Note 350 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

No sneer is intended in this adjective. Except in one or two of the personages of Les Égarements, Crébillon's intended gentlemen are nearly always well-bred, however ill-moralled they may be, and his ladies (with the same caution) are ladies. It is with him, in this last point at any rate, as with our own Congreve, whom he rather closely resembles in some ways: though I was amused the other day to find some twentieth-century critical objections to actresses' rendering of Love for Love as "too well-bred." The fact is that the tradition of "breeding" never broke down in France till the philosophe period, while with us it lasted till—when shall we say?