in certain of their poems, and boast of philofophers that are worthy of inftructing mankind. The English have reaped very great benefit from the writers of our nation, and therefore we ought (fince they have not fcrupled to be in our debt) to borrow from them. Both the English and we came after the Italians, who have been our inftructors in all the arts, and whom we have furpalled in fome. I cannot determine which of the three nations ought to be honoured with the palm; but happy the writer who could difplay their various me rits.

LETTER

ON THE

XXIII.

REGARD

That ought to be fhewn to

MEN OF LETTER S.

NEL

EITHER the English, nor any other people, have foundations eftablish'd in favour of the polite arts like those in France. There are univerfities in molt countries, but 'tis in France only that we meet with fo beneficial an encouragement for aftronomy, and all parts of the mathematicks, for phyfick, for refearches into antiquity, for painting, fculpture and architecture. Lewis the fourteenth has immortaliz'd his name by thefe feveral foundations, and this immortality did not cost him two hundred thousand livres a year.

I MUST confefs, that one of the things I very much wonder at, is, that as the parliament of Great Britain have promised a reward of twenty thousand pounds Sterling to any person who may difcover the longitude they fhould never have once thought to imitate Lewis the fourteenth in his munificence with regard to the arts and fciences. MERIT

MERIT indeed meets in England with rewards of another kind, which redound more to the honour of the nation. The English have fo great a veneration for exalted talents, that a man of merit in their country is always fure of making his fortune. Mr. Addifon in France would have been elected a member of one of the academies, and, by the credit of fome women, might have obtain❜d a yearly pension of twelve hundred livres; or elfe might have been imprisoned in the Baftile, upon pretence that certain ftrokes in his Tragedy of Cato had been difcover'd, which glanc'd at the porter of fome man in power. Mr. Addifon was rais'd to the poft of fecretary of ftate in England. Sir Ifaac Newton was made warden of the royal mint. Mr. Congreve had a confiderable employment. Mr. Prior was plenipotentiary. Dr. Swift is Dean of St. Patrick in Dublin, and is more revered in Ireland than the primate himself. The religion, which Mr. Pope profeffes, excludes him indeed from preferments of every kind, but then it did not prevent his gaining two hundred thousand livres by his excellent tranflation of Homer. I myfelf faw a long time in France the author of † Rhadamiftus ready

*

Secretary for Jamaica. + Mr. de Crebillon.

I 5

to perish for hunger: And the son of one of the greatest men* our country ever gave birth to, and who was beginning to run the noble career which his father had fet him, would have been reduced to the extremes of mifery, had he not been patronized by Mr. Fagon.

BUT the circumftance which mostly encourages the arts in England, is the great veneration which is paid them. The picture of the prime minifter hangs over the chimney of his own clofet, but I have seen that of Mr. Pope in twenty noblemens houses. Sir Ifaac Newton was revered in his life-time, and had a due refpect paid to him after his death; the greatest men in the nation difputing who fhould have the honour of holding up his pall. Go into Westminster-Abbey, and you'll find, that what raises the admiration of the fpectator is not the maufoleums of the English kings, but the monuments, which the gratitude of the nation has erected to perpetuate the memory of thofe illuftrious men who contributed to its glory. We view their statues in that abbey in the fame manner, as thofe of Sophocles, Plato, and other immortal perfonages, were viewed in Athens; and I am perfuaded, that the bare fight of those glorious monuments has fired more than one breast,

* Racine.

and

and been the occafion of their becoming great men.

THE English have even been reproached with paying too extravagant honours to mere merit, and cenfured for interring the celebrated actress Mrs. Oldfield in Weftminfter-Abby, with almost the fame pomp as Sir Ifaac Newton. Some pretend that the English had paid her these great funeral honours, purposely to make us more strongly fenfible of the barbarity and injuftice which they object to us, for having buried Mademoifelle le Couvreur ignominiously in the fields.

BUT be affured from me, that the English were prompted by no other principle, in burying Mrs. Oldfield in Westminster-Abbey, than their good fenfe. They are far from being fo ridiculous as to brand with infamy an art which has immortalized an Euripides and a Sophocles; or to exclude from the body of their citizens a fet of people whose business is to fet off, with the v moft grace of fpeech and action, thofe pie-: ces which the nation is proud of.

UNDER the reign of Charles the first, and in the beginning of the civil wars raifed by a number of rigid fanaticks, who at last were the victims to it, a great many pieces. were published against theatrical and other fhews, which were attacked with the greater virulence, because that monarch and his I 6 queen,