Guevara; among the French: Rabelais and Montaigne; among the English: Sir Philip Sidney, Bacon, and Selden. I mention nothing of what is written upon the subject of divinity, wherein the Spanish and English pens have been most conversant, and most excelled. The modern French are Voiture, Rochefoucauld's Memoirs, Bussy's Amadis de Gaule, with several other little relations or memoirs, that have run this age, which are very pleasant and entertaining, and seem to have refined the French language to a degree that cannot be well exceeded. I doubt it may have happened there, as it does in all works, that the more they are filed and polished, the less they have of weight and of strength, and as that language has much more fineness and smoothness at this time, so I take it to have had much more force, spirit, and compass, in Montaigne's age.
[Among other causes that have hindered the advancement of modern learning have been religious disputes, want or decay in kings and princes of favour to learning, avarice and greed of wealth, and the scorn of pedantry.]
