“You would not wish, fair stranger,” replied the Count, “that we should admit Teutonic barbarism amongst us—­that we should copy Young’s Night Thoughts, and the Concetti of the Italians and Spaniards.  What would become of the taste and elegance of our French style after such a mixture?” Prince Castel-Forte, who had not yet spoken, said—­“It seems to me that we all stand in need of each other:  the literature of every country discovers to him who is acquainted with it a new sphere of ideas.  It was Charles the Fifth himself who said—­that a man who knows four languages, is worth four men.  If that great political genius judged thus, in regard to the conduct of affairs, how much more true is it with respect to literature?  Foreigners all study French; thus they command a more extended horizon than you, who do not study foreign languages.  Why do you not more often take the trouble of learning them?—­You would thus preserve your own peculiar excellence, and sometimes discover your deficiencies.”

FOOTNOTE: 

[22] Cesarotti, Verri, and Bettinelli, are three living authors who have introduced thought into Italian prose; it must be confessed, that this was not the case for a long time before.

Chapter ii.

“You will at least confess,” replied the Count d’Erfeuil, “that there is one part of literature in which we have nothing to learn of any country.—­Our drama is decidedly the first in Europe; for I cannot believe that the English would presume to oppose their Shakespeare to us.”—­“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Mr Edgermond, “they have that presumption.”—­And after this observation he was silent.—­“In that case I have nothing to say,” continued the Count, with a smile which expressed a kind of civil contempt:  “Each one may think as he pleases, but for my part I persist in believing that we may affirm without presumption that we are the very first in dramatic art.  As to the Italians, if I may speak my mind freely, they do not appear even to suspect that there is a dramatic art in the world.—­With them the music is every thing, and the play itself nothing.  Should the music of the second act of a piece be better than the first, they begin with the second act.  Or, should a similar preference attach to the first acts of two different pieces, they will perform these two acts in the same evening, introducing between, perhaps, an act of some comedy in prose that contains irreproachable morality, but a moral teaching entirely composed of aphorisms, that even our ancestors have already cast off to the foreigner as too old to be of any service to them.  Your poets are entirely at the disposal of your famous musicians; one declares that he cannot sing without there is in his air the word felicita; the tenor must have tomba; while a third singer can only quaver upon the word catene.  The poor bard must make these different whims agree with dramatic situation