[729]. Señor Menéndez y Pelayo, as cited before, in vols. 5 and 6 of his History.
[730]. P. 333.
[731]. This Gallicism was not universal. As Mr Ticknor (III. v., opening) says, while Moratin spoke contemptuously of the ballad of “Calaynos,” his opponent Huerta pronounced Athalie fit for nothing but its original purpose of being acted by schoolgirls.
[732]. One of the most important works of the Swiss school itself is Bodmer’s Sammlung Kritischer Schriften, 1741, but this is for another time. Nicolai’s Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1757) and Literaturbriefe (ibid., 1759-66) perhaps show the movement best.
[733]. I did not think it worth while to mention Camusat in the French chapter, though he is not quite a contemptible person. He was one of the tribe of French men of letters who, for this reason or that, settled in Holland. He has the not small credit of being one of the first to attempt a Literary History (Amsterdam, 1722, 3 vols.) of France. He edited part of the literary contents of Chapelain’s letters, and did other things. But the Germans seem to have been particularly attracted by a Lettre sur les Poètes qui ont chanté la Volupté, which he wrote, I think, in connection with the work of Chaulieu, but which I have only read in German. It may have had, for them, the attraction of elegant naughtiness; but it has in reality very little either of the adjective or of the noun.
[734]. E.g., my friend Professor Elton, in his Augustan Ages (Edinburgh, 1899), p. 348. It is, I trust, not immoral, I am sure it is not illiberal, to edit a book without absolutely indorsing all its opinions, or insisting that all these opinions shall be one’s own.
[735]. My copy is the third edition, Leipsic, 1742. The first is, I think, of 1730.
[736]. Callières, a diplomatist and Academician, who wrote a good deal on various subjects, in his later years, has been referred to under Swift (p. 450). For more on him and his Histoire poétique de la guerre des A. et des M., v. Rigault, op. cit., pp. 213-217. As to Furetière, the agreeable author of the Roman Bourgeois seemed to me to lie too far outside any possible limits here, though, of course, there are critical touches in his work. Some might even reckon, as an important if rather excessive testimony to the rise of the novel, the curious picture of the girl Javotte—pretty but innocent to the verge of idiocy—turned into an accomplished and intelligent young lady by the mere reading of the Astrée. Furetière even defends this representation by serious argument (Roman Bourgeois, i. 171 sq., ed. Jannet, 2 vols., Paris, 1878).
[737]. This was James Ralph—the “Ralph to Cynthia howls” of Pope. It appeared in 1731, and deals with public amusements, from the theatre (which it defends from Prynne and Collier) to cock-fighting, auctions, and “Henley’s oratory.” It is rather amusing, and by no means, as Mr Pope calls its author, “wholly illiterate.”
[738]. It is notable that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, critics of the youngest school have been found Gottschedising in this sense, and proposing to judge the worth or worthlessness of criticism on similar cookery-book lines. I have seen an excellent critic rebuked by a reviewer for not “showing how to do something”—as if he were a dancing-master.