SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT ETRE BEL ESPRIT?
—a proposition very far from identical with that which is attributed to him by Mr. Carlyle, namely:
SI UN ALLEMAND PEUT AVOIR DE L'ESPRIT?
The variation simply being that Bouhours did not, as here alleged, decide negatively that a German could not have any literary talent, but queried if a German could be a wit.
Truly a distinction with a difference.
Hallam, seldom incorrect in such matters, presents the matter fairly in stating that the Père Bouhours "proposed the question whether a German can by the nature of things possess any wit."
The misrepresentation made is a serious one, and the citation as corrected deprives Mr. Carlyle's thunder of its noise, and extracts from his sarcasm all its sting.
We believe it was Thackeray who said that, notwithstanding his profound respect and deep veneration for the twelve apostles, they really were not the sort of persons he should care to invite to a festive dinner party.
Père Bouhours would doubtless, as readily as Mr. Carlyle, concede to Kepler and Leibnitz all the merit the most enthusiastic German could claim for these great men as shining lights of science, but would hardly credit them with the ability to write the Xenien or edit the Kladderadatsch.
When Bouhours published his Entretiens, it is very certain that, if German literature shone in wit, the fact was not known west of the Rhine. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle himself, a few paragraphs further on, unconsciously records the fullest vindication of Père Bouhours. With a patriotism quite as fervent as that of his victim, he informs us that "centuries ago translations from the German were comparatively frequent in England," but to support this statement can only cite Luther's Table Talk and Jacob Boehme. Enumeration most scant and melancholy! The essayist then goes on to say: "In the next century, indeed, translation ceased; but then it was, in a great measure, because there was little worth translating. The horrors of the Thirty Years' War had desolated the country; French influence, extending from the courts of princes to the closets of the learned, lay like a baleful incubus over the far nobler ruins of Germany; and all free nationality vanished from its literature, or was heard only in faint tones, which lived in the hearts of the people, but could not reach with any effect to the ears of foreigners."