SIMILI MODO UTILITATE CARERE EXISTIMO DICERE QUID IN MINOREM POPULUM, NON SOLUM AB EO, SED A SUIS ACTUM SIT, CUM ID DICTU SCIAMUS DIFFICILE, ET OB IMMANEM CRUDELITATEM, FORTASSIS INCREDIBILE.

Towards the end of the XVIIth century Cartwright, the actor, bequeathed to the College a number of MS. plays, which the College authorities in the middle of the last century exchanged (horrendum dictu!)

O mores!^, what a pity!, miserabile dictu!

Adv. wonderfully, &c adj.; fearfully; for a wonder, in the name of wonder; strange to say; mirabile dictu [Lat.], mirabile visu [Lat.]; to one's great surprise.

Incredibile dictu, &c.

" Our Italians and Spaniards do make a whole dinner of herbs and salads (which our said Plautus calls coenas terrestras, Horace, coenas sine sanguine), by which means, as he follows it, "Hic homines tam brevem vitam colunt Qui herbas hujusmodi in alvum suum congerunt, Formidolosum dictu, non esu modo, Quas herbas pecudes non edunt, homines edunt.

Incredibile dictu, as [1430]one of their own countrymen complains: Quantum liquoris immodestissima gens capiat, &c. "How they love a man that will be drunk, crown him and honour him for it," hate him that will not pledge him, stab him, kill him: a most intolerable offence, and not to be forgiven.

Et horrendum sane dictu, quantum apud nos patrum memoria, scelus detestandum hoc saevierit!

[4709]Hostius quidam specula fecit, et ita disposuit, ut quum virum ipse pateretur, aversus omnes admissarii motus in speculo videret, ac deinde falsa magnitudine ipsius membri tanquam vera gauderet, simul virum et foeminam passus, quod dictu foedum et abominandum.

Mirabile dictu est, quantum opsoniorum una domus singulis diebus absumat, sternuntur mensae in omnes pene horas calentibus semper eduliis.

Dictu incredible, quantum hujusce liquorice immodesta gens capiat, plus potantem amicissimum habent, et cert coronant, inimicissimum e contra qui non vult, et caede et fustibus expiant. 1432.

Incredibile dictu quantum juvent.

Turpium deliciarum comes est externa saltatio; neque certe facile dictu quae mala hinc visus hauriat, et quae pariat, colloquia, monstrosus, inconditos gestus, &c. 5144.

quod horrendum dictu, desperabundus quidam me presente cum ad patientiam hortaretur, &c. 6744.

The harvesting of wheat, for example, as a Virginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, in the days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much more severe than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "by no means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase (miserabile dictu!)

The characters were, for the most part, finely acted, and the play was admired for its lofty sentiments and elegance of expression, while the Tories, mirabile dictu, vied with their enemies in enthusiastic tokens of approval.

And yet, mirabile dictu!