We have experienced our greatest difficulty with the definitions, and, on this difficulty we have concentrated our utmost efforts. Everyone knows that the same word may have many and different meanings; but those only who have laboured at the work can fully comprehend what reflection, tact and patience are necessary to discover which of these acceptations ought to betaken as a starting—point; how this acceptation creates a second and then a third. If the path we must follow to arrive at these successive and various acceptations or meanings be once lost sight of, the logical sequence is interrupted, and utter confusion is the result.

In following out the logical order of ideas, it has been our intention riot only to deduce, one from the other, the gradual shades of meaning, but also to render palpable to the reader the manner in which this transformation has been effected, by indicating whether the sense arises from”extension “, “ analogy “, or “irony “; whether it is figurative or otherwise,etc., etc.; each sense bears a distinguishing number and is preceded by its French definition.

Numerous quotations from the best ancient and contemporary writers elucidate every part of the work; in consulting the Dictionary, the importance and practical utility of this system are clearly manifest, as the examples given prevent the possibility of one sense being taken for another; at the same time, the exact and well classified value of each term to be employed is clearly given. In the choice of examples, care has been taken to find those which give an uncommon meaning or sense, are difficult to translate into English, and those, especially, which give the solution of a grammatical difficulty; this is one of the characteristic features of our work.

The idioms, which in most dictionaries are put all together at the end of each, article, are here placed under their respective meanings,so that one perceives at a glance the literal sense of the phrase side by side with the equivalent in English.

We feel sure that the importance of this will be fully appreciated by students.

Paris, May 1865.