Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/77

 may be properly called a language of their own, all the languages are understood, cultivated and spoken. All useful inventions in arts, and new discoveries in science, are published here almost as soon as at the places which first produced them. Its individuals have the same faults, however, with the Germans, of making more use of their memory, than their judgment. The chief employment of their literati is to criticise, or answer the new performances which appear elsewhere.

of wit in France or England, naturally produces a scarcity in Holland. What Ovid says of Eccho, may be applied here, Nec loqui prius ipsa didicit nec reticere loquenti. They wait till something new comes out from others, examine its merits, and reject it, or make it reverberate through the rest of Europe.