Note 733 — Chapter III · CLASSICISM IN THE OTHER NATIONS.

I did not think it worth while to mention Camusat in the French chapter, though he is not quite a contemptible person. He was one of the tribe of French men of letters who, for this reason or that, settled in Holland. He has the not small credit of being one of the first to attempt a Literary History (Amsterdam, 1722, 3 vols.) of France. He edited part of the literary contents of Chapelain’s letters, and did other things. But the Germans seem to have been particularly attracted by a Lettre sur les Poètes qui ont chanté la Volupté, which he wrote, I think, in connection with the work of Chaulieu, but which I have only read in German. It may have had, for them, the attraction of elegant naughtiness; but it has in reality very little either of the adjective or of the noun.