e standard
at Oxford higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, Christ
Church rose up as one man to defend the genuineness of the Epistles
of Phalaris, that great college, then considered as the first seat
of philology in the kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic
learning as is now possessed by several youths at every great public
school. It may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the
Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a former age
the poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the delight of Raleigh and
Falkland. In a later age the poetry and eloquence of Greece were the
delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham and Grenville. But during the
latter part of the seventeenth century there was in England scarcely one
eminent statesman who could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or
Plato.

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed, had not
altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still, in many parts
of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a negotiator. To speak
it well was therefore a much more common accomplishment shall in our
time; and neither Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great
occasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitations of
the verses in which Virgil and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of
Augustus.

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France united at
that time almost every species of ascendency. Her military glory was
at the height. She had vanquished mighty coalitions. She had dictated
treaties. She had subjugated great cities and provinces. She had forced
the Castilian pride to yield her the precedence. She had summoned
Italian princes to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her authority
was supreme in all matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet.
She determined how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke
must be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace
on his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to the
world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other country
could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet equal to
Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a rhetorician so skilful
as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy and of Spain had set; that of
Germany had not yet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the eminent men
who adorned Paris shone forth with a splendour which was set