While many of the publications of that time were prompted by Deism,
French society and literature were contributing an equal share toward
poisoning the English mind. France and England were so intimately
related to each other that the two languages were diligently studied in
both countries. If the English adventurer in letters had not spent a few
months in Paris, and could not read Corneille almost as readily as
Spenser or Shakspeare, he was cashiered by certain Gallicists west of
the Channel as a sorry aspirant to their coveted favor.[129] The rise of
the French spirit in England was mainly due to Bolingbroke, who was as
much at home in Paris as in London. He had numerous friends and admirers
in the former metropolis, and at two different times made it his
residence. Freely imbibing the skeptical opinions of the court of Louis
XIV., he dealt them out unsparingly to his English readers. He was one
of the most accomplished wits who frequented the _salon_ of Madame de
Croissy, and he developed his skeptical system through the medium of the
French language, in a series of letters to M.
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