they are attacking those ruffianly braggarts from Whitefriars, and are laying about them lustily with their cudgels.

"All right," exclaimed one braggart, "if they want us to rebel, let's go ahead!"

It is an old, I believe an obsolete, French word, and means "braggart.

It is amusing to see how these disguised priestlings now play the bully-braggart in the language of Sans-culottism, how fiercely they coquet with the red Jacobin cap, yet are ever and anon afflicted with the thought that they might forgetfully have put on in its place the red cap of a prelate; they take for an instant from their heads their borrowed covering and show the tonsure unto all the world.

But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom he met at dinner at a country-house.

I saw this braggart on several occasions afterwards, but he evidently kept aloof, and was disinclined to venture in the part of the room I occupied.

His design was to lash the follies and vices of the day, and his dramatis personæ consisted for the most part of gulls, impostors, fops, cowards, swaggering braggarts, and "Pauls men."