e,
But differing far in figure and in face,
Here stood Ill-nature, like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;
With store of prayers for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.
There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride;
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show."

This extract, in the original (not in the faint translation I have given
you of it), may be compared to the description of _la Molesse_ (softness
or effeminacy), in Boileau's "Lutrin."

Methinks I now have given you specimens enough from the English poets. I
have made some transient mention of their philosophers, but as for good
historians among them, I don't know of any; and, indeed, a Frenchman was
forced to write their history. Possibly the English genius, which is
either languid or impetuous, has not yet acquired that unaffected
eloquence, that plain but majestic air which history requires. Possibly
too, the spirit of party which exhibits objects in a dim and confused
light may have sunk the credit of their historians. One half of the
nation is always at variance with the other half. I have met with people
who assured me that the Duke of Marlborough was a coward, and that Mr.
Pope was a fool; just as some Jesuits in France declare Pascal to have
been a man of little or no genius, and some Jansenists affirm Father
Bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler. The Jacobites consider Mary
Queen of Scots as a pious heroine, but those of an opposite party look
upon her as a prostitute, an adulteress, a murderer. Thus the English
have memorials of the several reigns, but no such thing as a history.
There is, indeed, now living, one Mr. Gordon (the public are obliged to
him for a translation of Tacitus), who is very capable of writing the
history of his own country, but Rapin de Thoyras got the start of him. To
conclude, in my opinion the English have not such good historians as the
French have no such thing as a real tragedy, have several delightful
comedies, some wonderful passages in certain of their poems, and boast of
philosophers that are worthy of instructing mankind. The English have
reaped very great benefit from the writers of our nation, and therefore
we ought (since they have not scruple