The View from Across the Channel

Abstract

To ask what Frenchmen thought about the ‘English’ — they hardly ever described them as ‘British’ — during the eighteenth century is to pose a complicated question. Most Frenchmen probably never thought about them at all. Arthur Young amused himself in 1787 at the expense of someone he met in the south of France who asked if there were any rivers and trees in England, telling him that there were indeed a few trees but no rivers at all. At the opposite end of the scale were men like the abbe Morellet who knew Garrick and Hume in Paris, and spent five months as the guest of Shelburne at Bowood, where he was introduced to Price and Priestley. He corresponded regularly with Shelburne for many years and escorted his son on a tour of France.