und great pleasure in the society of French philosophers and
poets. He gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly
interesting conversations, one with Malbranche, the other with Boileau.
Malbranche expressed great partiality for the English, and extolled the
genius of Newton, but shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned, and was
indeed so unjust as to call the author of the Leviathan a poor silly
creature. Addison's modesty restrained him from fully relating, in his
letter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau,
having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and
melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went either to Court or to the
Academy, and was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English and of
English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly heard the name of
Dryden. Some of our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have
asserted that this ignorance must have been affected. We own that we see
no ground for such a supposition. English literature was to the French
of the age of Louis the Fourteenth what German literature was to our own
grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men who, sixty
or seventy years ago, used to dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua,
or at Streatham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wieland
was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, beyond all dispute,
the first critic in Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the
Paradise Lost, and about Absalom and Achitophel; but he had read
Addison's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had given him, he
said, quite a new notion of the state of learning and taste among the
English. Johnson will have it that these praises were insincere.
"Nothing," says he, "is better known of Boileau than that he had an
injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin; and therefore his
profession of regard was probably the effect of his civility rather
than approbation." Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he
was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either
friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition
which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic,
disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to
which everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell
Louis the Fourteenth firmly, and even rudely, that his Majesty knew
nothing about poetry, and ad