I'm doing a paper on Gulliver's Travels for university and I would appreciate if you could help me with this question:
Did people in the 18th century give any importance to the learning of a foreign language? Was it a normal practice to learn a foreign language?
I am particularly interested in what happened in England.
Thanks a lot.

Um, YES. The term Philology comes from the 18th century. They were taught languages all over the place. There were also less translations of things, save from Ancient Greek or Latin, so. Though most of the linguistic studies happened in the 19th century with the Jacob Grimm and such.