The fantastic dream of one generation may come true for the next succeeding ones. Did Louis xiv. and William iii. think that while their armies were endeavouring to destroy each other in Flanders, and their fleets on the Channel, some second-rate men of letters, a few divines who wrote indifferent grammar, a handful of merchants and skilled workmen were paving the way for peace more surely than diplomatists? The work of those cosmopolites was quite instinctive: they helped their several nations to exchange ideas as insects carry anther dust from one flower to another. Voltaire was probably the first deliberately to use the example of a foreign nation as an argument in the controversy which he carried on against tradition and authority, and, in that respect, he proved superior to his more obscure predecessors.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received while collecting material. My thanks are due above all to M. Mortreuil of the Bibliothèque Nationale, to whose unfailing kindness I owe much; and to M. Weiss, the courteous and learned librarian of the Bibliothèque de la Société pour l'histoire du protestantisme français. Nor shall I omit the authorities of the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. I desire also to express my thanks to Mr. W. M. Fullerton, Dr. F. A. Hedgcock, Mr. Frederic Cobb, MM. Lambin and Cherel.
I must add that the chapters on the political influence of the Huguenots, that appeared some years ago in the Journal of Comparative Literature, of New York, have been rewritten.
To the readers of Anglais et Français du dix-septième Siècle an explanation is owing. If the original title is retained only in the headlines, it is because, on the eve of publication, a book appeared bearing almost the same title. They will, it is hoped, hail in the short-lived Anglo-French entente of Charles ii.'s time, the forerunner of the present "cordial understanding."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Introduction [v]
I. From Paris to London under the Merry Monarch [1]
II. Did Frenchmen learn English in the Seventeenth Century? [19]
III. Specimens of English written by Frenchmen [39]
IV. Gallomania in England (1600-1685) [62]
V. Huguenot Thought in England (First Part) [77]
VI. Huguenot Thought in England (Second Part) [114]
VII. Shakespeare and Christophe Mongoye [142]
VIII. French Gazettes in London (1650-1700) [149]
IX. A Quarrel in Soho (1682) [167]
X. The Courtship of Pierre Coste, and other Letters [176]
XI. The Strange Adventures of the Translator of Robinson Crusoe, the Chevalier de Thémiseul [207]
Index [229]