Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/269

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COSMOPOLITAN LITERATURE
255

symptoms might be mentioned which lie outside M. Texte's plan. The English influence upon France was partly a result of the French influence upon England. English writers since the Restoration had been assimilating French methods, and Addison and Pope came near enough to Racine and Boileau to be regarded as civilised human beings by Voltaire. Familiarity with their work suggested that there were some merits in the older English literature which they had refined, and that it might be worth while to look even at Shakespeare or other literary ancestors. The English nobleman, conversely, all through the century regarded France as the school of good manners. Bolingbroke and Chesterfield and Horace Walpole felt themselves at home in a society pleasantly contrasted with the clownish and brutal Squire Westerns who were their neighbours at home and elbowed them in the House of Commons. The 'grand tour' enabled the young noble and his bear-leader to get some French polish. He was easily made an honorary member of the highest circles; and men like Hume and Adam Smith were introduced through his patronage to society in which their intellectual eminence was more frankly recognised than in