filled with much original genius. It was rather their 'inde'fatigable mediocrity' that made them as successful as they were. Many took to writing in English, such as Pierre Antoine Motteux who founded-with a self-confidence which we may hope was rewarded by success-a monthly journal called 'The Gentleman.' Motteux also wrote plays in English for the London stage. The refugees frequented the Rainbow Coffee-house in the rustic suburb of Marylebone, which became in consequence a sort of clearing-house for the Continent of information on English affairs. The president of the circle, Pierre Dandé, a Clerk of the Treasury, was a fervent Baconian, and passed for the supreme authority on English philosophy and theology. The Rainbow was the scene of constant discussion on every imaginable subject. The refugees were historians, journalists, playwrights, and theologians. They had the facile tendency to omniscience among their limitations. Desmaizeaux-publisher, translator, compiler, journalist—is a typical specimen of their intellectual activity. He became the biographer of Bayle, Saint-Evremond, and Boileau; contributed to all the journals of Holland as well as London; corresponded officially with the Journal des Savants' and with Leibnitz. He wrote in English the lives of Chillingworth and Hales, and produced the unpublished works of Newton, Clarke, and Collins-not to speak of an enormous private correspondence still buried in the archives of the British Museum.

The first task of the refugees was to popularise English philosophy. Locke published several of his writings in the Bibliothèques of Le Clerc. Pierre Coste published the first translation of the Essay on the Understanding,' in 1700. Coste assisted the philosopher on his deathbed. The Dutch papers, managed and written by French refugees, openly undertook the propagation of his ideas. The political ideas of England also appealed to them. They spread in Europe the knowledge of the British Constitution. The Journal Littéraire,' published at the Hague, abounded in praises of William III., and stigmatised France as an 'impure Babylone notre marâtre patrie.' On all questions of reform in France, they were naturall yon the revolutionary side. Rapin-Thoyras published in 1724 at the Hague a history of England in eight volumes, which became a classic. The book, which is really a history of the development of Parliamentary institutions in England, is the first

attempt at a philosophy of English politics. Tindal, a nephew of the Deist writer, translated it. It is doubtful whether any book has ever done more to make England known to Europe.

So persistent an effort could not fail of success. Little by little a public opinion favourable to the new England was formed in France. The majority of Frenchmen no doubt still sympathised, through political and religious tradition, with the Stuarts; but gradually Jacobite sympathies lost ground. Fénelon, informed by Ramsay of the details of the British Constitution, dreamed of a government which should leave kings all-powerful for good and powerless for evil,' an ideal which the British Constitution had perhaps hardly reached. After the death of Louis XIV., the Regent concluded an alliance with England, and pro-English sympathies became the fashion of the day in France.

The refugees had done a great deal, but more was needed to conquer completely the sympathies of France than the buzzings of the busy beehives of Marylebone and Amsterdam. A man of genius was wanted. One of the very greatest was waiting to come on the stage of literary Europe. But in his enthusiasm for England Voltaire, as befitted the Messianic role which he enjoyed so much, had a precursor who was also a man of genius. The Abbé Prévost, whose literary fame is mainly founded on his immortal 'Manon Lescaut,' was the author of many other works which at the time enjoyed a greater success than that piteous tragedy. In 1728 he broke with the Church, having been forced to leave the Abbey of which he was an unworthy monk, and fled to England. The Church's loss was the world's gain. Prévost, established as a secretary in the house of an English lord, appears to have greatly enjoyed his first visit to England, which lasted some three or four years. A scandal-the susceptible creature was always getting into trouble through his affections-obliged him to leave his pleasant post somewhat abruptly for Holland, whence he returned in 1733 accompanied by a young woman. The pair were but coldly welcomed at the Rainbow; the refugees were only libertins d'esprit. Prévost, however, braved their frowns and settled down with his young friend to write the novels of cosmopolitan life that soon acquired him an immense reputation in France. The most interesting of these is the 'Mémoires 'd'un homme de qualité,' which may still be read for its vivid picture of the English life of the period. Few books have

contributed more, in the author's words, 'à faire connaître 'parmi nous un pays qui n'est pas aussi estimé qu'il devrait 'être des autres peuples de l'Europe parce qu'il ne leur est pas assez connu.' Prévost truly said that he laboured for the destruction of 'certains préjugés puérils, qui sont ordinaires à 'la plupart des hommes, mais surtout aux Français, et qui les 'portent à se donner fièrement la préférence sur tous les autres peuples de l'univers.' The Spanish and Oriental scenes among which the homme de qualité wanders are not of any particular merit, but the pictures of English daily life, drawn as they were from nature, are admirable and arresting. Its pages are full of little tableaux de mœurs surely and lightly touched in by the hand of a master. We are shewn a masked ball at the Haymarket, what Prévost calls 'un combat de gladiateurs, ou plus exactement une partie de boxe suivie d'un combat au sabre, espèce d'école où la jeunesse va se former à l'intré'pidité, au mépris de la mort et des blessures'; we follow the hero on an English tour which gives occasion for any amount of fine and exact observation. There is an amusing and valuable description of Tunbridge Wells in which we learn that chocolate and coffee were sold on the Pantiles for six sous a cup; that at the balls one met ' grisettes à côté des duchesses,' and that gallant adventures were the order of the day. 'Si ce lieu charmant avait subsisté du temps des anciens, ils n'auraient pas dit que Vénus et les Grâces faisaient leur résidence à 'Cythère.' This was a new view of the English character for the French public, and it is to be feared that the amiable weaknesses so charmingly recounted by the exiled Abbé won favour where the solid political and social virtues that formed the topic of the learned tomes of the Protestant refugees had failed to create more than a somewhat chilly respect. Prévost does not however deal solely with the lighter side of English life. He speaks of the poets, quotes Milton, Spenser, Addison and Thomson, and notes that the drama flourishes. His opinion here seems a little exaggerated. He declares that he has read nothing in Greek or French to equal the works performed on the English stage 'pour la beauté des sentiments, soit tendres, 'soit sublimes, pour cette force tragique qui remue le fond du 'cœur et qui excite infailliblement les passions dans l'âme la plus engourdie.'

His most enthusiastic pages deal with the national character. Everything pleases him and primarily the atmosphere of per

sonal liberty. Quelle leçon de voir, dans un café, un ou deux milords, un chevalier baronnet, un cordonnier, un tailleur, 'un marchand de vin, et quelques autres gens de même trempe,' all seated round the same table and familiarly discussing, pipe in mouth, public affairs! Les Cafés'—unlike their degenerate descendants the public-houses of to-day-' sont comme le siège 'de la liberté anglaise.' His enthusiasm for the English character is thoroughly exploited in his 'Philosophe anglais ou Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland fils naturel de Cromwell,' which appeared before 1739. Cleveland is an absurd and impossible person who wanders over oceans and continents as a sort of missionary of progress without his philosophy once failing him. He suffers from only one weakness, 'le spleen, espèce de délire frénétique qui est plus commun parmi les Anglais que parmi les autres peuples de l'Europe . . . c'est 'la plus dangereuse et la plus terrible des maladies.' He however triumphs over the haunting temptation of suicide caused by le spleen as an English philosopher may be expected

to do.

In process of time Prévost returned to France and as chaplain to the Prince de Conti, by means of whose influence he had become a secular priest, continued the remarkable journal 'Le Pour et le Contre' devoted to the diffusion of English ideas in France which he had commenced during his exile.

Le

Pour et le Contre' was a sort of encyclopædic review of everything English. The foreword promises un ouvrage périodique 'd'un goût nouveau, dans lequel on s'explique librement sur 'tout ce qui peut intéresser la curiosité du public.' He proposes to satisfy the recently formed taste of his compatriots ―he had largely created it himself-for precise, varied, abundant information. Among his proposed topics, two take important places, 'le caractère des dames distinguées par 'le mérite' and 'les faits avérés qui paraîtront surpasser le pouvoir de la nature.' He is chronicler and gazetteer, gives prescriptions against smallpox and apoplexy, discusses volcanic eruptions, Egyptian mummies and giant aloes, and sweetens his pages with erotic verses and'échos mondains.' He never forgets his principal object.

'Ce qui sera tout à fait particulier à cette feuille, je promets d'y insérer chaque fois quelque particularité intéressante touchant le génie des Anglais, les curiosités de Londres et des autres parties

de l'île, les progrès qu'on y fait tous les jours dans les sciences et les arts, et de traduire même quelquefois les plus belles scènes de leurs pièces de théâtre.'

Certainly Voltaire's way as an interpreter of England to France was made straight before him.

It was during the first year of the publication of 'Le Pour et 'le Contre' in London that that illustrious man's 'Lettres 'Anglaises' appeared. Of this important work, M. Texte

says:

'A tous égards, les "Lettres Philosophiques" ou " Anglaises "— car Voltaire a employé les deux titres-sont une œuvre capitale. D'elles datent la campagne ouverte contre le christianisme qui va remplir le siècle d'elles enfin, et surtout, cet esprit nouveau, dédaigneux des questions d'art, réformateur et raisonneur, batailleur et pratique, plus soucieux de politique ou de science que de poésie ou d'éloquence, curieux pardessus tout d'une littérature d'action et de propagande d'esprit du siècle, qui se cherchait depuis trente ans, s'est reconnu dans ce livre. Les "Lettres Anglaises" sont les lettres de majorité du xviii siècle.

'Elles marquent aussi, dans le développement de l'influence Anglaise, un pas décisif. Il faut en croire ici les contemporains : "Cet ouvrage, a dit Condorcet, fut parmi nous l'époque d'une révolution; il commença a y faire naître le goût de la philosophie et de la littérature anglaises, à nous intéresser aux mœurs, à la politique, aux connaissances commerciales de ce peuple, à répandre sa langue parmi nous. Du moins Voltaire eut-il le mérite de redire avec esprit, verve et cynisme quelques vérités éparses chez ses précurseurs, et qui n'étaient pas encore du domaine public.'

"

M. Texte is certainly right in discounting Condorcet's excessive estimation of the intrinsic originality of Voltaire's propaganda. The effect of that propaganda can hardly be estimated too highly. In those days practically everyone who could read, read Voltaire, and much that in the works of his precursors would have speedily been forgotten lost its heaviness and pedantry and acquired new life when reproduced by his magic pen.

Voltaire disembarked at Greenwich on May the 30th, 1726. The day was Whit-Monday. The Greenwich Fair was being held and it happened to be the King's birthday. The weather, as he notes, was beautiful and he observed with the liveliest interest the two lines of merchant ships drawn up to salute the royal barge which, rowed by men in gorgeous liveries and preceded by boats containing the Court musicians, floated