The great majority of the entertaining works in both are unfit _pueris
virginibusque_.

Before the Revolution, Voltaire was as popular in England as in the rest
of Europe; his powers as highly admired, and his short _historiettes_ as
much quoted: their wit being considered a sufficient counterbalance of
their coarseness. But with the war between the two nations, arose a hatred
between the two literatures; with Swift and Tristram Shandy in our hands,
we turned up our eyes in holy indignation at Candide; we saw nothing to
admire in any thing French; and as our condition in politics became more
isolated, and we grew like our ancestors, _toto divisos orbe Britannos_--
we could see no beauty in any thing foreign. The Orders in Council
extended to criticism; and all continental languages were placed in
blockade. The first nation who honestly and zealously took our part
against the enemy was the German; and from that time we began to study
_achs_ and _dochs_. Leipsic, that made Napoleon little, made Goethe great;
and to Waterloo we are indebted for peace and freedom, and also for a
belief in the truth and talent of a host of German authors, whose
principal merit consisted in the fact of their speaking the same language
in which Blucher called for his tobacco. The opposite feelings took rise
from our enmity to the French; and though by this time we have sense
enough to be on good terms with the _crapauds_, and on visiting terms with
Louis Philippe, we have not got over our antipathy to their tongue. During
the contest, we had constantly refreshed our zeal by fervent declarations
of contempt for the frog-eating, spindle shanked mounseers, and persuaded
ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder, and
though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the
peasantry--costing about a guinea a dish--and that it is possible for a
Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high, the taint of our
former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and, in some
remote districts, we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a
more harmless volume in a young lady's hands than _Pascal's Thoughts_--in
French.

It is not unlikely that the Customs' Union may lower our estimate of
Weimar; a five years' war with Austria and Prussia, especially if we were
assisted by the French, would make us rank Schiller himself--the greatest
of German names--on the same humble level where we now place