A notable letter from Joseph Addison To Bishop Hough (from December 1700).

My Lord,

I received the honour of your Lordship's letter at Paris, and am since got as far as Lyons in my way for Italy. I am at present very well content to quit the French conversation, which, since the promotion of their young prince, begins to grow insupportable. That which was before the vainest nation in the world is now worse than ever. There is scarce a man in it that does not give himself greater airs upon it, and look as well pleased as if he had received some considerable advancement in his own fortunes. The best company I have met with since my being in this country has been among the men of Letters, who are generally easy of access, especially the religious, who have a great deal of time on their hands, and are glad to pass some of it off in the society of strangers. Their learning for the most part lies among the old schoolmen. Their public disputes run upon the controversies between the Thomists and Scotists, which they manage with abundance of heat and false Latin. When I was at Paris I visited the Pere Malebranche, who has a particular esteem for the English nation, where I believe he has more admirers than in his own. The French don't care for following him through his deep researches, and generally look upon all the new philosophy as visionary or irreligious. Malebranche himself told me that he was five and twenty years old before he had so much as heard of the name of Des Cartes. His book is now reprinted with many additions, among which he showed me a very pretty hypothesis of colours, which is different from that of Cartesius or Mr. Newton, though they may all three be true. He very much praised Mr. Newton's Mathematics, shook his head at the name of Hobbes, and told me he thought him a pauvre esprit. He was very solicitous about the English translation of his work, and was afraid it had been taken from an ill edition of it. Among other learned men I had the honour to be introduced to Mr. Boileau, who is now retouching his works and putting them out in a new impression. He is old and a little deaf, but talks incomparably well in his own calling. He heartily hates an ill poet, and throws himself into a passion when he talks of any one that has not a high respect for Homer and Virgil. I don't know whether there is more of old age or truth in his censures on the French writers, but he wonderfully decries the present, and extols very much his former contemporaries, especially his two intimate friends Arnaud and Racine. I asked him whether he thought Telemaque was not a good modern piece: he spoke of it with a great deal of esteem, and said that it gave us a better notion of Homer's way of writing than any translation of his works could do, but that it falls however infinitely short of the Odyssey, for Mentor, says he, is eternally preaching, but Ulysses shows us everything in his character and behaviour that the other is still pressing on us by his precepts and instructions. He said the punishment of bad kings was very well invented, and might compare with anything of that nature in the 6th Aeneid, and that the deceit put on Telemaque's pilot to make him misguide his master is more artful and poetical than the death of Palinurus. I mention his discourse on this author because it is at present the book that is everywhere talked of, and has a great many partisans for and against it in this country. I found him as warm in crying up this man and the good poets in general, as he has been in censuring the bad ones of his time, as we commonly observe that the man who makes the best friend is the worst enemy. He talked very much of Corneille, allowing him to be an excellent poet, but at the same time none of the best tragic writers, for that he declaimed too frequently, and made very fine descriptions often when there was no occasion for them. Aristotle, says he, proposes two passions that are proper to be raised by tragedy, terror and pity, but Corneille endeavours at a new one, which is admiration. He instanced in his Pompey, (which he told us the late Duke of Conde thought the best tragedy that was ever written,) where in the first scene the king of Egypt runs into a very pompous and long description of the battle of Pharsalia, though he was then in a great hurry of affairs and had not himself been present at it. I hope your Lordship will excuse me for this kind of intelligence, for in so beaten a road as that of France it is impossible to talk of anything new unless we may be allowed to speak of particular persons, that are always changing, and may therefore furnish different matter for as many travellers as pass through the country.

I am, my Lord, your Lordship's, &c.

J. Addison. To the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.