[263] See ante, July 26, 1763.
[264] See ante, i. 388.
[265] In spite of the gross nonsense that Voltaire has written about Shakespeare, yet it was with justice that in a letter to Horace Walpole (dated July 15, 1768,) he said:—'Je suis le premier qui ait fait connaître Shakespeare aux Français…. Je peux vous assurer qu'avant moi personne en France ne connaissait la poésie anglaise.' Voltaire's Works, liv. 513.
[266] 'Of whom I acknowledge myself to be one, considering it as a piece of the secondary or comparative species of criticism; and not of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be "real criticism." It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, and has done effectually what it professed to do, namely, vindicated Shakespeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations, Mrs. Montagu's Essay was of service to Shakspeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise. Johnson, I am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying, (with reference to Voltaire,) "it is conclusive ad hominem."' BOSWELL. That this dull essay, which would not do credit to a clever school-girl of seventeen, should have had a fame, of which the echoes have not yet quite died out, can only be fully explained by Mrs. Montagu's great wealth and position in society. Contemptible as was her essay, yet a saying of hers about Voltaire was clever. 'He sent to the Academy an invective [against Shakespeare] that bears all the marks of passionate dotage. Mrs. Montagu happened to be present when it was read. Suard, one of their writers, said to her, "Je crois, Madame, que vous êtes un peu fâché (sic) de ce que vous venez d'entendre." She replied, "Moi, Monsieur! point du tout! Je ne suis pas amie de M. Voltaire."' Walpole's Letters, vi. 394. Her own Letters are very pompous and very poor, and her wit would not seem to have flashed often; for Miss Burney wrote of her:—'She reasons well, and harangues well, but wit she has none.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 335. Yet in this same Diary (i. 112) we find evidence of the absurdly high estimate that was commonly formed of her. 'Mrs. Thrale asked me if I did not want to see Mrs. Montagu. I truly said, I should be the most insensible of all animals not to like to see our sex's glory.' That she was a very extraordinary woman we have Johnson's word for it. (See post, May 15, 1784.) It is impossible, however, to discover anything that rises above commonplace in anything that she wrote, and, so far as I know, that she said, with the exception of her one saying about Voltaire. Johnson himself, in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale, has a laugh at her. He had mentioned Shakespeare, nature and friendship, and continues:—'Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak? Of whom but Mrs. Montagu? Having mentioned Shakespeare and Nature, does not the name of Montagu force itself upon me? Such were the transitions of the ancients, which now seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to modern understandings. I wish her name had connected itself with friendship; but, ah Colin, thy hopes are in vain.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 101. See post, April 7, 1778.
[267] 'Reynolds is fond of her book, and I wonder at it; for neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale, could get through it.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 23, 1773.
[268] Lord Kames is 'the Scotchman.' See ante, i. 393.
[269] 'When Charles Townshend read some of Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism, he said:—"This is the work of a dull man grown whimsical"—a most characteristical account of Lord Kames as a writer.' Boswelliana, p. 278. Hume wrote of it:—'Some parts of the work are ingenious and curious; but it is too abstruse and crabbed ever to take with the public.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 131. 'Kames,' he says, 'had much provoked Voltaire, who never forgives, and never thinks any enemy below his notice.' Ib, p. 195. Voltaire (Works, xliii. 302) thus ridicules his book:—'Il nous prouve d'abord que nous avons cinq sens, et que nous sentons moins l'impression douce faite sur nos yeux et sur nos oreilles par les couleurs et par les sons que nous ne sentons un grand coup sur la jambe ou sur la tête.'
[270] L'Abbé Dubos, 1670-1742. 'Tous les artistes lisent avec fruit ses Réflexions sur la poésie, la peinture, et la musique. C'est le livre le plus utile qu'on ait jamais écrit sur ces matières chez aucune des nations de l'Europe.' Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV, i. 81.
[271] Bouhours, 1628-1702. Voltaire, writing of Bouhours' Manière de bien penser sur les ouvrages d'esprit, says that he teaches young people 'à éviter l'enflure, l'obscurité, le recherché, et le faux.' Ib, p. 54. Johnson, perhaps, knew him, through The Spectator, No. 62, where it is said that he has shown 'that it is impossible for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, … that the basis of all wit is truth.'
[272] Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2.