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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
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