POPE. 291 



belonged. Between 1660 and 1700 more French words, I 

 believe, were directly transplanted into our language than in the 

 century and a half since. What was of more consequence, 

 French ideas came with them, shaping the form, and through 

 that modifying the spirit, of our literature. 



Voltaire, though he came later, was steeped in the theories of 

 art which had been inherited as traditions of classicism from the 

 preceding generation. He had lived in England, and, I have no 

 doubt, gives us a very good notion of the tone which was pre 

 valent there in his time, an English version of the criticism 

 imported from France. He tells us that Mr. Addison was the 

 first Englishman who had written a reasonable tragedy. And in 

 spite of the growling of poor old Dennis, whose sandy pedantry 

 was not without an oasis of refreshing sound judgment here and 

 there, this was the opinion of most persons at that day, except, 

 it may be suspected, the judicious and modest Mr. Addison 

 himself. Voltaire says of the English tragedians and it will be 

 noticed that he is only putting, in another way, the opinion 

 of Dryden * Their productions, almost all barbarous, without 

 polish, order, or probability, have astonishing gleams in the 

 midst of their night; ... it seems sometimes that nature is not 

 made in England as it is elsewhere. Eh blen, the inference is 

 that we must try and make it so ! The world must be uniform 

 in order to be comfortable, and what fashion so becoming as the 

 one we have invented in Paris ? It is not a little amusing that 

 when Voltaire played master of ceremonies to introduce the 

 bizarre Shakspeare among his countrymen, that other kind of 

 nature made a profounder impression on them than quite pleased 

 him. So he turned about presently and called his whilome^rtf- 

 tege a buffoon. 



The condition of the English mind at the close of the seven 

 teenth century was such as to make it particularly sensitive to 

 the magnetism which streamed to it from Paris. The loyalty of 

 everybody both in politics and religion had been put out of joint. 

 A generation of materialists, by the natural rebound which 

 inevitably follows over-tension, was to balance the ultra-spi 

 ritualism of the Puritans. As always when a political revolution 

 has been wrought by moral agencies, the plunder had fallen 

 mainly to the share of the greedy, selfish, and unscrupulous, 

 whose disgusting cant had given a taint of hypocrisy to piety 

 itself. Religion, from a burning conviction of the soul, had 

 grown to be with both parties a political badge, as little typical of 

 the inward man as the scallop of a pilgrim. Sincerity is impos 

 ts 



