Note 709 — Chapter II · THE CONTEMPORARIES OF VOLTAIRE.

Cf., for instance, Batteux, quite a reasonable person on the whole. He has no doubt (i. 80, 81) of the excellence, the almost perfection, at which French taste has arrived; he only fears that it may be impossible to guard against falling from so high an estate. This extraordinary self-complacency is a little less noticeable in England, but only a little. When we thought that Mr Pope had improved even upon Mr Dryden, and was in a sort of Upper House of Literature as compared with Shakespeare and Chaucer, we could not throw many stones at those who considered Voltaire a better poet than Ronsard.