which the example of the old repentant _roué_, Louis XIV., had rendered
fashionable among the _literati_ of France: "There is no book comes out
at present that has not something in it of an air of devotion. Dacier has
been forced to prove his Plato a very good CHRISTIAN before he ventures
upon his translation, and has so far complied with the taste of the age,
that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and the notion of
pre-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of the prophets."
The sincere believer is usually the first to detect and be disgusted with
the sham one; and Addison was always a sincere believer, but he had also
that happy nature in which disgust is carried quickly and easily off
through the safety-valve of a smile.

From Paris he went to Blois, the capital of Loir-and-Cher, a small town
about 110 miles south-west of Paris. Here he had two advantages. He found
the French language spoken in its perfection; and as he had not a single
countryman with whom to exchange a word, he was driven on his own
resources. He remained there a year, and spent his time well, studying
hard, rising early, having the best French masters, mingling in society,
although subject, as in previous and after parts of his life, to fits of
absence. His life was as pure as it was simple, his most intimate friend
at Blois, the Abbe Philippeaux, saying: "He had no amour whilst here that
I know of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any." During
this time he sent home letters to his friends in England--to Montague,
Colonel Froude, Congreve, and others[1]--which contain sentences of
exquisite humour. Thus, describing the famous gallery at Versailles, with
the paintings of Louis' victories, he says: "The history of the present
King till the sixteenth year of his reign is painted on the roof by Le
Brun, so that his Majesty has actions enough by him to furnish another
gallery much longer than the first. He is represented with all the terror
and majesty that you can imagine in every part of the picture, and see