Boileau, who corresponded with Hamilton and
Gramont, recommends to French poets the knowledge of
foreign lore : " Des pays etrangers etudiez les mceurs " ;
and he immediately refers his readers to " antique Italy."
All the examples he takes from foreign literatures are
drawn, without exception, from Spain or Italy ; he
condemns " Tasso's tinsel," the ''showy folly" ot
Italian " false jewels " ; he quotes in his verses Tasso's
religious poem, but not Milton's ; he has heard of
satires written against women by Ariosto and Boccaccio,
but not by Chaucer ; of " Rocinante cheval de Dom
Quichot," but not of the " Faerie Queen " ; of the
independence of the stage " dela les Pyrenees," but not
beyond the Channel. In the " Lutrin," Barbin's book-
shop is sacked and its exotic treasures are used as
projectiles by the combatants : from dark recesses
emerge " Guarinis " and " French Tassos," nothing but
the products of southern literatures. Addison visited
Boileau in 1700, and found him old and a little deaf,
but " talking incomparably well in his own calling ;
he heartily hates an ill poet." The conversation
turned on Homer, Virgil, Racine, Corneille, Fenelon's
" Telemaque," which " is at present the book that is
everywhere talked of " ; but not a single allusion seems
to have been made to English letters. 1

French was, indeed, more than ever before, the com-
mon means of communication in Europe. Howell
instructed his " forreine traveller " to learn it first of