Example is the best definition,’ says Sainte-Beuve. Far from it, say we. It is the easiest, as small boys find out before their preceptors. It is the test, the touchstone of definition, but it is not definition, so how can it be the best? French clarity, where art thou?

Now what is a Wowser? It would be easy to define by examples. Stiggins and Chadband were Wowsers with a difference : they embodied only a sect, a thing, virulent and intense; even if drowned in Dickens’s scorn of all the tribe. The thing was extant in his day (when has it not been?), but the inspired nomenclature was in the womb of time, if this be not an indecent expression by now (for the Wowser works like the coral insect, defiling words deep down by identifying them with defilement in his imagination, and he rages like the tempest against Beauty and her father, Freedom-of-Heart, and her mother, Simplicity).