'He was of opinion, that the English nation cultivated both their soil
and their reason better than any other people: but admitted that the
French, though not the highest, perhaps, in any department of
literature, yet in every department were very high[364]. Intellectual
pre-eminence, he observed, was the highest superiority; and that every
nation derived their highest reputation from the splendour and dignity
of their writers[365]. Voltaire, he said, was a good narrator, and that
his principal merit consisted in a happy selection and arrangement of
circumstances.

'Speaking of the French novels, compared with Richardson's, he said,
they might be pretty baubles, but a wren was not an eagle.

'In a Latin conversation with the Pere Boscovitch, at the house of Mrs.
Cholmondeley, I heard him maintain the superiority of Sir Isaac Newton
over all foreign philosophers[366], with a dignity and eloquence that
surprized that learned foreigner[367]. It being observed to him, that a
rage for every thing English prevailed much in France after Lord
Chatham's glorious war, he said, he did not wonder at it, for that we
had drubbed those fellows into a proper reverence for us, and that their
national petulance required periodical chastisement.

'Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues, he deemed a nugatory performance. "That
man, (said he,) sat down to write a book, to tell the world what the
world had all his life been telling him[368]."

'Somebody observing that the Scotch Highlanders, in the year 1745, had
made surprising efforts, considering their numerous wants and
disadvantages: "Yes, Sir, (said he,) their wants were numerous; but you