of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were
to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns
unexplored by a negligent administration, in which bandits found a
refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature
of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and
fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the
severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is
perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste
began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious,
inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to
ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less
ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point
of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing
could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be
attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of
genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When _Gil Blas_
was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the
fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste
of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the
master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the
vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fenelon, and
Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of
European literature.

Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national
prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one
were to affirm that the _Adelphi_ of Terence was not a translation from
Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater
authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for
proselytes. Let us see what he might allege--he might urge that Terence
had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on
this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus
as his original--he might insist that Syrus could only have been the
slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our
notions of a Roman pander, that AEschinus was the picture of a dissolute
young patrician--in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian
drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and
socie