The Abbé Delille, another fellow-countryman of Sidonius Apollinarius, of the Chancelier de l'Hospital, of La Fayette, of Thomas, of Chamfort[211], had also come to settle in London, after being driven from the Continent by the inundation of the Republican victories. The Emigration was proud to number him in its ranks: he sang our misfortunes, a reason the more for loving his muse. He did a great deal of work; he could not help himself, for Madame Delille locked him up and did not release him until he had earned his day's keep by writing a certain number of verses. I called on him one day, and was kept waiting; then he appeared with very red cheeks: it is said that Madame Delille used to box his ears; I know nothing about it; I only say what I saw. Who has not heard the Abbé Delille recite his verses? He told a very good story: his ugly, irregular features, lit up by his imagination, went admirably with his affected delivery, with the character of his talent, and with his clerical profession. The Abbé Delille's masterpiece is his translation of the _Georgics_, with the exception of the sentimental pieces; but it is as though you were reading Racine translated into the language of Louis XV. [Sidenote: The Abbé Delille.] The literature of the eighteenth century, saving a few fine talents which dominate it, standing as it does between the classical literature of the seventeenth century and the romantic literature of the nineteenth, without lacking naturalness lacks nature; given up wholly to arrangements of words, it was neither sufficiently original as a new school, nor sufficiently pure as an ancient school. The Abbé Delille was the poet of the modern country-houses, in the same way as the troubadours were the poets of the old castles; the verses of the one and the ballads of the other point the difference which existed between aristocracy in its prime and aristocracy in its decrepitude: the abbé describes the pleasures of reading and chess in the manor-houses in which the troubadours sang of tourneys and crusades. The distinguished persons of our Church militant were at that time in England: the Abbé Carron, who wrote the life of my sister Julie; the Bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon[212], a stern and narrow-minded prelate, who contributed more and more to estrange M. le Comte d'Artois from his country; the Archbishop of Aix[213], slandered perhaps because of his success in society; another learned and pious bishop, but so avaricious that, had he had the misfortune to lose his soul, he would never have bought it back. Nearly all misers are men of wit: I must be a great fool.