the way, I grant; but there are degrees at which men stop, some for the fear of men, some for the fear of God: shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God *.'
JOHNSON. * The French, Sir, are a very silly People, they have no common life. Nothing but the two ends, Beggary and Nobility 2 .'
- Sir, they are made up in every thing of two extremes. They
have no common sense, they have no common manners, no common learning, gross ignorance or les belles lettres V
A LADY. ' Indeed even in their dress, their fripary [sic] finery and their beggarly coarse linnen 4 . They had I thought no politeness. Their civilities never indicated more good-will than the talk of a Parrot, indiscriminately using the same set of super lative phrases as a la merveille ! to every one alike. They really seem'd to have no expressions for sincerity and truth.'
JOHNSON. 'They are much behind-hand, stupid, ignorant creatures. At Fountainblue [sic] I saw a Horse-race 5 , every thing was wrong, the heaviest weight was put upon the weakest Horse, and all the jockies wore the same colour coat.'
1 * It was chiefly respecting the eenth century ' as ' one of the most opinion of the Gentleman that this powerful and pervasive intellectual dialogue appear'd memorable to the agencies that have ever existed the writer.' Miss REYNOLDS. greatest European force of the eight-
2 ' Johnson observed. " The great eenth century.' Essays in Criticism, in France live very magnificently, ed. 1889, p. 54.
but the rest very miserably. There 4 Mrs. Carter wrote from Calais
is no happy middle state as in on June 4, 1763 : ' In the market
England." ' Life, ii. 402. I saw such a mixture of rags and dirt
3 In another version Miss Reynolds and finery as was entirely new to an writes 'or la metaphysique? The English spectator. The women at French, in this, were the opposite of the stalls, who looked as if they were the Scotch, ' whose learning is like by no means possessed of anything bread in a besieged town; every man like a shift, were decorated with long gets a little, but no man gets a full dangling earrings. ... I am sorry to meal.' Life, ii. 363. 'There is, say it, but it is fact, that the Lion perhaps, (said Johnson) more know- d' Argent at Calais is a much better ledge circulated in the French Ian- inn than any I saw at Dover.' Mrs. guage than in any other. There is Carter's Memoirs, i. 253.
more original knowledge in English.' 5 He does not mention this in his 16. v. 310. Matthew Arnold describes journal. Life t ii. 394. ' the French literature of the eight-
VOL. ii. u GENTLEMAN.
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