tible with that of many of his cleverest
contemporaries, including Sterne. He conceives of the typical Frenchman
as regulating his life in accordance with the claims of impertinent
curiosity and foppery, gallantry and gluttony. Thus:

"If a Frenchman is capable of real friendship, it must certainly be the
most disagreeable present he can possibly make to a man of a true
English character. You know, madam, we are naturally taciturn, soon
tired of impertinence, and much subject to fits of disgust. Your French
friend intrudes upon you at all hours; he stuns you with his loquacity;
he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and
private affairs; he attempts to meddle in all your concerns, and forces
his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity; he asks the
price of everything you wear, and, so sure as you tell him, undervalues
it without hesitation; he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill contrived,
ill made; that you have been imposed upon both with respect to the
fashion and the price; that the marquis of this, or the countess of
that, has one that is perfectly elegant, quite in the bon ton, and yet
it cost her little more than you gave for a thing that nobody would
wear.

"If a Frenchman is admitted into your family, and distinguished by
repeated marks of your friendship and regard, the first return he makes
for your civilities is to make love to your wife, if she is handsome;
if not, to your sister, or daughter, or niece. If he suffers a repulse
from your wife, or attempts in vain to debauch your sister, or your
daughter, or your niece, he will, rather than not play the traitor with
his gallantry, make his addresses to your grandmother; and ten to one
but in one shape or another he will find means to ruin the peace of a
family in which he has been so kindly entertained. What he cannot
accomplish by dint of compliment and personal attendance, he will
endeavour to effect by reinforcing these with billets-doux, songs, and
verses, of which he always makes a provision for such purposes. If he
is detected in these efforts of treachery, and reproached with his
ingratitude, he impudently declares that what he had done was no more
than simple gallantry, considered in France as an indispensable duty on
every man who pretended to good breeding. Nay, he will even affirm that
his endeavours to corrupt your wife, or deflower your daughter, were
the most genuine proofs he could give of his particular regard f