The middling and common people are not much richer than Job when he had lost everything but his patience.' Rousseau wrote of the French in 1777:--'Cette nation qui se pretend si gaie montre peu cette gaite dans ses jeux. Souvent j'allais jadis aux guinguettes pour y voir danser le menu peuple; mais ses danses etaient si maussades, son maintien si dolent, si gauche, que j'en sortais plutot contriste que rejoui.' Les Reveries, IXme. promenade. Baretti (Journey to Genoa, iv. 146) denies that the French 'are entitled to the appellation of cheerful.' 'Provence,' he says (ib. 148), 'is the only province in which you see with some sort of frequency the rustic assemblies roused up to cheerfulness by the fifre and the tambourin.' Mrs. Piozzi describes the absence of 'the happy middle state' abroad. 'As soon as Dover is left behind, every man seems to belong to some other man, and no man to himself.' Piozzi's Journey, ii. 341. Voltaire, in his review of Julia Mandeville (Works, xliii. 364), says:--'Pour peu qu'un roman, une tragedie, une comedie ait de succes a Londres, on en fait trois et quatre editions en peu de mois; c'est que l'etat mitoyen est plus riche et plus instruit en Angleterre qu'en France, &c.' But Barry, the painter (post, May 17, 1783), in 1766, described to Burke, 'the crowds of busy contented people which cover (as one may say) the whole face of the country.' But he was an Irishman comparing France with Ireland. 'They make a strong, but melancholy contrast to a miserable ------ which I cannot help thinking of sometimes. You will not be at any loss to know that I mean Ireland.' Barry's Works, i. 57. 'Hume,' says Dr. J. H. Burton, 'in his Essay on The Parties of Great Britain (published in 1741), alludes to the absence of a middle class in Scotland, where he says, there are only "two ranks of men, gentlemen who have some fortune and education, and the meanest starving poor; without any considerable number of the middling rank of men, which abounds more in England, both in cities and in the country, than in any other quarter of the world."' Life of Hume, i. 198. I do not find this passage in the edition of Hume's Essays of 1770.
[1209] Yet Smollett wrote in 1763:--'All manner of butcher's meat and poultry are extremely good in Paris. The beef is excellent.' He adds, 'I can by no means relish their cookery.' Smollett's Travels, i. 86. Horace Walpole, in 1765, wrote from Amiens on his way to Paris:--'I am almost famished for want of clean victuals, and comfortable tea, and bread and butter.' Letters, iv. 401. Goldsmith, in 1770, wrote from Paris:--'As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my pick-tooth.' Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 219.
[1210] Walpole calls Paris 'the ugliest, beastliest town in the universe,' and describes the indelicacy of the talk of women of the first rank. Letters, iv. 435. See post, May 13, 1778, and under Aug. 29, 1783.
[1211] Madame du Boccage, according to Miss Reynolds, whose authority was Baretti. Croker's Boswell, p. 467. See post, June 25, 1784.
[1212] In Edinburgh, Johnson threw a glass of lemonade out of the window because the waiter had put the sugar into it 'with his greasy fingers.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 14.
[1213] Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson in 1782:--'When we were in France we could form little judgement [of the spread of refinement], as our time was passed chiefly among English; yet I recollect that one fine lady, who entertained us very splendidly, put her mouth to the teapot, and blew in the spout when it did not pour freely.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 247.
[1214] That he did not continue exactly as in London is stated by Boswell himself. 'He was furnished with a Paris-made wig of handsome construction,' (Post, April 28, 1778). His Journal shews that he bought articles of dress (ante, p. 398). Hawkins (Life, p. 517) says that 'he yielded to the remonstrances of his friends so far as to dress in a suit of black and a Bourgeois wig, but resisted their importunity to wear ruffles. By a note in his diary it appears that he laid out near thirty pounds in clothes for this journey.' A story told by Foote we may believe as little as we please. 'Foote is quite impartial,' said Johnson, 'for he tells lies of everybody.' Post, under March 15, 1776.
[1215] If Johnson's Latin was understood by foreigners in France, but not in England, the explanation may be found in his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 99), where he says:--'He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such conformity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries.' Johnson was so sturdy an Englishman that likely enough, as he was in London, he would not alter his pronunciation to suit his Excellency's ear. In Priestley's Works, xxiii. 233, a conversation is reported in which Dr.