390

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

m.

Influence

ofFrench

litera-

ture.

and -was still, in many parts of Europe, almost indispensableto a traveller or a negotiator. To speak it well was thereforea much more common accomplishment than in our time; andneither Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on a greatoccasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitationsof the verses in which Virgil and Ovid had celebrated thegreatness 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 vanquishedmighty coalitions. She had dictated treaties. She had sub-jugated great cities and provinces. She had forced theCastilian pride to yield her the precedence. She had sum-monedltalian princes to prostrate themselves at her foot-stool.Her authority was supreme in all matters of good breeding,from a duel to a minuet. She determined how a gentleman’scoat must be cut, how long his peruke must be, whether hisheels must be high or low, and whether the lace on his hatmust be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to theworld. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. Noother country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine,a comic poet equal to Moliere, a trifier so agreeable as LaFontaine, a rhetorician so skilful as Bossuct. The literaryglory of Italy and of Spain had set; that of Germany had notyet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the eminent menwho adorned Paris shone forth with a splendour which wasset off to full advantage by contrast. France, indeed, hadat that time an empire over mankind, such as even the RomanRepublic never attained. For, when Rome was politicallydominant, she was in arts and letters the humble pupil ofGreece. France had, over the surrounding countries, atonce the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and theascendency which Greece had over Rome. French was fastbecoming the universal language, the language of fashionable