Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/98

 no single writer attracts our attention alone, yet their conjunction diffuses such brightness upon the age, as will give the minutest actions of those two reigns an importance, which the revolutions of empire will want that were transacted in greater obscurity.

that excellence which now excites the admiration of Europe, served at that period of which I am speaking, only to promote envy in the respective writers of those two countries. They both took every method to depreciate the merit of each other; the French seldom mentioned the English but with disrespect, put themselves foremost in every literary contest, and to leave the English no colour of competition, placed the Italians in the second rank. The English, on the other hand, regarded the French as triflers, accused the