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Excerpt from A Book of Famous Wits
Twenty years ago, when I edited a set of little books known as the bon-mot Series, I was taken to task by some critics for using the plural bon - mots instead of following the French original. The error, if error it be, is repeated in this book; my contention being that the word is anglicized as bon-mots, - its use in that form by Horace Walpole, Smollett and Cowper overriding any objection that it has not duly taken out letters of naturalization under the authority of the dictionary makers. Should any future lexicographer care for the references, here they are. Wal pole, writing to a friend on sth April 1765, said: Though I have little to say, it is worth while to write, only to tell you two bon-mots of Quin to that turncoat, hypocrite infidel, Bishop Warburton. Smollett in one of the early letters of Humphrey Clinker says (also of Quin, by the way) His bon-mots are in every witling's mouth. Cowper, in Truth (11. 307-308) has: The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew Bon mots to gall the Christian and the Jew.
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