398 POPE. 



and gilds the clipped hedges over which his thought 

 clambers like an unpruned vine, Dryden, one of the 

 most truly English of English authors, did more than 

 all others combined to bring about the triumphs of 

 French standards in taste and French principles in crit 

 icism. But he was always like a deserter who cannot 

 feel happy in the victories of the alien arms, and who 

 would go back if he could to the camp where he natu 

 rally 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 prevalent 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. Vol 

 taire 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 bien, the inference is that we 

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



