Thomas Hodgins,M.A.
1890
HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRFSS
LECTURES
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
EDINBURGH : BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES.
PAUL S WORK, AND 3 THISTI.K STREET.
LECTURES
HISTORY OF LITERATURE
ANCIENT AND MODERN
1 KOM THE (JEKMAN Of
FREDERICK SCHLEGEL
M
NEW EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
M.DCCC.XLVI
flrj
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
Introduction and plan of the Work Influence of Literature
on life and on the character of Nations Poetry of the
Greeks down to the age of Sophocles, ... J.
LECTURE II.
The later Literature of the Greeks Their sophists and
Philosophers The Alexandrian age, ... 33
LECTURE III.
Retrospect Influence of the Greeks on the Homans
Sketch of Roman literature, 71
LECTURE IV.
Short duration of the Roman literature New epoch under
Hadrian Influence of the opinions of the Orientals on
the philosophy of the West Mosaic writings, poetry of
the Hebrews Religion of the Persians Monuments of
the Indians Modes of interment among the ancient
nations, .... 103
VI CONTENTS.
LECTURE V.
PAGE
Literature, opinions, and intellectual habits of the Indians
Retrospect to Europe, . . . . . . 130
LECTURE VI.
Influence of Christianity on the Roman language and litera
ture Transition to the Northern nations Gothic heroic
poems Odin, Runic writings and the Edda Old Ger
man poetry The Nibelungen-lied, .... 153
LECTURE VII.
Of the Middle Age Of the origin of the modern European
languages Poetry of the Middle Age Love Poetry
Character of the Normans, and their influence on the
Chivalrous poems Particularly those which treat of
Charlemagne, . 178
LECTURE VIII.
Third set of Chivalrous poems Arthur and the Round
Table Influence of the Crusades and the East on the
poetry of the West Arabic and Persian poems Ferdusi
Last remodelling of the Nibelungen-lied "VVolkram von
Eschenbach, true purpose of the Gothic Architecture
Later poetry of the Chivalrous period Poem of the Cid, 202
CONTENTS. vii
LECTURE IX.
PAGE
Italian literature Allegorising spirit of the middle age
Relation of Christianity to poetry Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio Character of the Italian art of poetry in gene
ral Modern Latin poets, and the evil consequences of
their writings Machiavelli Great inventions and disco
veries of the fifteenth century, .... 225
LECTURE X.
A few words upon the literature of the North and East of
Europe Upon the scholastic learning and German mys
tics of the middle age, 250
LECTURE XL
General remarks on the philosophy of the times immediately
preceding and following the Reformation Poetry of
the Catholic nations, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and
the Italians Garcilaso, Ercilla, Camoens, Tasso, Guarini,
Marino, and Cervantes, 274
LECTURE XII.
Of Romance Dramatic poetry of the Spaniards Spenser,
Shakespeare, and Milton Age of Lewis XIV. The
French Theatre 298
LECTURE XIII.
Philosophy of the seventeenth century Bacon, Hugo Gro-
tius, Descartes, Bossuet, Pascal Change in the mode of
thinking Spirit of the eighteenth century Picture of
the atheism and revolutionary spirit of the French, . 331
Vlll CONTENTS.
LECTURE XIV.
PAGE
Lighter species of writing in France, and imitations of the
English Fashionable literature of both countries Mo
dern romance The prose of BufFon and Rousseau Popu
lar poetry in England Modern Italian theatre Criticism
and historical composition of the English Sceptical phi
losophy- Return to a better and higher species of philo
sophy in France Bonald and St Martin Sir William
Jones and Burke. 356
LECTURE XV.
Retrospect German philosophy Spinosa and Leibnitz
German language and poetry in the sixteenth and seven
teenth centuries Luther, Hans Sachs, Jacob Bohme
Opitz, the Silesian school Corruption of taste after the
peace of Westphalia; occasional poetry German poets
of the first half of the eighteenth century Frederick
the Second ; Klopstock ; the Messiad and Northern my
thology The chivalrous poems of Wieland Introduction
of the ancient metres of quantity into the German lan
guage ; defence of rhyme Adelung, Gottsched, and "the
(so called) golden age" First generation of the later
German literature, or " the period of the founders," 337
LECTURE XVI.
General review Second generation German criticism
Lessing and Herder Lessing as a philosopher Free-
thinking and the illuminati The Emperor Joseph the
Second Character of the third generation The philo
sophy of Kant, Goethe and Schiller Anticipation Fichte
and Tieck True character of German literature Con
clusion, ... 407
LECTURES
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OP THE WORK INFLUENCE OF LITERATURE ON LIFE
AND ON THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS POETRY OF THE GREEKS DOWN TO
THE AGE OF SOPHOCLES.
IN the following discourses, it is my design to give a
general view of the development and of the spirit of litera
ture among the most illustrious nations of ancient as well
as of modern times ; but my principal object is to represent 3 *"
literature as it has exerted its influence on the aifairs of
active life, on the fate of nations, and on the progressive
character of ages.
During the last hundred years, the human mind, morcx
particularly in Germany, has undergone a great, and, in
one point of view at least, a fortunate alteration. Not that
the individual productions of art, or inquiries into science,
f to which this period has given birth, are entitled to indis
criminate praise, or have attained equal success ; but a
i mighty change has taken place in the quarter where it
was most necessary, in the regard and interest which the
world at large bestows on literature ; and among us, above
all other people, in the influence which it has already
A
2 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
exerted, and is likely iu a much greater degree to exert on
us, both as individuals and as a nation.
Our men of letters formed, till of late, a body altogether"
cut off from the rest of the world, and quite as distinct from
the society of the higher orders as these were from the
mass of the people. Keppler and Leibnitz composed far
the greater part of their works in Latin ; and Frederick""
of Prussia, in his turn, both of thinking and of Avriting,
was a Frenchman. All national recollections, and all
national feelings, were either abandoned to the common
people, who still maintained among them some remnant,
however feeble and mutilated, of the spirit of " the good
old time ; " or formed in secret the inspiration and the en
thusiastic pursuit of a few poets and authors, who at first,
indeed, applied themselves to these objects in the hope of
bringing about a new state of things by their means. So
long, however, as this was alone attempted by some parti
cular classes of society, there could be little chance that the
youthful enthusiasm of their design should be justified by
success, or crowned by consequences of universal utility.
During the whole of the latter part of the seventeenth,
and the first half of the eighteenth century, this complete
separation between the men of letters and the people of
fashion, and between them and the rest of the nation, was
universal throughout Germany ; and, indeed, these unna
tural distinctions and their necessary consequences pro
tracted no inconsiderable influence in particular quarters,
long after the general mind had become sufiiciently prepared
for the reception of a new state of things, and a more
rational arrangement of society.
The great number of distinguished works, or at least of
remarkable and praiseworthy attempts, which, especially
after the middle of the eighteenth century, were perpetually
making their appearance in the German tongue, succeeded
at length in attracting universal attention, partly to the too
much neglected history of our country, and to the many
beautiful traits of magnanimity and virtue which are
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. *J
related in our ancient chronicles ; partly to the innate
excellencies of our language itself, the strength, the rich
ness, and the flexibility which it never fails to display,
when it is employed in a manner adapted to its character.
The more that national feelings and recollections were""
revived, the more also was our love awakened for our
mother tongue. That acquaintance with foreign languages,
whether dead or living, which is necessary for men of
letters and men of fashion, was no longer connected with
neglect of their vernacular speech ; a neglect which is
always sure to work its own revenge on those who practise
it, and which can never be supposed to create any prejudice
either in favour of their politeness or their erudition. The
great attention with which foreign languages had been
studied, was, however, at this period, of infinite advantage
to our own ; for every foreign language, even a living one,
must of necessity be acquired in a more exact manner than
our vernacular tongue. Thus the mind becomes sharpened
for the perception of the general principles of language ;
and in the end we apply to the polishing and enriching of
our own language that acuteness which we have been
accustomed to exercise on others. It has become, in a
word, the great object of general ambition to add to the
strength and the variety, which are the distinguishing ex
cellencies of our native tongue, all those other advantages
which characterise the most cultivated languages of ancient
as well as of modem times.
It is, however, my purpose to exhibit a picture, not of
German literature alone, but of the literature of the Euro
pean nations in general. There cannot, therefore, be any
impropriety in anticipating the remark, that during the
eighteenth century, the literature of many other countries
underwent a change similar to that which took place in
our own, and manifested the same disposition to resume^
those national characteristics, and that national spirit, which
it had been the ambition of the preceding period, as much
as possible, to obliterate. The example of England will
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sufficiently illustrate my meaning. Even there, during the-"
latter part of the seventeenth century, while the country
lay exhausted and drooping under the consequences of the
civil wars of Cromwell, the public taste became corrupted,
insipid, tame, sickly, and un-English. The language itself
was neglected, and the great old poets and authors were
sinking fast into oblivion. But so soon as, by a fortunate""
revolution, the political independence of England came
again to be displayed, her national literature also began to
revive. The French taste, which the English had adopted^
became every day weaker ; and they recurred at last, with
redoubled affection, to the old poets of their country. It
became an object of much study to preserve their language
in all its strength and integrity ; a number of great writers
arose ; and since that time, so strong and so unchanging
have been their care and partiality for every monument
and every relic, however minute, of British history and
British antiquities, that, so far as this matter is concerned,
we can reproach their national character with only the
one glorious fault of a too exclusive admiration of their
country.
A separation, such as I have mentioned, between the--
men of letters and the courtly society, and again between
both of these and the common people, is destructive of all
national character. It is necessaiy that the different natural-
circumstances and situations of the various classes of man
kind, should, in a certain degree, work together, before we
can either attain or enjoy excellence in the productions of
mind. Where was there ever any work entitled to be
called truly perfect, in the formation of which the strength
and enthusiasm of youth have not laboured in companion
ship with the experience and maturity of manhood ? Even
the tenderness of womanly feeling must not be excluded
from exerting its due influence on the works of literature ;
because, when the character of a nation is once truly-
formed, that noble sense of delicacy which is peculiar to
the sex, may do much towards maintaining it in its
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 5
purity, and preventing it from overstepping the limits of
the beautiful. There are only two common principles on-
which every work of imagination must more or less pro
ceed, -first, On the expression of those feelings which are
common to all men of elevated thinking ; and, secondly, On
those patriotic feelings and associations peculiar to the
people in whose language it is composed, and on whom it
is to exert its nearest and most powerful influence.
That the formation of a national character requires a
combination of all those powers and faculties, which we
but too often keep distinct and isolated, is a truth which
has at least begun to be felt. The learning of the philoso
pher the acuteness and promptitude of the man of busi
ness the earnestness and enthusiasm of the solitary
artist that lightness and flexibility of mental impression,
and every fleeting delicacy which we can only find, and
learn to find, in the intercourse of society, all these are
now brought somewhat into contact with each other, or,
at least, do not stand aloof in such total separation as of
old.
But however much literature has of late gained in most-
countries, by becoming more national, more spirited, and
more connected with the affairs of life, the evil of which I
have complained is yet far from being altogether removed.
In Germany we may still, on many occasions, see literature
and active life stand separated like two different worlds,
having no influence on each other. If all the individual
varieties of mental exertion and mental production (which
we class under the common name of literature) be not in
a great measure lost to the world, at least they are far,
very far, from exerting their due influence on us, either as
individuals or as a nation. Let us only contemplate for a
moment the actual state of literature, but particularly
those causes which are most powerful in their influence on
literature itself, and on the estimation in which it is gene
rally held.
It seems to be considered as a common right to all poets
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and artists, to live only in the world of their own thoughts,
and to be quite unfitted for the world which other men
inhabit. Concerning the man of erudition, it is a maxim
in every mouth, that he is a being of no practical utility.
Every one mistrusts the skill of the orator, and imagines
that he has the power to bend the truth to his own pur
poses, with the design of deceiving and misleading us.
That philosophy is often more apt to lead an age wrong,
and betray it into the most unfortunate errors, than really
to enlighten and maintain it in the truth, is sufficiently
manifest from our own experience and the history of the
present age. Through the reciprocal animosities and com
plaints of philosophers themselves, it has become commonly
known, even among the uninitiated, how seldom they are
in good understanding with each other ; and from this
circumstance the opinion has gone abroad, that, in general,
philosophical tenets exert no practical influence on those
who maintain them, and that philosophers, like other
men, more frequently accommodate their opinions to their
desires, than their desires to their opinions. Yet nothing
can be more irrational than to endeavour to bring into
discredit the noblest struggle which it is in the power of
man to make, the struggle after knowledge in the investi
gation of truth merely on account of the general difficulty
of the undertaking, and the ill success or ill conduct of
particular inquirers. There is indeed no occasion to won
der, that men, perpetually occupied with the weighty affairs
of political and of active life, should consider the petty
disputes of writers as a mere spectacle of amusement,
neither very interesting nor very important. Even the
countless number of books must produce, in the greater
proportion of readers, such a feeling of satiety, that nothing
can appear more completely trifling, superfluous, and un
profitable, than a new book, adding one more to the heap
of authors whom they have already in their hands. In this
sketch, however, I have omitted to notice, that in my
opinion, writers of all sorts poets, learned men, and artists,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 7
are themselves the cause of a great share of that contempt
of literature which is so prevalent throughout the world :
for this reason, that they very seldom speak their mind
freely and decidedly on the subject. But even if all the
reproaches which are commonly cast on authors and their
works were, on the whole, just and well founded, will any
one deny that there are at least glorious exceptions to the
rule works both of learning and of genius, which, in
relation to the world in general, to their country, and to
the age, fulfil every wish that could be formed, and are in
all respects absolute and perfect ? And if this be so, why
are men so slow to recognise the absurdity of this general
neglect, which has no better logic to support it than that
which throws the blame of partial and temporary abuses
of literature on the essence of literature itself, a thing
every way so great and so important ? Or why do they
persist in keeping literary men in a state of separation
from the world at large a situation from which so
many of their errors and defects are, in all probability,
derived ?
But in order to discover with perfect clearness and pre
cision the importance of literature, both in its original
destination, and in the power which it certainly exerts on
the worth and welfare of nations, let us for a moment con
sider it under both of these aspects. And, in the first place,
let us regard the true nature and object, the wide extent,
and original dignity of literature. Under this name, then,-
I comprehend all those arts and sciences, and all those
mental exertions, which have human life, and man him
self, for their object ; but which, manifesting themselves in
no external effect, energise only in thought and speech,
and, without requiring any corporeal matter on which to
operate, display intellect as embodied in written language.
Under this are included first, the art of poetry, and the-
kindred art of narration, or history ; next, all those higher
exertions of pure reason and intellect which have human
life, and man himself, for their object, and which have
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
influence upon both ; and, last of all, eloquence and wit,
whenever these do not escape in the fleeting vehicle of
oral communication, but remain displayed in the more
substantial and lasting form of written productions. And
when I have enumerated these, I imagine I have com
prehended almost every thing which can enter into the
composition of the intellectual life of man. With the single
exception of reason and even reason can scarcely operate
without the intervention of language is there any thing
more important to man, more peculiar to him, or more
inseparable from his nature, than speech ? Nature, indeed,
could not have bestowed on us a gift more precious
than the human voice, which, possessing sounds for the
expression of eveiy feeling, and being capable of dis
tinctions as minute, and combinations as intricate, as
the most complex instrument of music, is thus enabled
to furnish materials so admirable for the formation of
artificial language. The greatest and most important
discovery of human ingenuity is writing; there is no
impiety in saying, that it was scarcely in the power of
the Deity to confer on man a more glorious present
than LANGUAGE, by the medium of which he himself has
been revealed to us, and which affords at once the
strongest bond of union, and the best instrument of
communication. So inseparable, indeed, are mind and
language, so identically one are thought and speech,
that although we must always hold reason to be the
great characteristic and peculiar attribute of man, yet
language also, when we regard its original object and
intrinsic dignity, is well entitled to be considered as a
component part of the intellectual structure of our being.
And although, in strict application and rigid expression,
thought and speech always are, and always must be,
regarded as two things metaphysically distinct, yet
there only can we find these two elements in disunion,
where one or both have been employed imperfectly or
amiss. Nay, such is the effect of the original union or^
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 9
identity, that, in their most extensive varieties of appli
cation, they can never be totally disunited, but must
always remain inseparable, and every where be exerted
in combination.
However greatly both of these high gifts, which are
so essentially the same these, the proudest distinc
tions of human nature, which have made man what he
is may be in many instances misdirected and abused ;
still our innate and indestructible sense of the original
dignity of speech and language is sufficiently manifest,
from the importance which we attach to them, in the
formation of all our particular judgments and opinions.
What influence the art of speaking has upon our judg
ment in the affairs of active life, and in all the relations
of society, what power the force of expression every
where exerts over our thoughts, it would be superfluous
to detail. The same considerations which govern us in
our judgment of individuals, determine us also in our
opinions concerning nations; and we are at once dis
posed to look upon that people as the most enlightened
and the most polished, which makes use of the most
clear, precise, appropriate, and agreeable medium of
expression : insomuch, that we not unfrequently allow
ourselves to be biassed even to weakness by the external
advantage of diction and utterance ; and pay more
attention to the vehicle than to the intrinsic value of
the thoughts themselves, or the moral character of those
from whom they proceed. Nor do we form our opinions
in this manner concerning those individuals alone, and
those people, who reside in our vicinity, or with whom
we are personally acquainted ; but we apply the same
standard to those who are removed to the greatest distance
from us, both in time and situation. Let us take, for
instance, the example of a people which we have always
been accustomed to class under the general epithet of
barbarian. So soon as some observing traveller makes
himself acquainted with their language, this unfavourable
10 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
opinion begins essentially to be changed. "Barbarians!"
he will say " they are indeed barbarians, for they are
unacquainted with our arts and our refinements, as well as
with those moral evils which are so often their conse
quences ; but it is at least impossible to deny that they
possess a sound and strong understanding, and a natural
acuteness, which we cannot observe without admiration.
Their brief replies are most touching ; and not unfrequently
display a native vein of wit. Their language is powerful
and expressive, and possesses the most marked clearness
and precision." Thus, in all situations, and in all affairs,
we are accustomed and compelled to reason from language
to intellect, and from the expression to the thought. But
these are only solitary examples in solitary cases.
The true excellence and importance of those arts and
sciences which exert and display themselves in writing,
may be seen, in a more general point of view, in the
great influence which they have exerted on the cha
racter and fate of nations, throughout the history of the
world. Here it is that literature appears in all its
reach and comprehension, as the epitome of all the
intellectual capabilities and progressive improvements
of mankind. If we look back to the history of our
species, and observe what circumstances have given to
any one nation the greatest advantages over others, we
shall not, I think, hesitate to admit, that there is
nothing so necessary to the whole improvement, or
rather to the whole intellectual existence of a nation,
as the possession of a plentiful store of those national-
recollections and associations, which are lost in a great
measure during the dark ages of infant society, but
which it forms the great object of the poetical art to
perpetuate and adorn. Such national recollections, the
noblest inheritance which a people can possess, bestow
an advantage which no other riches can supply ; for
when a people are exalted in their feelings, and ennobled
in their own estimation, by the consciousness that they
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 11
have been illustrious in ages that are gone by, that these
recollections have come down to them from a remote and
a heroic ancestry, in a word, that they have a national
poetry of their own, we are willing to acknowledge that
their pride is reasonable ; and they are raised in our eyes
by the same circumstance which gives them elevation in
their own. It is not from the extent of its undertakings
alone, or from the remarkable nature of the incidents of
its history, that we judge of the character and importance
of a nation. Many a nation, which has undergone in its
time all the varieties of human fortune, has sunk nameless
into oblivion, and left behind scarcely a trace of its ex
istence. Others, more fortunate, have transmitted to
posterity the memory of their influence, and the fame of
their conquests ; and yet we scarcely hold the narrative
to be worthy of our attention, unless the spirit of the
nation has been such as to communicate its interest to
those undertakings and those incidents which ^t best
occupy but too great a space in the history of the world.
Kemarkable actions, great events, and strange cata
strophes, are not of themselves sufficient to preserve the
admiration and determine the judgment of posterity.
These are only to be attained by a nation who have
given clear proofs that they were not insensible instru
ments in the hands of destiny, but were themselves
conscious of the greatness of their deeds and the singu
larity of their fortunes. This national consciousness, -
expressing itself in works of narrative and illustration,
is HISTORY. A people whose days of glory and victory
have been celebrated by the pen of a Livy, whose mis
fortunes and decline have been bequeathed to posterity
in the pages of a Tacitus, acquires a strange pre-emi
nence by the genius of her historians, and is no longer in
any danger of being classed with the vulgar multitude
of nations, which, occupying no place in the history of
human intellect, as soon as they have performed their
part of conquest or defeat on the stage of the world,
12 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
pass away from our view, and sink for ever into obli
vion. The poet, the painter, or the sculptor, though
endued with all the power and all the magic of his art,
though capable of reaching or embodying the boldest
flights of imagination ; the philosopher, though he may
be able to scrutinise the most hidden depth of human
thought, (rare as these attainments may be, and few
equals as he may find in the society with which he is
surrounded,) can, during the period of his own life, be
known and appreciated only by a few. But the sphere
of his influence extends with the progress of ages, and
his name shines brighter and broader as it grows old.
Compared with his, the fame of the legislator, among dis
tant nations, and the celebrity of new institutions, appears
uncertain and obscure ; while the glory of the conqueror,
after a few centuries have sunk into the all-whelming, all-
destroying abyss of time, is for ever fading in its lustre,
until at length it perhaps affords a subject of exultation
to some plodding antiquarian, that he should be able to
discover some glimmerings of a name which had once
challenged the reverence of the world. It may safely be
affirmed, that not only among the modems, but even in the
later ages of antiquity, the preservation and extension of
the fame of Greece were at least as much the work of
Homer and Plato, as of Solon and Alexander. The tribute
of attention which all the European nations so willingly
pay to the history of the Greeks, as the authors and
examples of European refinement, is in truth more rightly
due to the philosopher and the poet than to the conqueror
and the legislator. The influence which the works and-
the genius of Homer have of themselves produced on after
ages or rather, indeed, on the general character and im
provement of the human race has alone been far more
durable, and far more extensive, than the combined effects
of all the institutions of the Athenian, and all the heroic
deeds and transcendant victories of the Macedonian. In
truth, if Solon and Alexander still continue to be glorious
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 13
and immortal names, their glory and immortality are to
be traced rather to the influence which, by certain acci
dents, their genius has exerted on the intellectual character
and progress of the species, than to the intrinsic value of a
system of municipal laws altogether discrepant from our
own, or to the establishment of a few dynasties which have
long since passed away.
We must not, indeed, expect to find many poets or
many philosophers whose genius or whose celebrity have
in any degree entitled them to be compared with Homer
and Plato. But wherever one is to be found, he, like
them, is deservedly valued by posterity as a solitary light
in the midst of darkness, a sure index and a common
standard, by which we may form an estimate of the intel
lectual power and refinement of the age and nation which
gave him birth.
If to these high advantages of a national poetry and
national traditions, of a history abounding in subjects of
meditation, of refined art, and profound science, we add
the gifts of eloquence, of wit, and of a language of society
adapted to all the ends of elegant intercourse, but not
abused to the purposes of immorality ; we have filled up the
picture of a polished and intellectual people, and we have
a full view of what a perfect and comprehensive literature
ought to be.
Animated as I am by the wish to represent literature in
all its importance, and in all the influence which it exerts
on the affairs of mankind, I am far from being insensible
to the difficulties of the task which I have undertaken.
I am well aware that, on one hand, from my desire to be
brief and comprehensive, I may be in danger of passing
over many things in a cursory, and perhaps an incidental
manner, which might well deserve the fullest explanation
and detail ; while, on the other hand, from my anxiety to
establish the justice of my opinions by a reference to his
torical facts, I may be apt to dwell on particular points to
a length which, by those who have not made literature the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
great business of their lives, may be esteemed useless and
unprofitable. I am, however, encouraged to proceed in my
attempt by the long intimacy in which I have lived with
many departments of literature. The ground, indeed, is so
rich and so extensive, that no one who is at all acquainted
with its nature can be in much danger of believing himself
to have exhausted it. But my familiarity with a subject
which has occupied almost the whole of my life, may per
haps be no inadequate preparation for giving a comprehen
sive sketch of literature as a whole. It should at least
enable me to distinguish, with some precision, between
what is useful only as a step to something further, and
what possesses in itself the importance of an end ; as well
as between those results whose value can be estimated
only by the learned, and those which possess qualities cal
culated to render them interesting in the eyes of the world
at large.
The whole of our mental refinement is in so great a
degree derived from that of the ancients, that it would be
extremely difiicult to treat of literature in any way, with
out bestowing at least a few introductory observations on-
the writers of Greece and Rome. It would, above all
things, be impossible to draw a picture of the progress of
literature in general, or to form any estimate of the rela
tive merits of the works which have appeared in our own
time, without having previously described, in some sort,
the peculiar excellencies of the great masterpieces of
antiquity. The history of Greece, beyond that of any
other country, affords the most striking illustration of
the strength and beauty to which literature may attain,
when its progress is fostered by the public care of an
ingenious and lively people ; and, in a different period of
the same eventful story, the poisonous influence and de
structive consequences of a sophistical eloquence, are dis
played with a power and a clearness for which we should
elsewhere seek in vain.
The view which I propose to take of antiquity shall, how-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 15
ever, be short and compressed, however much I might be
tempted to extend my account of the literature of nations
to whom we are indebted for so large a share of our mental
cultivation, and from whom we have derived so rich a legacy
of models, in every department both of letters and of art.
In the same brief manner I shall notice what the literature
of Europe has derived from the oriental nations, whether in
the more remote ages of antiquity, or during the flourishing
period of Greece and Rome, or in consequence of the inti
mate connexions which have subsisted between Europe and
Asia in modern times. It is true that, were I to write in
a manner strictly chronological, the ancient monuments of
Asiatic and Egyptian genius would come to be considered
before those of the Greeks. But as it is my principal object
to give a historical view of our European refinement, and
to represent literature as influencing the affairs of active
life, I apprehend I shall act more suitably to my design, if
I postpone my account of those matters in which we have
been indebted to the genius of the East, till I come to treat
of that period in our history when these first began to
have a considerable share in the formation of the intellec
tual character of the Europeans. I shall then with parti
cular attention review the antiquities of our northern
ancestors, and the mythology of the Goths, together with
the poetry and fiction of chivalry which are derived from
these sources. The influence of the Crusades, and the
effects of the intercourse which at that period took place
between the Franks and the Saracenic nations, will come
next to be considered. In the remaining lectures, I shall
describe the period which has elapsed since the revival of
letters, and conclude with a full and particular review of
the literature of the eighteenth century.
In the mean time, should I be so fortunate, while I am
occupied with the history of ancient literature, as to show
some things which are well known, and have been often
treated by preceding writers, in a new light and a new con
nexion, I hope I shall have the greater chance of meeting
16 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
with a patient hearing, when, in the progress of my labours,
I shall sometimes venture to try the productions of later
ages, and more particularly those of our own times, by the
test of principles which are, in my opinion, well entitled to
respect and admiration, although they may not unfrequently
appear to be totally in opposition to the acknowledged
canons of ancient criticism.
IN addition to the reasons which I have already assigned
for beginning my account of literature in general with a
description of that of the Greeks, I may notice, that they--
are the only people who can be said to have, in almost
every respect, created their own literature ; and the excel
lence of whose attainments stands almost entirely uncon
nected with the previous cultivation of any other nations.
This is w^hat we can by no means assert either of the Roman
literature, or of that of the modern nations of Europe. It
is indeed true, according to their own testimony, that the
Greeks derived their alphabet from the Phcenicians ; and
the first principles of architecture and mathematical sci
ences, as well as many detached ideas of their philosophers,
and many of the useful arts of life, from the Egyptians or
the early inhabitants of Asia. Their oldest traditions and
poems, moreover, have many points of resemblance to the
most ancient remains of the Asiatic nations. But all this
amounts to nothing more than a few scattered hints or
mutilated recollections ; and may, indeed, be all referred
to the common origin of mankind, and the necessary influ
ence of that district of the world in which the mental im
provement of our species was first considered as an object
of general concern. Whatever the Greeks learned or bor
rowed from others, by the skill with which they improved,
and the purposes to which they applied it, became thence
forth altogether their own. If they were indebted to those
who had gone before them for solitary ideas, and uncon-
HISTOEY OF LITERATURE. 17
nected hints, the great whole of their intellectual refinement
was unquestionably the work of their own genius. The
Romans, on the contrary, and the modern Europeans, set
out with the possession of a complete body of literature, and
examples of high cultivation, derived from nations more
ancient than themselves: the Romans receiving this rich
legacy from the Greeks ; and the modern Europeans being
the common heirs of both of these peoples, as well as of
much of the learning and refinement of the Orientals,
possessions which, till within the two last centuries, they
can scarcely be said either to have appropriated to their own
uses, or rendered more valuable by the additions of their
own ingenuity.
There are three great incidents which divide the whole-
of the truly illustrious period of Greek history into as many
different parts, and which also form three epochs in the his
tory of the mental improvement of our species : the Persian
war, in the first place, when the Greeks contended for the
maintenance of their political freedom and independence, with
united strength and success so glorious, against the over
whelming power of Asia ; the Peloponnesian war, in the
second place, a civil war between Athens on the one hand,
and the Doric states on the other, which raged throughout
the whole of their country for the space of twenty-seven
years ; in the course of which the arms of kindred tribes
were turned against each other, and the political power of
Greece was destroyed by the valour of her own children ;
and last of all, the expedition of Alexander, by means of
which the spirit and the empire of Greece were extended
over a great part of Asia, like the scattering of a mingled
seed, destined to give birth in after ages to a rich harvest
both of evil and of good. A new Graeco- Asiatic taste and
turn of thinking were produced at this period, which formed
a bond of connexion more close than had ever before
united Europe and Asia; whose influence, indeed, has
never ceased, and which at this moment exerts no incon-
18 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
siderable power over those who are scarcely aware of its
existence.
Had the Greeks been unsuccessful in the war which they
waged in defence of their liberty against the Persians, and
had their country become at last a province of the great
empire of Xerxes, their place in the history of the human
mind must have been widely different from that which they
at present hold. They must have remained stationary
where the Persians found them ; or, it is probable, they
might have declined from the eminence to which they had
already attained. It is true that, to a certain degree, they
must always have remained an intellectual, and even a re
fined people. Like other cultivated nations which fell under
the power of Persia the Egyptians, for instance, the Jews,
or the Phoenicians they would have retained their language
and their authors, and in part, it may be, their customs and
their laws ; for the government of Persia was, upon the
whole, singularly mild, and by far the noblest and the best
of all the universal empires which the world has ever seen.
But the spirit of man never reaches, without freedom, that-"
high tone to which it attained during the glorious struggle
of the Greeks.
The whole happy period of the political history of Greece,
as well as all the glories of her literature, occupy no greater
space than the three hundred years which intervened be
tween Solon and Alexander.
With Solon commences a new epoch even in the litera
ture of Greece. Not only does the perfecting of lyric and
the beginning of dramatic poetry fall within this period ;
it also gave birth to a crowd of didactic poets, who en
lightened the opening curiosity of the public mind, and
displayed, in all the beauty of verse, the fitness of moral
laws, and the physical structure of the universe. It was
then, too, that Herodotus carried at once to perfection the
art of writing in prose. The freedom of spirit which Solon
introduced and rendered durable, and the liberal education
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. ] 9
which the whole system of his laws rendered indispensably
necessary to the noble and wealthy citizens of Athens, soon
rendered the state which had been enlightened by his legis
lation, a central point of illumination to all the republics of
Greece.
This happy period ended with Alexander the Great.
Demosthenes was bora only one year later than the too
successful conqueror who waged the last war against the
independence of his country, and he was the last great
writer whose works were addressed to the Greeks as a
nation. The Greeks continued, indeed, long afterwards,
to be a polished and a literary people. In Eg}-pt, under
the Ptolemies, they became a more learned and a more
philosophical people than they had ever been in the days
of their ancient glory at home ; but they were no longer
a nation ; and with their freedom, their whole strength of-
feeling, and the peculiar tone of their spirit, were for ever
lost.
Within so short a space, then, lies all that vast and
manifold creation of productions, which, even to this hour,
render Greece the object of universal wonder and reverence ;
a great spectacle, and well-deserving of thought ; a period
fruitful beyond measure both of evil and of good, and
thereby doubly instructive. The whole history of the
world can show but one more such spectacle of the real
development of awakened intellect ; but that we shall have
full leisure to consider in the sequel.
With Solon the proper epoch of Grecian literature
begins. Before his time the Greeks possessed no more
than commonly falls to the share of every people who are
blessed with a favourable corporeal organisation, while
they are animated with the fresh impulse of a youthful
society traditions, which hold the place of histories, and
songs and poems, which are repeated and remembered so
as to serve instead of books. Such songs, calculated to
arouse national feelings, and to give animation in the
hour of battle; or to be sung at the festivals of their
20 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
religion ; or to perpetuate the joys of a successful, or the
rage and hatred of a slighted lover, or the tears which the
poet has consecrated to the memory of his departed mis
tress all these were possessed by the Greeks, in the
utmost variety, from the most early period of their exist
ence as a nation. Still more valuable are those songs of
narrative, which express, not the feelings that seize and
overpower an individual poet, but embody the recollection
and the feelings of the people the faint memory of an
almost fabulous antiquity the achievements of heroes
and of gods the origin of a nation and the creation of
the world. But even these are to be found in abundance
among other nations, as well as among the Greeks. There
is only one production, the high pre-eminence of which
gives to the early ages of the Greeks a decided superiority
over those of every other people the Homeric poems,
the still astonishing works of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
These, indeed, are the work of a preceding age ; but it is
sufficiently evident, from the language, the contents, and,
above all, from the spirit of these poems, that they were
designed and composed within a short time (probably within
a century) of the age of Solon. In his time, at all events,
and partly by means of his personal exertions, they were
first rescued from the precariousness and forgetfulness of
oral recitation, arranged in the order in which we see them,
and rendered, as they have ever since continued to be, the
objects of universal attention and regard.
Solon and his successors in the government of Athens,
Peisistratus and the Peisistratidae, over and above the de
light which they must have derived from the compositions
themselves, were probably influenced by views of a nature
purely political, to interest themselves in the preservation
of the Homeric poems. About this period that is, six
hundred years before Christ the independence of the
Greeks of Asia Minor was much threatened, not indeed as
yet by the power of Persia, but by that of the Lydian
monarchs, whose kingdom was soon after swallowed up in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 21
the immense empire of Cyrus. As soon, however, as that
conqueror had overcome Cro3sus, and extended his power
over the Lesser Asia, no clear-sighted patriot could any
longer conceal from himself the great danger which was
impendent over Greece. The greater part of the Grecian
states, indeed, seem to have remained long in their security,
without foreseeing the storm which was so near them, and
which burst with such fury on their continent during the
reigns of Darius and of Xerxes. But the danger must have
been soon and thoroughly perceived by Athens, linked as
she was in the closest intimacy with the Asiatic Greeks, not
only by all the ties of a flourishing commerce, but also by
the common origin of their Ionic race. The revival of~
these old songs, which relate how Grecian heroes warred
with united strength against Asia, and laid siege to the
metropolis of Priam, occurred at least at a very favourable
period to nourish in the Greeks the pride of heroic feelings,
and excite them to like deeds in the cause of their inde
pendence.
Whether any such event as the Trojan war ever in
reality took place, we have no positive means of deciding.
The dynasty of Agamemnon and the AtreidaB, however, falls
almost within the limits of history. Neither is it at all
unlikely that much intercourse subsisted, at a very early
period, between the Greek peninsula and Asia Minor;
for the inhabitants of the two countries were kindred
peoples, speaking nearly the same language, and Pelops,
from whom the peninsula itself derived its name, was a
native of Asia. That the carrying away of a single prin
cess should have been the cause of a universal and long-
protracted war, is at least abundantly consistent with the
spirit of the heroic times, and forcibly recalls to our recol
lection a parallel period in the history of Christendom,
and the chivalry of the middle ages. However much of
fable and allegory may have been weaved into the story of
Helen and Troy, that many great recollections of the remote
ages were in some manner connected with the local situation
22 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of Troy itself, is manifest from the graves of heroes,
the earthen tumuli, which are still visible on that part of
the coast. That these old Greek mounds or monuments,
which were, according to universal tradition, pointed out as
the graves of Achilles and Patroclus over one of which
Alexander wept, envying the fate of the hero who had
found a Homer to celebrate him that these were in
existence in the time of the poet himself, is, I think, ap
parent from many passages of the Iliad. It was reserved
for the impious, or at least the foolish, curiosity of our--
own age, to ransack these tombs, and violate the sacred
repose of the ashes and arms of heroes, which were found
still to exist within their recesses. But all these are
matters of no importance to the subject of which I am at
present treating; for although the Trojan war had been
altogether the creation of the poet s fancy, that circum
stance could have had little influence, cither on the object
which Solon and Peisistratus had in view, or on the spirit
of patriotism which was excited by the revival of the
Homeric poems. The story was at all events universally
believed, and listened to as an incident of true and authentic-"
history.
To the Greeks, accordingly, of every age, these poems
possessed a near and a national interest of the most
lively and touching character ; while to us their principal
attraction consists in the more universal charm of beautiful
narration, and in the lofty representations which they
unfold of the heroic life. For here there prevails not any
peculiar mode of thinking, or system of prejudices, adapted
to live only within a limited period, or exclusively to
celebrate the fame and pre-eminence of some particular
race defects which are so apparent, both in the old songs
of the Arabians, and in the poems of Ossian. There
breathes throughout these poems a freer spirit, a sensibility-
more open, more pure, and more universal alive to every
feeling which can make an impression on our nature,
and extending to every circumstance and condition of the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 23
great family of man. A whole world is laid open to our
view in the utmost beauty and clearness a rich, a living,
and an ever-moving picture. The two heroic personages
of Achilles and Ulysses, which occupy the first places in
this new state of existence, embody the whole of a set
of universal ideas and characters which arc to be found in
almost all the traditions of heroic ages, although nowhere
else so happily unfolded or delineated with so masterly
a hand. Achilles, a youthful hero, who, in the fulness of
his victorious strength and beauty, exhausts all the glories
of the fleeting life of man, but is doomed to an early death
and a tragical destiny, is the first and the most lofty of
these characters ; and a character of the same species is to
be found in numberless poems of the heroic age, but per
haps nowhere, if we except the writers of Greece, so well
developed as in the sagas of our northern ancestors. Even
among the most lively nations, the traditions and recol
lections of the heroic times are invested with a half mourn
ful and melancholy feeling a spirit of sorrow, sometimes
elegiac, more frequently tragical which speaks at once to
our bosoms from the inmost soul of the poetry in which
they are embodied : whether it be that the idea of a long-
vanished age of freedom, greatness, and heroism, stamps,
of necessity, such an impression on those who are accus
tomed to live among the narrow and limited institutions
of after times ; or whether it be not rather, that poets have
chosen to express only in compositions of a certain sort,
and in relation to certain periods, those feelings of distant
reverence and self-abasement with which it is natural to
us at all times to reflect on the happiness and simplicity
of ages that have long passed away. In Ulysses we have
displayed another and a less elevated form of the heroic
life, but one scarcely less fertile in subjects for poetry, or
less interesting to the curiosity of posterity. This is the
voyaging and wandering hero, whose experience and acute-
ness are equal to his valour ; who is alike prepared to suffer
with patience every hardship, and to plunge with boldness
24 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
into every adventure ; and who thus affords the most un
limited scope for the poetical imagination, by giving the
opportunity of introducing and adorning whatever of
wonderful or of rare is supposed, during the infancy of
geography, by the simple people of early societies, to belong
to ages and places with which they are personally unac
quainted. The Homeric works are equalled, or perhaps
surpassed, in awful strength and depth of feeling, by
the poetry of the north ; in audacity, in splendour, and
in pomp, by that of the oriental nations. Their peculiar
excellence lies in the intuitive perception of truth, the
accuracy of description, and the great clearness of under
standing, which are united in them, in a manner so unique,
with all the simplicity of childhood, and all the richness of
an unrivalled imagination. In them we find a mode of
composition so full that it often becomes prolix, and yet
we are never weary of it, so matchless is the charm of the
language, and so airy the lightness of the narrative ; an
almost dramatic development of characters and passions, of
speeches and replies ; and an almost historical fidelity in the
description of incidents the most minute. It is perhaps to
this last peculiarity, which distinguishes Homer so much,
even among the poets of his own country, that he is indebt
ed for the name by which he is known to us. For Homeros
signifies, in Greek, a witness or voucher, and this name has
probably been given to him on account of his truth
such truth, I mean, as it was in the power of a poet, espe
cially a poet who celebrates heroic ages, to possess. To us
he is indeed a Homer a faithful voucher, an unfalsifying
witness, of the true shape and fashion of the heroic life.
The other explanation of the word Homeros, " a blind
man," is pointed out in the oft-repeated and vulgar his
tory which has come down to us of the life of a poet con
cerning whom we know absolutely nothing ; and is, without
doubt, altogether to be despised. In the poetry of Milton,
even without the express assertion of the poet himself, we
can discover many marks that he saw only with the inter-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 25
nal eye of the mind, but was deprived of the quickening
and cheering influence of the light of day. The poetry of
Ossian is clothed, in like manner, with a melancholy
twilight, and seems to be wrapped, as it were, in an ever
lasting cloud. It is easy to perceive that the poet himself
was in a similar condition. But he who can conceive that
the Iliad and the Odyssey, the most clear and luminous of
ancient poems, were composed by one deprived of his sight,
must, at least in some degree, close his own eyes, before he
can resist the evidence of so many thousand circumstances
which testify so incontrovertibly the reverse.
In whatever way, and in whatever century, the Homeric
poems might be created and fashioned, they place before
us a time when the heroic age was on the decline, or had
perhaps already gone by. For there are two different
worlds, which both exist together in the compositions of
Homer : the world of marvels and tradition which still,
however, appears to be near and lively before the eyes of
the poet ; and the living circumstances and present con
cerns of the world which produced the poet himself. This
commingling of the present and the past, (by which the
first is adorned, and the second illustrated,) lends, in a pre
eminent degree, to the Homeric poems, that charm which
is so peculiarly their characteristic. Of old the whole of
Greece was ruled by kings who claimed descent from the
heroic races. This is still the case in the world of Homer.
Very soon, however, after his time, the regal form of
government was entirely laid aside, and every people
which had power enough to be independent, erected itself
into a little republic. This change in the government of
states, and the condition of their citizens, must have had a
tendency to render the relations of society every day more
and more prosaic. The old heroic tales must have, by
degrees, become foreign to the feelings of the people ; and
there can be little doubt that this universal revolution
of governments must have mainly contributed towards
26 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
bringing Homer into that sort of oblivion, out of which ho
was first recalled by the efforts of Solon and Peisistratus.
The Homeric poems are of so much importance in the
literature both of Greece and of all Europe, and are in so
great a degree the fountain-heads from which all the refine
ment of the ancients was derived, that I could not resist
the temptation of detaining you at least a few moments in
considering their character. It is, indeed, at all times my
wish to confine myself to inventors ; and I shall not scruple
to pass, with the utmost rapidity, over whole centuries of
imitation. I pass over the whole period which intervened
between Solon and the Persian war. This period was,
indeed, chiefly occupied by weak imitations of Homer, or
by attempts towards new exertions of intellect, and new
species of writing, which reached not, till long afterwards,
the full and perfect development of maturity. Besides,
the works of the greater part of the poets and other authors
of this period have entirely perished ; and they are known
to us only by scattered fragments, and the criticisms of their
successors.
The Persian war itself, which forms, in a political point
of view, the most remarkable epoch in the history of Greece,
is illustrious, even when considered in regard to literature ;
and was distinguished by many great poets and authors,
whose writings are still in our hands. Pindar, who was
honoured by the Greeks as without exception the most
sublime of all their poets, survived the conclusion of this
war ; during which his conduct gave rise to the suspicion
that his dispositions were not patriotic, but favourable to
the interests of the invaders. ^Eschylus, the oldest of the
great tragedians of Greece, was himself a soldier, and
fought with heroism in many of those glorious battles one
of which he has celebrated by perhaps the most daring
exertion of his dramatic genius. Herodotus, somewhat
younger, was born only a few years before Xerxes under
took his prodigious enterprise against the Greeks ; and
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 27
when he read, before assembled Greece, the books of his
history, (which do much honour even to such a contest as
they record,) the great events which occupy his narrative
were yet fresh in the proud recollection of his victorious
countrymen.
The reproach which has been cast upon the character of
Pindar is easily accounted for, by the aversion so frequently
apparent in his writings, for that predominance of the
democratic principle which gave cause in his time to so
many violent commotions throughout Greece, and which
occasioned in the end consequences yet more destructive ;
as well as by the evident partiality which he shows for the
regal form of government, and that influence of the nobility
which remained always so powerful among the Doric states.
Monarchy and aristocracy, however, it is fair to observe, do
not appear among any other people of antiquity in a light
at once so mild and so illustrious as in the empire of
Persia a government which, in whatever way its power
might be abused by particular princes, was on the whole
founded on the basis of elevation of sentiment and purity
of manners.
As a Doric writer, Pindar is doubly valuable to us ; for
he is the sole representative of the many that are lost.
What we call Greek literature, and possess under that name
in the great writers who have come down to us, is in truth
only the literature of Ionia and Athens, and, if we take
in the later times, of Alexandria. But at the same time
when poetry, history, and philosophy were flourishing in
Athens and the Ionian states, the Doric people (a race of
Greeks so different from the lonians in manners and
government, in language and in modes of thinking) pos
sessed a literature distinct and peculiar to themselves, the
existence of which is almost the only fact with respect to it
of which we can be said to be assured ; poets of every
kind ; a peculiar form of drama ; and, after the time of
Pythagoras, philosophers also, and other writers. Although
all these have perished, we have still Pindar ; and from him
28 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
we may extract at least some general idea of Doric man
ners, and, if we make due allowances for the ornaments and
partialities of the poet, of Doric life.
Nothing can be more foreign to the style of Pindar than
the elaborate wildness of imagination, and the artificial
obscurity, which characterise the modern imitations of this
great poet, and have from them received the name of Pin
daric. If there be any obscurity in his own writings, it
arises from the frequent allusions which he makes to things
which are indeed foreign to us, but which were familiar
and present to those for whom he wrote. While he is
celebrating the victor in some games, it is not unnatural
for him to introduce the praise of that heroic race from
which he is descended or of the city in which he was
born or of the deity in whose honour the games were
held ; and this gives occasion, without doubt, to some
abruptness of transition. In truth, these festival songs can
scarcely be called lyric poems ; at least they bear little
resemblance to what we commonly understand by that
name. They are heroic or epic poems composed in cele
bration of particular events, which were not merely sung,
but accompanied with music and dancing, and brought
forward in a manner somewhat dramatic. The peculiar
characteristics of Pindar are, the lofty beauty and musical
softness of his language, and his fondness of considering
eveiy subject in the most dignified point of view of which
it is susceptible. The graceful repose of high-born lords,
who, in peaceful times, and surrounded by happy depen-
dlants, passed a careless life in chivalric pastimes and con
tests ; or listened, among the society of congenial friends,
to the songs of illustrious poets, and the celebration of their
heroic ancestors : these are the subjects which Pindar has
treated with unrivalled excellence ; and such is the mode of
life which he ascribes, not to his beloved victors alone, and
the Doric nobles, but to the gods themselves in Olympus,
and to those whose virtues shall entitle them to participate
in the glories of an eternal life.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 29
The next great poet, JEschylus, was one of another kind,
and animated with a spirit altogether different. The war
like, bold, and lofty sentiments of a soldier inflamed with
the love of freedom, which are ever bursting forth in his
poetry, place us at once within the circle of that feeling
which might well be the predominant one of haughty
Athens during the time of the great struggle which she so
gloriously maintained. As a poet, he appears only in that
form which is the first in dignity, and the most peculiar to
Greece the great form of tragedy which he himself first
fashioned and unfolded, although perhaps he never carried
it to the fulness of its perfection. His poetry is pre-emi
nently powerful in the expression of the terrible and tragic
passions. The depth of poetic feeling is in him accompanied
with the intense earnestness of philosophic thought. A
philosopher, well may he be called ; and the reproach
which has been thrown against him that he had revealed
in his poems the mysteries, or the concealed doctrines of
the secret society of Eleusis is a proof how much truth, in
all things had been the object of his most earnest inquiries.
In his spirit, the whole mythology of the Greeks assumed
a new, a peculiar, a characteristic appearance. He has not
been contented with the representation of individual tragi
cal events : Throughout all his works there prevails an
universal and perpetual recurrence to a whole world ot
tragedy. The subjection of the old gods and Titans and
the history of that lofty race being subdued and enslaved
by a meaner and less worthy generation these are the
great points to which almost all his narrations and all his
catastrophes may be referred. The original dignity and
greatness of nature and of man, and the daily declension of
both into weakness and worthlessness, is another of his
themes. Yet in the midst of the rains and fragments of a
perishing world, he delights to astonish us now and then
with a view of that old gigantic strength the spirit of
which seems to be embodied in his Prometheus ever bold
and ever free chained and tortured, yet invincible within.
30 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
It is impossible to deny to this representation the merit of a
moral sublimity, which is more glorious than any merely
poetical beauty of which tragedy can be the vehicle.
Herodotus, from whom we have our account of the
Persian war, has been called the father of history. It is
true that this work pretends to be nothing more than a
chronicle a candid and open narration of all the inci
dents which occurred in the neighbourhood, and made the
greatest impression on the mind of the narrator ; with
which he has, moreover, interwoven whatever he knew
from any other source, either of the world or of its history ;
and into which he has introduced, by way of episode, a
description of his travels, including all the observations
which he had made on the manners and customs of foreign
countries, little known to the Greeks in general, but care
fully visited and studied by himself. The number of his
episodes, and the free and poetical arrangement which he
has followed, have induced many critics to rank his work
among the epic narrations of heroic actions. But, in reality,
the truth, the simplicity, the clearness, the flexibility,
and the unsought pathos which characterise Herodotus,
are exactly the qualities which render an historical work
perfect in its kind, and which, but for their rarity, we
should all be ready to consider as the most indispensably
necessary in that species of composition. He is the Homer--
of history.
To these three great authors whom I have attempted to
describe, succeeded, although at some little distance of time,
others of a rank equally exalted. The first is Sophocles.
In every species of intellectual development (as in the^-
visible gradations of the physical world) there is one short
period of complete bloom one highest point of fulness and
perfection which is manifested, at the moment of its
existence, by the beauty and the faultlessness of the form
and the language in which it is embodied. This point, not
in the art of composing tragedies alone, but in the whole
poetry and mental refinement of the Greeks, is the period
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 31
of Sophocles. In him we find an overflowing fulness of
that indescribable charm of which we can perceive only
rare specimens in the writings of most other poets and
writers but which, whenever we do find it, we at once,
by intuition as it were, recognise to be the symbol of per
fection, whether it makes its appearance in the structure of
thought or the style of language. Through the transparent -
beauty of his works, we can perceive the internal harmony
and beauty of his soul. It is worthy of remark, that in
most of the old poets many traces are to be found of a
peculiar knowledge, and just conceptions, of the nature and
attributes of the Deity. Or if it be impossible that they
had really these conceptions, (which seems to follow of
necessity from what we know respecting the age in which
they lived,) it were at least the height of injustice to deny,
that the greatest and the best of them have anticipated,
to a wonderful degree, those deep feelings of awe and
reverence with which we, born in happier days, contem
plate the revealed character of God. In none of the most
ancient poets does this appear with more clearness and
brilliancy than in Sophocles. In all countries it has been-
the fate and progress of poetry to begin with the wonderful
and the sublime with the mysterious majesty of the gods,
and the elevated character of the heroic times ; and ever
afterwards to descend lower and lower from this lofty flight
to approach nearer and nearer to the earth till at last it
sinks, never to rise again, into the common life and citizen
ship of ordinary men. The region most favourable for
poetry is that which lies in the middle, between these two
extremes : while the magnanimity of the heroic time still
appears natural and unsought, and while our conceptions of
Deity, although still fresh and animated, do not stalk before
us in the gigantic forms of supernatural strength and terror,
but have assumed the milder and more touching character
of human tenderness, serenity, and repose. This is the
peculiar region and delight of Sophocles. With regard to
the artificial structure of Greek tragedy which was by him
32 HISTOKY OF LITERATURE.
brought to its perfection, I shall have many opportunities of
considering that subject in the sequel ; and then more par
ticularly, when I shall have to call your attention to the
successful or abortive attempts of other nations to imitate,
or naturalise among themselves, this great form of the art
of poetry among the Greeks.
Euripides was the successor of Sophocles in his art, but
not in his sentiments, which are indeed those of an alto
gether different generation. He was at least as much an
orator as a poet ; and accordingly as men judge favour
ably or unfavourably of him, is commonly styled either a
philosopher, or a sophist. But in the school of sophistry
he certainly was formed, and from it he has unquestionably
borrowed many ornaments of a nature altogether foreign
from that of poetry : a circumstance which is often dwelt
upon with peculiar felicity by his unmerciful enemy and
persecutor, Aristophanes. But before I proceed to describe,
in a few words, this writer, and some others of the declining
age of Greece, it is necessary that I should first explain,
in a brief and general manner, by what steps, about the
commencement of the civil wars and political corruptions
of the country, the race of sophists succeeded in acquiring
that wide, destructive, and subduing influence over the
intellectual character of Greece, which they maintained
without opposition till Socrates rose up against them ; who,
having brought back the perverted taste of the Athenians,
as far as it was possible, from the errors of these pernicious
teachers, became the founder of that nobler school out of
which Plato proceeded.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE II.
THE LATER LITERATURE OF THE GREEKS THEIR SOPHISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS
THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE.
IN my first lecture I endeavoured, by a rapid sketch,
to recall to your recollection the brilliant spectacle of
Greek genius, as it flourished for a few years in all its
power and pre-eminence. I must now set before you the
darker side of the picture, and proceed to contemplate the
effects of that principle of decay, whose operation is des ~
tined to follow so closely and so certainly after every period
distinguished by the greatness of its inventions and the
beauties of its productions and which here also, when
manners had become impure, and governments corrupted
by means of a false and deceitful sophistry, succeeded in
accomplishing the utter ruin of art and genius among the
Greeks.
The first great writer who sets before us a view of this
decline and corruption of Greece, as manifested in the inci
dents of her political history, is Thucydides. By the lofti
ness of his style, and the depth of his reflections, this
author has secured to himself a place among the very first
writers of Greece. His history is the masterpiece of ener
getic representation ; such was the judgment of all anti
quity concerning it ; and on that account it was commonly
said to be, not indeed a poetical, but a historical dramav-
And, truly, well might the history of that great civil war,
which occasioned the decline, and ended in the ruin of his
once flourishing, happy, and powerful country, appear to
the historian himself as possessing all the life and interest
of a fearful tragedy. The events which he has recorded
are indeed invested, to our eyes, with an interest yet more
mighty; for to them we can now trace consequences which
c
|U HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
in his time could not have been apparent, in them we
perceive the causes of the decay and downfall, not of
Athens only, but of universal Greece. Thucydides both
framed and perfected that form of historical writing which
is peculiar to the Greeks. The characteristics of his method
of composing history consist, first, in the interweaving of
political speeches, framed in a manner at once clear and
elaborate which introduce us into the secret motives and
councils by which the political events of the period were
governed enable us to survey every particular incident
exactly from that point of view in which it was regarded
by each of the most opposite parties and lay open the
most hidden wiles of contending statesmen, with an acumen
superior to what was ever exerted by the craftiest of them
all ; secondly, in an almost poetical, minute, energetic, and
lively representation of battles, and those other external
incidents which occupy but too great a space in the his
tory of human affairs ; and lastly, in the accumulation of
all those highest excellencies of style, which can be em
bodied in the richest, most ornamented, and most energetic
prose.
The similarity of their political institutions, and the
equal weight and influence which was, under their form
of government, attached to popular oratory, enabled the
Romans to naturalise among themselves this particular
species of writing with greater ease, and a success more
perfect, than any other department of the literature of the
Greeks. With us modern Europeans the case is widely
different; our attempts towards imitation of the Greek
historians have been in general lamentably unsuccessful.
The relations of society among us are totally of another
sort from what they were in the republics of antiquity;
and oratory exerts no longer over mankind that imperative
and often destructive influence which it formerly possessed.
Above all, such is the effect of that immense storehouse of
facts which we have it in our power to review in the col
lected history of the world, that we have lost all taste for
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. OD
minute and poetical descriptions of battles, sieges, and
other external incidents ; we desire instead of these, short
and precise sketches which carry us without any circum
locution to the point in view, and explain, in simple nar
rative, events as they really happened, with the true causes
which brought them about. Herodotus, distinguished as
he is by unadorned simplicity and beautiful clearness, pos-
sesses a much greater share of this expressive brevity, and
coincides much more nearly with our ideas of excellence
or at least with the scope of our own attempts in histo
rical composition, than Thucydides. He, accordingly, is
the model of modern historians, and indeed, he was the
model of Thucydides himself, who, however in some re
spects he may fall short of perfection, holds unquestion
ably the first place among the historians of Greece. His
want of perfection lies neither in the arrangement of his
history as a whole, nor in the connexion of its parts, for
these are throughout dignified and exquisite or, as was ex
pressed in the universal encomium of antiquity, well worthy
of a great historical tragedy but merely in his style,
which is somewhat massive and hard, and not unfrequently
obscure. Whether it be that the last touch of the master s
hand was denied, not to the latter part alone and the con
clusion, but (as it has been conjectured by a critic of great
discernment) to the general review and polishing of the
whole work; or whether it be, that it was impossible, for
one who composed before the expiration of the age in
which the art of writing in prose was first created and
fashioned (more particularly for one who made use of a
style so ambitious as that which was attempted by this
prince of historians) to reach at once the masterly emi
nence to which he has attained, without leaving behind
him some traces of the laborious straining and toil which
must have preceded the accomplishment of his daring under
taking ; or whether it might not be that Thucydides found
a style such as he has employed sublime and masterly,-
yet rough, and in some measure repulsive the most suitable
36 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
vehicle for the dark contents of his tragic story the fear
ful catastrophes, the decay and the ruin of his country
insomuch that he disdained to record and lament them in
the language of elegance, but considered himself throughout
the progress of his work (what he has powerfull y declared
himself in its commencement), as one framing a history
destined to be a possession unto eternity*
While Thucydides has thus set before our eyes, and ex
plained, in a general manner, the causes and progress of
internal corruption in all the states and societies of Greece ;
Aristophanes, on the other hand, has painted the deep de
cline of manners, not only in Athens, but throughout all
the republics of Greece, in a manner and with a power of
which those who are unacquainted with him can form no
conception, but the place of which could not have been
supplied to us by any other poetical work, or by any monu
ment whatever of antiquity. In this point of view, when
considered as a document of the history of ancient manners,
the value of his works is now universally recognised.
If we would judge of Aristophanes as a writer and a,v
a poet, we must transplant ourselves freely and entirely
into the age in which he lived. In the modern ages of > "
Europe it has often been made the subject of reproach
against particular nations or periods, that literature in
general, but principally the poets and their works, have too
-exclusively endeavoured to regulate themselves according
to the rules of polished society, and, above all, the preju
dices of the female sex. Even among those nations and
in those periods which have been most frequently charged
with this fault, there has been no want of authors who
have loudly lamented that it should be so, and asserted
and maintained with no inconsiderable zeal, that the intro
duction of this far-sought elegance and gallantry, not only
into the body of literature as a whole, but even into those
departments of it where their presence is most unsuitable,
has an evident tendency to make literature tame, poor, uni-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 37
form, and unmanly. It may be that there is some founda
tion for this complaint : the whole literature of antiquity,
but particularly that of the Greeks, lies open to a reproach
of an entirely opposite nature. If our literature has some
times been too exclusively feminine, theirs was at all times
uniformly and exclusively masculine not unfrequently or
a nature far more rough and unpolished than might have
been expected from the general intellectual character and
refinement of the ancients.
In the most ancient times, indeed, (as, even at this day,
we can judge from the picture of manners which is unfolded
to us in the Homeric poems,) the situation of women in
Greece possessed a considerable share of freedom and re
spectability; if we compare it with that of the same sex in
other countries, at a period equally early in the formation
of society, we may even say that it was happy. But in
later times the Greeks adopted by degrees all the tyran
nical prejudices of their Asiatic neighbours, and, like them,
devoted the whole female sex to total seclusion, confine
ment, and degradation. The republican form of govern
ment was, of itself, inimical in the highest degree to
the influence and importance of the women ; for its evi
dent tendency was to fill the whole life and soul of the
men with matters of public moment with views which,
whether they were just or false, and events which, whether
they were real or fictitious, were all of a nature purely
patriotic and, above all, to engross the whole attention
of each individual with the peculiar political tenets or
prejudices of the sect or party to which he belonged. It
is true that the situation of the women was not every
where the same ; on the contrary, it was extremely different
in different states ; and the several tribes which were in
cluded under the common name of Greeks, disagreed in
this matter as much as they did in almost every other point
either of manners or of politics. In Sparta, and in general
among all the descendants of the Doric race, more parti
cularly among those of them who had adopted the ethical
38 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
principles of the Pythagoreans, the natural rights and
dignity of the female character were recognised infinitely
more than in the Ionian republics. Upon the whole, how
ever, it were in vain to deny that the Asiatic system of
secluding and confining the women had obtained a very
extensive influence throughout Greece a circumstance
which can, indeed, be easily traced in certain unhapp} r
effects which it produced on the works of Grecian genius.
In these works, however masterly in other respects may
be then* excellence, there is often wanting a certain delicate
bloom of womanly tenderness and refinement which is
very far from being fit for introduction every where ; than
which nothing can be more utterly detestable when it
bears the slightest mark of being far sought or laboured
but which we miss with no inconsiderable regret in those
situations where it might have been appropriately admit
ted ; to say nothing of the disgust which we feel when its
place is occupied by vulgarity or coarseness, whether real
or affected. Through this vice in their mode of life, the
writings of the ancients in general, but most of all those of
the Greeks, have not only been rendered less polished than
might have been expected from people so distinguished as
they were for refinement and urbanity : the contempt and
depression of the female sex have wrought their own re
venge by effects yet more positively injurious, and stained
the whole body of their literature with a rudeness that
is always unmannerly, and not unfrequently unnatural.
Even in the most beautiful and noble of the works of the
ancients, our attention is every now and then irresistibly
recalled by some circumstance or other to this point, in
which their morality was so defective, and their manners
so perverted from the standard of their original simplicity.
Here, where we are treating of the decline of Grecian
manners, and of the writer who has painted that decline
the most powerfully and the most clearly, the considera
tion of this common defect of antiquity has, I imagine, been
not improperly introduced. But when this imperfection
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 39
has once been distinctly recognised as one, the reproach of
which affects in justice not the individual writers, but
rather the collective character, manners, and literature of
antiquity, it were absurd to allow ourselves to be any
longer so much influenced by it, as to disguise from our
selves the great qualities often found in combination with
it, in writings which are altogether invaluable to us, both
as specimens of poetical art, and as representations of the
spoken wit of a very highly refined state of society to
refuse, in one word, to perceive in Aristophanes the great-
poet which he really is. It is true that the species and
form of his writing if indeed that can be said with pro
priety to belong to any precise species or form of composi
tion are things to which we have no parallel in modern
letters. All the peculiarities of the old comedy may be
traced to those deifications of physical powers which were
prevalent among the ancients. Among them, in the fes
tivals dedicated to Bacchus and the other frolicsome
deities, every sort of freedom even the wildest ebullitions
of mirth and jollity, were not only things permitted, they
were strictly in character, and formed, in truth, the con
secrated ceremonial of the season. The fancy, above all
things a power by its very nature impatient of constraint,
the birth-right and peculiar possession of the poet, was on
these occasions permitted to attempt the most audacions
heights, and revel in the wildest world of dreams : loosened
for a moment from all those fetters of law, custom, and pro
priety, which at other times, and in other species of writ
ing, must ever regulate its exertion even in the hands of
poets. The true poet, however, at whatever time this old
privilege granted him a Saturnalian license for the play
of his fancy, was uniformly impressed with a sense of the
obligation under which he lay, not only by a rich and
various display of his inventive genius, but by the highest
elegance of language and versification, to maintain entire
his poetical dignity and descent, and to show, in the midst
of all his extravagances, that he was not animated by pro-
40 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sale petulance, nor personal spleen, but inspired with the
genuine audacity and fearlessness of a poet. Of this there
is the most perfect illustration in Aristophanes. In lan
guage and versification his excellence is not barely acknow
ledged it is such as to entitle him to take his place among
the first poets to whom Greece has given birth. In many
passages of serious and earnest poetry which (thanks to
the boundless variety and lawless formation of the popular
comedy of Athens) he has here and there introduced,
Aristophanes shows himself to be a true poet, and capable,
had he so chosen, of reaching the highest eminence even
in the more dignified departments of his art. However
much his writings are disfigured by a perpetual admixture
of obscenity and filth, and however great a part of his wit
must to us in modern times be altogether unintelligible,
after deducting from the computation every thing that is
either offensive or obscure, there will still remain to the
readers of Aristophanes a luxurious intellectual banquet
of wit, fancy, invention, and poetical boldness. Liberty,
such as that of which he makes use, could, indeed, have
existed nowhere but under such a lawless democracy as
that which ruled Athens during the life of Aristophanes.
But that a species of drama, originally intended solely for
popular amusement in one particular city, should have
admitted or hazarded so rich a display of poetry this is a
circumstance which cannot fail to give us the highest pos
sible idea, if not of the general respectability, at least of
the liveliness, spirituality, and correct taste of the -populace
in that remarkable state which formed the focus and
central point of all the eloquence and refinement, as well
as of all the lawlessness and all the corruption, of the
Greeks.
This might be abundantly sufficient, not indeed to repre
sent Aristophanes as a fit subject of imitation for that he
can never be but to set his merit as a poet in its true
light. But if we examine into the use which he has made
as a man, but more particularly as a citizen, of that
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 41
liberty which was his poetical birthright, both by the
manners of antiquity, and by the constitution of his
country, we shall find many things which might be said
still further in his vindication, and which cannot, indeed,
fail to raise him personally in our esteem. His principal
merit as a patriot consists in the fidelity with which he
paints all the corruptions of the state, and in the chastise
ment which he inflicts on the pestilent demagogues who
caused that corruption or profited by its effects. The
latter duty was attended with no inconsiderable danger in
a state governed by a democracy, and during a time of
total anarchy yet Aristophanes has performed it with the
most fearless resolution. It is true that he pursues and
parodies Euripides with unrelenting severity ; but this is
perfectly in character with that old spirit of merciless
enmity which animated all the comic poets against the
tragedians ; and it is impossible not to perceive, that not
only the more ancient JEschylus, but even his contempo
rary Sophocles, is uniformly mentioned in a tone altoge
ther different in a temper moderate and sparing, nay,
very frequently with the profoundest feelings of admira
tion and respect. It forms another grievous subject of re
proach against Aristophanes, that he has represented in
colours so odious, Socrates, the most wise and the most
virtuous of all his fellow-citizens : it is, however, by no
means improbable that this was not the effect of mere
poetical wantonness ; but that Aristophanes selected, with
out any bad intention, that, first and best of illustrious
names, that he might under it render the Sophists as ridi
culous as they deserved to be, and as foolish and worthless
in the eyes of the people as he could make them. The
poet, it is not unlikely, in his own mind, mingled and con
founded, even without wishing it, this inestimable sage
with his enemies the Sophists to whose school he had at
first, indeed, been conducted by his inclination, but whose
maxims he studied, and whose schools he frequented in
his maturer years, solely with the view of making himself
42 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
master of that which he intended to refute and overthrow
the utter vanity of whose doctrines induced him to begin
the arduous attempt to revolutionize the whole intellectual
character of his countrymen, and reinstate truth in her
rightful supremacy.
Not only political institutions and private manners, but
the art of eloquence itself, and all those branches of know
ledge which exert themselves and are communicated by
speech, and, in short, the whole system of thinking among
the Greeks, were poisoned, and corrupted, and degraded by
the spirit of SOPHISTRY, till Socrates turned back the stream
of destruction, and guarded his country as well as might be
against the danger of its future devastations. This indefa
tigable inquirer and friend of truth was a simple citizen of
Athens, spent his days in the most narrow and limited sit
uation of life, and had no immediate influence except on a
small circle of chosen disciples and congenial friends ; and
yet his was a life of greater importance to Greece, and his
name forms perhaps a more remarkable epoch in her history,
than that of either the lawgiver Solon, or the conquerer
Alexander. But before I can set in an intelligible manner
before your eyes, this memorable struggle of Socrates, the
regeneration of philosophy which resulted from it, and the
subsequent entire renovation and exaltation of the intellec
tual character of Greece, it is necessary that I should first
look backwards for a moment to the more ancient philoso
phy and popular belief of the Greeks, as well as to the com
mencement of that spirit of sophistry which sprung up be
tween that philosophy and that belief, and was reconcileable
with neither.
However conspicuous was the pre-eminence of the
Greeks in every thing which relates to art and general
cultivation, in eveiy thing which belongs to the external
appearance and sensible surface of human refinement, it
is impossible to deny that those principles which formed
the groundwork of all these brilliant and beautiful mani
festations : the ideas of the Greeks concerning the nature
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 43
of the universe, concerning God and man, were far too
material, and, in effect, if not despicable, at least unsatis
factory. The more ancient of the Greek philosophers them
selves were, indeed, all of this opinion, for we find them
perpetually laying hold of Homer and Hesiod as the most
known and celebrated masters of the Greek mythology ; not
to approve of or praise them, but to ridicule in the mass
their poetical theology; and to reprehend and condemn
them, in the severest terms, for the unworthy, irrational,
and immoral representations of the Deity which are con
tained in their works, and had through their means become
constituent parts of the popular faith. To us, indeed, these
poetical representations wear no appearance but that of .a
beautiful play of imagination, and as such they are well
fitted to furnish us both with delight and inspiration ; but
if we reflect a little deeper on the matter if we consider
that these pleasing vagaries of fancy were really received
into the popular creed as so many sober truths, and con
template the necessary consequences of this, the use to
which the herd of vulgar and unquestioning believers must
have applied them in spite of all our partiality for the be
witching poetry in which these absurdities are embodied,
we shall have, I imagine, no great difficulty in adopting, at
least to a certain extent, the unfavourable and condem
natory judgment of the philosophers : we shall at least
feel and understand the grounds of their aversion. It is,
indeed, very probable that they carried their enmity to
poetry, which had been rationally enough commenced,
much too far, and that they expressed themselves much too
generally in their vituperation of poetical practice : for in
truth the development of Greek genius was so diversified,
that nothing was more difficult than to pronounce a judg
ment at once just and general concerning any part of their
literature, more particularly in the early period of its his
tory. However this might be, it is extremely probable that
the poems previous to the time of Homer, those songs which
celebrated the labours of Hercules ; the war of gods, giants,
44 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and heroes ; the beleaguering of Thebes by the seven cham
pions ; but, above all, the marvellous expedition of Jason
and the Argonauts, might have, in part at least, contained
views more profound, and been founded on principles much
more elevated, than the later heroic poems of the Trojan
time. Some things in these more ancient poems might
coincide much more closely with the remains of Asiatic
theology, than any production of the Greeks, after their
mode of thinking had been changed they might even
amount to positive recollections of an Asiatic ancestry.
Such, at least, to give a single example, appears plainly to
be the case with that beautiful piece of poetry which goes
under the name of Hesiod, wherein the existence of an ori
ginal and golden age of innocence during which undisturbed
felicity was the lot of men living in friendship with the gods,
and themselves godlike in their lives ; next, that evil age in
which strength and valour become the tests of justice ; and
then the whole train of subsequent degradation and corrup
tion among mankind are all distinctly and orthodoxly set
forth. In relation to these probably more profound and
dignified conceptions of the most ancient poets of Greece,
Orpheus is a name, although possibly fabulous, by no
means destitute of meaning to the student of history : for
it represents at least the name of some real poet who re
vealed and communicated to his fellow-countrymen, in such
heroic songs as were best adapted for the spirit of his age,
the holy symbols and mysterious secrets of these ancient
recollections.
Whatever may have been the case in more remote periods,
and of whatever nature the poetry of Orpheus may have
been, these more dignified conceptions, of which I have
been speaking, are altogether lost, or appear only in a few
very faint traces, in the works of the Homeric age. In the
Theogony which has been left us by Hesiod a work whose
authority was apparently very universally admitted, and
which may be taken as a standard by which to judge of
many similar works that have perished these conceptions
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 45
are indeed sufficiently manifest ; but they are set forth in a
manner too material and altogether contemptible. Accord
ing to this poem the world is a mere appendix to chaos.
To say nothing of the inadequate and senseless descriptions
of the gods, nature is represented only in her character of
fertility and fulness of life, and that under an immense
variety of emblems, which commonly, however, terminate
in the idea of some enormous animal. The life of the phy
sical world, again, is, according to the doctrines of this
poetical theology! represented merely as a perpetual circum-
rotation of love and hatred, attraction and repulsion ; but
we can scarcely perceive the least surmise even of the
existence of that higher spirit which has indeed its proper--
residence in the intellect of man, but which even in external
nature, at least in certain parts of her structure, breaks
through and is made manifest.
In this theology there is contained, in fact, absolute ma
terialism, not indeed set forth systematically with all the
pretension of science and philosophy, but clothed in poeti
cal form, and adapted to take fast and exclusive hold of the
popular belief. Of Homer, indeed, we cannot with pro
priety say so much ; at least no such thorough materialism
appears on the face of his writings. There is much more of
it, however, than could have been wished in those altogether
human representations which his poetical fancy has given
us of the character and conduct of deities ; for in them we
can perceive no trace either of what we, in philosophical as
well as in common language, call religion, or of any other
principle which might be substituted in its place. Not that
there is any unbelief or scepticism, or any openly and con
temptibly material conception of the divine nature in the
writings of Homer : his defect is rather a total ignorance,
or an incapability, like that of a child, for forming any
adequate idea of God diversified, however, here and there,
as is the case in children, with an exquisite feeling, or a
happy surmise, or a solitary flash of the truth.
According to the view which I have now been taking of
46 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the matter, Hesiod must be entirely given up to the strong
and well-founded reproaches of the ancient philosophers ; but
the judgment which we should form of Homer ought to be
somewhat more favourable. Yet there is no difficulty in
seeing what parts even of this mythology must have given
offence to the moralists of after times ; and it is not to be
denied that, upon the whole in a poetical, but much more
in a moral point of view his representations of the gods
form the weakest parts of all his productions. If the Ho
meric heroes, in their size and strength at least, appear
superhuman and godlike, it is equally true that the Homeric
gods are of a nature infinitely coarser, and much more en
tangled with human infirmities, and in all respects less god
like beings, than the heroes in whose quarrels they engage.
This may easily be accounted for, if we reflect that, in
framing the character and actions of his deities, the poet
did not, in all probability, consider himself as entitled to
exert the ennobling power of his own imagination, but ad
hered as closely as he could to the relics of ancient tradition
and the substance of the popular belief.
All the forms attributed to deities, and all the incidents-
which compose their history in the popular creed of anti
quity, had originally some covert meaning, most frequently
of a physical nature. Now, it might easily have been fore
seen, that an attempt to represent in this manner physical
objects and events under the guise of human beings and
human actions, could not fail to terminate very often at
once in absurdity and in immorality. Let us only consider
the fable of Saturn or Chronos, who is represented as
eating his own children. Nothing can be more odious than
this, if we take it in its human or moral acceptation, and
yet nothing more is intended by it than to set forth
the perpetual decay and renewal of external things the
destroying and reproductive powers of nature herself.
Hesiod abounds in similar fictions and representations,
which become altogether senseless, improper, and vicious,
the moment we view them without reference to their
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 47
original and physical meaning. In like manner, that-
symbolic meaning which was originally intended to be
shadowed forth in all the corporeal representations of
divine or superhuman nature, is extremely hostile to
beauty in all the imitative arts. Let us take, for instance T
the representation of a hundred-handed giant a plain and
obvious emblem of strength and enormous activity. In a
poem we might find no great fault with this ; and, indeed,
we are familiar with its occurrence both in Homer and
Hesiod ; but our tolerance is only produced by the dulness
of our imaginations, and the difficulty with which we
form to ourselves any precise and lively idea of a thing
described to us only in words. Were the hundred-handed
giant set distinctly and substantially before us in a work
of sculpture, we should be as much shocked with the defor
mity of this Grecian image, as we can be with any of the
hideous and unearthly monsters which fill the gloomy
temples of Jaggcrnaut or Benares. Or we may take any
representations of a similar nature, however superior to
the one I have instanced, both in spirituality and in dig
nity : we shall find the best of them almost equally inimical
to the beauty of form. The Indians, for example, embody
their conception of the three great exertions of the power
of one Divine Being creation, preservation, and destruc
tion in the image of a figure with three heads. In like
manner, and with a similar typical meaning and purpose,
the Brahma of Hindostan is represented with four faces,
exactly as the Janus of ancient Italy was represented with
two. All these symbolical images are hostile to the beauty
of imitative representations. The art of sculpture reached,
accordingly, far greater perfection among the Greeks than
it ever attained among the Egyptians, merely because the
former people did not adhere so pertinaciously as the latter
to these ancient symbols, but were perpetually laying
them more and more aside, in so far as they were charge
able with deformity : although they at no time framed
their images of superior beings after mere human models,
48 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
but were ever solicitous to stamp upon the features which
they borrowed from them the seal and impress of divinity.
In their poetry also, the same thing may be remarked ; for
it was uniformly attempted by all their serious poets, but
most of all by the grand and noble lyrical poet on whose
genius I have already commented, to soften down and polish
away those rough and barbarous circumstances in their
ancient mythology which are most offensive to a refined
understanding. It is true that these circumstances were
never so thoroughly disguised in their poetry as in their
sculpture, for the poetry of the Greeks was religious in its
origin, and depended for its existence on that very mytho
logy, of whose deformities, however glaring, it would have
been hazardous, and in all probability quite useless, for any
one poet to attempt the eradication. For this reason, even
in those poets who are the fondest of representing deities as
mere men, there are always some traces to be discovered
of these ancient types. A single example from Homer
(whose deities are the most human of all) will render this
abundantly perspicuous. When Jupiter, in an ebullition of
rage by no means inconsistent with his Homeric character,
tells the assembled gods, that although they should fasten a
chain to the heavens, and drag it downwards with united
strength, they would not be able to move him from his seat
nay, that, if it so pleased him, he could by one touch draw
them all up to him from the earth : at first sight this ap
pears to be nothing more than a piece of rough and swagger
ing rodomontade, yet there is no doubt that in this passage
reference is made to the chain-like connexion which runs
through all things, and unites, in some sort, not only the
heavens with the earth, and the earth with the sea, but
the greatest and the most dignified with the weakest and
the humblest of intellectual existences. So, accordingly,
was this allegory universally explained among the ancients.
A second passage sets the matter in a yet clearer light, and
is even more disagreeable to our feelings, when considered
only in its obvious and primary acceptation. In another
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 49
of these customary fits of passion, the father of gods and
men desires Juno to reflect on the strife which she of old
had kindled by persevering in her unmerciful persecution
of Hercules, his favourite son ; and how, in consequence of
that strife, the queen of heaven (which antiquity interpreted
to mean the sky) had been suspended by her fastened hands,
from the vault of the firmament, having each foot burdened
with the weight of an anvil. It is probable that the poet,
in this instance, did not shadow forth some mere allegorical
conception of his own, but alluded to some individual and
familiar hieroglyphics! carving in one of the temples of his
countiy. Passages of this nature, however, are of very rare
occurrence in Homer ; and on this account many commenta
tors either reject them as not genuine, or endeavour to fur
nish them with some different interpretation.
It was probably owing to these and other similar
representations, that the great moralists of Greece enter
tained an unfavourable opinion, not of Homer only, but of
poetry itself, and in their ideal systems of perfect legislation
and government, entirely prohibited the use of that im-
passionatlng art. But the poetical application of these
relics of a former time of this imperfect, and, in a great
measure, unintelligible system of symbols, must have been
equally offensive to the moral writers, for another reason
of an altogether different kind. In consequence of that
universal vanity and ambition of the ancients which
attributed the origin of all their noble and illustrious
families to some hero, and the birth of every hero to some
god, the numberless procession of these demigod-children
ascribed to all the deities, but particularly to Jupiter, was
such, that Ovid has entirely filled several books of his great
poem with an account of the divine amours which gave
occasion to their birth. All this, as I have already observ
ed, is regarded by us as the mere display of a luxurious and
delightful imagination, and we can scarcely conceive the
possibility of any serious and pious belief having ever
been attached to absurdities so amusing. But how could
D
50 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the ancient moralists consider so lightly poetical fictions
which formed the root and essence of the popular creed of
their country a creed, too, on which the whole internal
principles, and exterior demonstrations, of moral feeling
were substantially dependent? whose pernicious influence
on the character of those who adopted it, was every day
before their eyes, in the willing zeal with which their
believing countrymen imitated the moral transgressions of
their gods ?
In so far, then, the reproaches of the old philosophers, if
we set them in a proper point of view, may be both under
stood and justified. But, in truth, before we can judge
aright of this matter, we must draw a line of distinction
between Homer, individually considered, and the ancient
mythology taken as a general system of belief. Homer, in
spite of all his defects, (and we have already touched upon
most of them,) has been the source of so much good both
to Greece and to all Europe, that we cannot sufficiently
express the gratitude we owe to Solon and the Peisistratidae
for preserving to us this great poet, whom the philosophers,
had their opinions ever gained the mastery, would in all
probability have brought into forgetfulness, as they have
already done every thing that lay in their power to bring
him into contempt. But if we consider the Greek mytho
logy in general, -and out of connexion with this prince of
all ancient poets, we shall not be able to close our eyes
to the fact, that it was not only defective in the particular
moral ideas which it unfolded, but Avas, on the whole, and
in the innermost principles on which it was founded,
material, inadequate, and unworthy of the divine nature.
It should not, however, be forgot, that these very philo
sophers, who indulged themselves so freely in railing
against the poets and their mythology, had themselves,
previous to the times of Socrates, scarcely ever made any
inquiries into the proper nature of the Deity ; and, indeed,
very seldom advanced farther than certain vague and
indefinite feelings of veneration for the elemental powers of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 51
the physical world ; moreover, from being philosophers,
they were very soon converted into sophists, and were, in
that character, infinitely more dangerous, both in a political
and in a moral point of view, than any of the old poets ever
were, with all their ignorance and simplicity.
Not only the poetry, but the philosophy of the ancients,
had its origin among the Asiatic Greeks. The same climate
which produced Homer and Herodotus, gave birth also to
the first and greatest of the philosophers, not only to
Thales and Heraclitus, who founded in their own time the
Ionian school, properly so named, but also to those who
extended the influence of its doctrines in Magna Graecia,
and among the southern Italians, as for example the
poet Xenophanes, and the institutor of the great learned
confederacy, Pythagoras. We are all accustomed to talk
with wonder and reverence of the art and the poetry of the
Greeks ; yet perhaps their genius appears nowhere so active,
so inventive, and so rich as in their philosophy. Even
their errors are instructive, for they were always the fruit
of reflection. They had no beaten path of truth prepared
for them, but were obliged to seek out and beat a pathway
for themselves ; and accordingly they are best able to
teach us how far men can, by the unassisted power of
their own nature, advance in the inquiry after truth.
But this philosophy is well deserving of a little further
consideration.
It was the custom of the Ionian philosophers to reverence
one or other of the elements as the first and primary prin
ciple of nature some water, as Thales, others fire, as
Heraclitus. It is scarcely to be believed that they meant
all this in a mere corporeal acceptation. They recognised,
it is probable, under the name of the liquid element, not
only the nourishing and connecting power of water, but
also the general principle of perpetual change and variety in
nature. And in like manner, when Heraclitus said that
fire was the origin of all things, he did not surely refer
merely to external and visible fire, but meant rather to
52 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
express that hidden heat, that internal fire, which was
universally considered by the ancients as the peculiar and
vivifying power in every thing that lives. Heraclitus, the
founder of this doctrine, seems to have had conceptions of
a nature more profound and spiritual than any of his
brethren. But perhaps the incapacity of all these philoso
phers to set themselves free from the fetters of materialism,
may be best illustrated by the example of Anaxagoras.
This philosopher is well worthy of mention, for he was the
first before Socrates who recognised the existence of a
supreme intelligence directing and governing the whole
system and concerns of nature and the universe ; and yet
he attempted to illuminate the world by recurrence to
those minute and imperceptible elemental atoms, of which,
according to the docrine of materialism, the whole universe
is composed. This atomical philosophy, which accounts
for the creation of the world on the principle of mechanical
attraction, was very early reduced to the shape of a regular
system by Leucippus and Democritus ; but afterwards it
became, by means of Epicurus, as prevalent among both
Greeks and Romans as it ever was among the moderns of
the eighteenth century. This is that proper materialism
which strikes at once at the root of the idea of a God.
It is in vain to suppose that these were mere speculations,
and destitute of any influence on active life. The utter
defectiveness of the popular faith of the Greeks, and
of their philosophy, previous to the time of Socrates, will
be most evident if we direct our attention to the opinions
which they embraced with regard to the immortality of
the soul. That indistinct and gloomy world of shades,
which was celebrated by the poets and believed in by the
common people, was at the best a mere poetical dream ;
and the moment reflection awakened, either sunk into
doubt, or gave place to total incredulity. In the mysteries,
it is true, or secret societies, whose influence was so exten
sive both in Egypt and in Greece, some more accurate and
stable notions, with regard to a future life, appear to have
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 53
been preserved and inculcated ; but these, whatever they
might be, were carefully confined to the small circle of the
initiated. Both the earlier and later philosophers who
sought to establish the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, had in general nothing further in view than the
indestructible nature of that intellectual principle of the
universe, whereof, according to then- belief, every human
soul formed a part ; they had no conception of any such
thing as the continuance of personal existence. That doc
trine the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, properly
so called, was first started and first rendered popular
among their philosophers by Pythagoras. Even in his
system, indeed, the truth was mingled with a considerable
share of falsehood, for he embraced in its Ml extent the
oriental doctrine of Metempsychosis, or the transmigration
of souls ; yet as it is, he is even in this respect superior
to all the other old philosophers of Greece, and is well
entitled to our reverence, both as a discoverer of truth, and
as a benefactor of his nation. But his celebrated society
(whose chief aim was certainly political power, and
whose principles could not have been adopted without the
total overthrow of the popular belief) was very soon dis
solved ; and after that time the state of philosophy became
daily more and more anarchical, down till the period of
Socrates.
The contradiction and singularity of these opinions, in
vented and defended as they were with the greatest acute-
ness, and given to the world with the highest advantages
of diction ; the spirit of doubt and unbelief, which it is the
tendency of such opinions to spread abroad ; and the con
fusion of all ideas, and the relaxation of all principles,
which naturally follow from their adoption, were perhaps
never displayed in all the fulness of their destructive in
fluence so manifestly as then. One great class of these
ancient philosophers, however their opinions might differ on
other matters, agreed in one thing, that they all regarded
nature only on the side of the mutability and variety of her
54 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
productions. " Every thing," said they, " is perpetually
changing and revolving like the water of a river." So far,
indeed, did they carry this principle, that they refused to
believe in the existence of any thing steadfast and endur
ing ; they denied that there could be any thing stable in
being, any thing certain in knowledge, any thing universally
useful in morals ; in other words, they treated as a fable the
existence, not of God alone, but of speculative truth and
practical rectitude.
Another party who held fast by the tenet of an
unchangeable unity in all things, fell into an altogether
opposite opinion. They denied the possibility of any
mutability in that which zs, and were thus reduced to
deny the real existence of the sensible world. These
paradoxes they endeavoured to render popular by the
highest exertions of dialectic skill; and in so far, at
least, they were successful in their attempt, for the dis
cussions which took place rendered doubt and uncer
tainty even more common than before. One of the first
.and greatest of these sophists commenced his instructions
expressly and distinctly with the assertion that there is
no such thing as truth, either absolute or relative ; that
even if there were, it could not be within the reach of
human knowledge ; and that even if it were known it would
be altogether unprofitable. It would have been cruel, in
deed, to deny this inquirer any private consolation which
his DOUBT could afford him, if such had really been the
poor and unsatisfactory result of a diligent and candid in
vestigation. But these sophists were not content to enjoy
their doubt in privacy ; they had scholars and dependents
in every district of Greece, and the education of the noble
and cultivated classes of society was, for a season, en
tirely in their hands. Neither was the termination of
their sceptical inquiries always candidly stated : for while
some were honest enough to confess that they knew
nothing, there was no want of other sophists who had
the impudence and the quackery to say that they knew
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 55
all things, and who boldly professed themselves to be
masters of every art and every science. It was, at all
events, an easy matter for them to bring young men
to such a pitch of accomplishment that they could, by
means of a few turnings and windings of a sophistical
argumentation, perplex and bewilder the understandings
of others yet more inexperienced than themselves, and
believe themselves qualified to settle every thing by the
rapid exercise of their own more cultivated genius, much
better than had ever been done by the once reverenced,
but now despised and insulted wisdom of their fore
fathers. In these schools, it was not merely proposed by
way of an exercise of ingenuity and acumen, to defend
alternately two opposite opinions concerning the same
subject, and endeavour to lend either, according to plea
sure, the semblance of truth : the regular object of sophis
tical ambition was to defend on all occasions what they
knew to be speculatively or practically wrong : to make the
worse appear the better reason, not in scholastic disputa
tion only, but in active life ; and to forge weapons of de
ceit for the destruction of their fellow-citizens. With a
bold contempt of all those moral principles by which,
according to them, the weak only allow themselves to be
conducted and deceived, but which they in their wisdom
were pleased to consider as the silly prejudices of childish
ness and folly, others expressly taught, that there is no
virtue but that of cunning or of power, and no right but
the right of the stronger, and the pleasure of him who has
the rule. In these schools, not only was ridicule perpe
tually cast on the popular belief, which, with all its mani
fold defectiveness, was still closely connected with many
feelings of a noble and dignified morality, which should
have been carefully reverenced and preserved so long as
men had nothing better to be substituted in their room-
not only did they heap together loose, vain, and despicable
dogmas concerning the world and its first cause they de
nied, without hesitation, the very existence of a Deity, and
56 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
annihilated within their bosoms all perception either of truth
or of goodness.
Through the prevailing influence of these opinions, the
political purity of Grecian governments, which had long
stood in jeopardy on the brink of an abyss of democratical
lawlessness, was at last entirely overthrown : and sophistry-
had the merit of creating a spirit of corruption and debase
ment which neither party-strife, nor protracted wars, nor
foreign bribery, nor bloody revolutions, had been able to
produce.
In the midst of this universal atheism Socrates arose,
and taught again the existence of a God in a manner alto
gether practical. He encountered the sophists on their
own ground, and exposed to all the world the fallacy and
nothingness of their opinions : he demonstrated to men, that
virtue and goodness are not empty names ; and convinced
them, in spite of their prejudices, that in their own hearts
are seated many pure and noble principles, derived at first
from a superior being, and giving birth to perpetual aspi
rations after some state of things more analogous to the
dignity of their original. He laid hold of the best feelings
of our nature, and linked them all with the cause of his
philosophy. By these means Socrates became the second
founder and restorer of a more noble system of thinking
among the Greeks, at the expense of falling himself a sacri
fice to his zeal, and to the truth. But his death is so re
markable an incident in the history of mankind, that we
may well pause for a moment, and bestow on it some fur
ther consideration.
The solitary charge which was made against him, that
he was guilty of teaching the existence of a new and un
known Godhead, and of despising the old and publicly re
cognised deities of the popular creed, was certainly so far
founded in truth, and is most honourable to the fame of
Socrates. Had the Socratic mode of thinking, which was
in every respect new in Greece, ever gone beyond the
circle of his own friends and disciples, and become the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 57
ruling one throughout the country, there can be no doubt
that the whole system of private life among the ancients,
and at least a great part of their popular belief, must
have either been entirely changed, or undergone a
very considerable modification. This must have been
thoroughly felt by the narrow-minded bigots of the
ancient faith, and is quite sufficient to account for the
deadly hatred which they all bore to Socrates, and the
readiness with which they endeavoured to confound his
great name with that of the profligate and pernicious so
phists whose principal enemy he was. The charge, never
theless, was in a great measure a mere pretext ; and the
true ground of their hatred lay in the nature, not of the
philosophical, but of the political tenets which Socrates
maintained.
In every situation of his life, Socrates had shown himself
to be an excellent citizen and a zealous patriot ; but
his opinions, or at least those of the greater part of his
scholars, were openly inimical to democracy. The manner
in which both Xeuophon and Plato often praise almost
with the zeal and warmth of political partisans the con
stitution of Sparta, and that of every state in whose insti
tutions the aristocratical principle was predominant, could
have appeared only in the light of a disgusting want of
national feeling, to the bigoted democrats of their native
city. Besides, all the enemies of democracy who proceeded
from the school of Socrates, were far from bearing cha
racters so noble and reproachless as Xenophon and Plato.
Even Critias himself had been a disciple of Socrates
Critias, one of the tyrants who ruled Athens by means
of Spartan influence, and who, indeed, reduced their
country to the state of a mere dependency on the govern
ment of Lacedasmon. And to this very circumstance it is
that one ancient writer attributes, and with no small
appearance of justice, the primary cause of the fate of
Socrates.
It is impossible to explain, in any satisfactory method,
58 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
by what means Socrates reached those peculiar principles
which he professed. With the more ancient doctrines of
his countrymen of the Ionian school, he was well acquainted ;
but he seems to have considered them as, on the whole,
inadequate and unsatisfying. On several remarkable occa
sions of his life, he had, according to his own account,
recourse to a DAEMON, under whose guidance and tuition he
professed himself uniformly to act ; but whether he meant
by this expression, merely the suggestions and resolves of
his own meditative spirit and uncorrupted conscience, or
whether he really meant something of a nature still more
elevated, we have no means of deciding. It is equally
out of our power to ascertain whether his private opinions
pointed at a total overturn, or only at a partial modification
and more rational interpretation of the principles of the
popular belief. He appears to have been well acquainted
with all the doctrines inculcated in the mysterious societies
of his day. It is indeed true, that he was far from being
altogether divested of certain opinions and principles,
which the philosophers of the eighteenth century do not
hesitate to rank in the same class of infidelity with the
opinions of those all-knowing and all-doubting beings
against whom Socrates was never weary of testifying. A
single example will be enough to show with what unfair
ness and injustice this part of his character has been
treated by some of these writers. One of their chief ob
jections to him is founded on the reply which he made to
a question put to him by one of his friends, on the evening
of his death : "Is there nothing more which you wish us
to do? " said the friend. " Nothing," answered Socrates,
" except that I wish you to oifer a cock to JEsculapius."
So then, say these modern critics, the last moment of his
life was spent in commanding a mark of respect to be paid
to that superstition with whose worthlessness he must
have been perfectly acquainted ; or if it was a jest which
he uttered, surely jesting was ill-suited for a moment so
solemn. Perhaps if they had looked a little deeper, they
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 59
might have found a more rational explanation. By the
constant practice of antiquity, when any person had re
covered from an illness, he offered a cock to JEsculapius.
Now, when Socrates expressed his wish to make a similar
sacrifice, it is probable that he alluded to a notion which
he himself entertained, and which has been illustrated ut
great length by several of his disciples, the notion that
the present life is given us only to prepare us for another ;
or, according to the expression of antiquity, that we may
learn to die. Besides, Socrates has often expressly said that
he considered human life in general (and, without doubt,
the state of the world in his day must have eminently
tended to make him so consider it) in the light of an
imprisonment of the soul, or of a malady under which the
nobler spirit is condemned to linger, until it be set free
and purified by the healing touch of death. To terminate
life by suicide was held by Socrates if not the first, at
least the most distinctly of all the ancient philosophers as
a thing not permitted as a crime against God and against
ourselves. lie made no attempt to emancipate himself, by
his own hand, from the confinement and the malady of life.
Perhaps he did not imagine, however much he must have
been aware of the true dignity both of his own character
and of the cause of truth and virtue in which he suffered,
that that character and that cause would in after ages
derive new reverence and dignity from the example of
resolution and steadfastness which he set before his Mends
and disciples in the manner of his death.
In order to give a general view of the Greek philosophy,
I have selected only a few points out of the great mass of
their opinions : it has been my chief object to select those
principally which may be traced in works not didactic, but
historical which have exerted the greatest influence on
the affairs of active and political life, and from that circum
stance are the most interesting as well as the most intelli
gible. I now return to my short survey of their most cele
brated writers.
60 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Xenophon is entitled, by his beautiful style alone, to
take his place by the side of the best authors of antiquity.
As a writer of history, he surpasses Thucydides, in so far
that his narrative is more light and clear ; and that the
feeling with which his story is animated, is more simple
and natural. Yet so much is he inferior both in depth and
in dignity of reflection, that, tender and elegant as he is, we
almost universally give the preference to the severe auste
rity of his more manly rival. As a philosophic writer, iir"
his account of the conversation of Socrates, he falls in
finitely short of Plato, not only in profoundness of thought,
but in richness of illustration, and in the arrangement of
his materials. His political romance upon the life of
Cyrus is deserving of much notice, because it is the only
work of that kind which has come down to us from the
ancients. The work is composed, in almost equal parts,
of history, poetry, and ethics. But although each of the
elements may be highly beautiful when taken by itself, the
manner in which they are mingled together in the Cyro-
psedia, appears to me, I must confess, very far from being a
fit subject of imitation.
Although both Xenophon and several other writers of
the school of Socrates, were conspicuous examples of sim
plicity and true beauty in composition, the sophistical
rhetoric nevertheless continued to be almost universally
prevalent among the Greeks. Isocrates may furnish us
with abundant evidence of the wide extent to which that
affected system of language and expression had been
adopted by this ingenious and spiritual people : how they
could endure to hear long harangues upon particular points
or circumstances, selected at the mere caprice of the
speaker, and often not only inapplicable, but utterly use
less and unprofitable, to the total exclusion of every thing
which might really bear upon the merits of the case : how,
in short, they could make their reason altogether subser
vient to their pleasure, and listen to the discussion of
matters the most important to themselves, whether as
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 61
individuals or as a nation, with feelings which might have
better suited a drama or a show as if the only matter on
which they were to decide had been the relative merits of
eloquence or wit in those who were so vain as to address
them. There is an unvarying appearance of artifice in the
system of speaking and writing which was at this period
in fashion. Every word is laboriously selected and ar
ranged ; every syllable is placed with reference not only
to its significance but to its sound ; every period is rounded
with reiterated touches, and the whole is polished with in
defatigable care. Yet this taste in composition, this ex
treme refinement of language, may be of considerable use to
us ; for we are but too apt to fall into an altogether opposite
error, and to destroy or diminish the effect of our reason
ings by a very culpable inattention to the accuracy of our
expression. The art which is employed in writing should,
indeed, be kept as much as is possible out of view. The
consideration of the labour which must have been em
ployed, is sometimes distressing to us even in works of
sculpture; yet, in general, we allow ourselves to be de
lighted with an inanimate statue long before we take time
to reflect on the toil with which it has been formed. But
the case is widely different here ; the appearance of labour
in a piece of writing is instantly and invariably disagree
able. We know that a poem or an oration is not to be
hewn out of stone, and we expect to see in it not barely a
skilful application of art, but something free, lively, and-
having influence upon life.
Plato and Aristotle, whom I consider in this place
merely as writers, are specimens at once of the widest
extent of Grecian knowledge, and of the greatest depth
and dignity of reflection, which were ever attained by the
Grecian mind. The first has treated of philosophy, in
narratives and dialogues, with all the fervour of an artist ;
the method of the other is more scientific, in the strictest,
as well as in the widest sense of that word : he has not con
fined himself to philosophy alone, he has treated of natural
62 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
science also, and natural history ; he has written on politics,
on history, and on criticism ; and, in fact, reduced to a sys
tem all the knowledge of the Greeks.
In the narrative and poetical passages of his dialogues
above all, on account of his language and skill in composi
tion the general voice of his contemporaries, as well as of
posterity, has set Plato at the head of all the prose writers
of antiquity. The most striking peculiarity of his style is
its unrivalled variety ; for it adapts itself with equal ease to
the artificial abstractions and hair-drawn distinctions into
whose labyrinths he pursues his enemies the sophists, and
to the poetical, nay, the often dithyrambic boldness with
which he sets forth the rich fables and inventions of his
own philosophy. Considered merely as works of narration,
Phaadon and the Republic are entitled to be classed with
the most illustrious specimens of that species of writing to
which Grecian genius has given birth.
Both of these mighty intellects, Aristotle and Plato, have
for two thousand years exerted a commanding influence on
the character of the human mind, both in Europe and in
Asia. But to this I shall call your attention with more
propriety in some other place. Aristotle is characterised,
as a writer, by purity and elegance, which began, in his
time, to be looked upon as the first qualities of style. Al
though Plato has always been considered as a perfect model
both in the power and in the construction of his language,
and, in general, as a specimen of the highest point of re
finement to which Grecian, or, more properly speaking,
Attic genius, ever attained, yet there is no doubt that
with regard to works of erudition, and the development and
acuteness of criticism, but above all, with regard to every
department of historical composition, the influence of
Aristotle has been more determinate as well as more ex
tensive than that of Plato. The immediate successor of
Aristotle, Theophrastus the same whose descriptions of
characters have come down to us and all the early phi
losophers of the Platonic school, were men of universal
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 63
refinement, and their writings were uniformly composed
in a style at once elevated and beautiful. The philosophic
sects which sprung up at a later period in Greece, appear to
great disadvantage when compared, in this respect, with
their predecessors. The followers of Epicurus make use of
a careless, dull, and drawling mode of composition, whUe
the writings of the Stoics are still more offensive on account
of the bombast pedantry and technical barbarisms with
which they are loaded. The decline of the genius of the-
Greeks may be traced, through all its stages, in the corre
sponding debasement of their language.
The revival of philosophy, which was effected by So
crates, was very far from extending its influence to the
whole of the intellectual character of the Greeks. This
happy revolution was confined to a few particular depart
ments of thinking, and these were daily becoming more
and more unconnected with the general spirit of that de
graded people. On the poetry of Greece, to which we
must now return, it exerted .no influence whatever ; that
depended, so long as it deserved the name of poetiy, on the
mythology, the popular belief, the traditional tales, and
the ancient modes of life of the country ; after the national
manners had become relaxed and corrupted, it exhibited
merely a faint echo of what it had formerly been in the
hands of those great and creative geniuses who have
already passed under our review. But although in this
later poetry we can see only the reflection of its ancient
splendour ; yet even the productions of this declining age
are rich in particular beauties, and exhibit many glorious
traces of that peculiar poetical spirit which seems in hap
pier times to have been almost inseparable from the phybi-
cal temperament of the Greeks.
The first traces of decline in the art of composing trage
dies, may be discovered without difficulty in the writings
of Euripides ; rich as these are in pathetic representations
and in isolated above all, in lyrical beauties. The last
among the great tragedians of antiquity appears less perfect
(34: HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
than his predecessors in many respects ; but his princi
pal defect, certainly, consists in a want of unity and con
nexion between the different parts of whicKTTs works are
composed. I have already mentioned that the tragedy of
the ancients arose, by degrees, out of a peculiar national
chorus, and festival song of mythological import which
was usually performed in certain solemnities of the Greek
religion. The chorus forms in this manner an inseparable
part of the ancient tragedy, whose composition is for the
same reason, in its whole shape and substance, strictly
allied to lyrical poetry: a circumstance which has been
very powerfully felt, by those poets in particular who
have endeavoured to imitate, in modern times, the pecu
liarities of the Grecian drama. Perfect harmony and
agreement between the choral songs, and the dramatic
part, strictly so called, forms, in tragedies composed after
these models, a requisite altogether indispensable. Both
are in the most entire unison in the works of Sophocles ;
but in Euripides the choral interludes assume a character
widely different : they seem to be introduced into his plays
merely by way of compliment to established custom ;
and, so far from being occupied with the events of the
drama, are rendered, in general, vehicles for w T hat has
often no apparent connexion with them the poet s own
private opinions concerning the mythology and philosophy
of his country. They abound, indeed, in lyrical beauties,
which may be exquisite and delightful in themselves ; but
these are perpetually intermingled with formal dogmas
which the poet had gathered from the schools of the
sophists, and with long, pedantic, and ill-placed disquisi
tions, which seem to have no purpose in view but an
ostentatious display of his skill as a rhetorician. In con
sequence of this harmony being disturbed, and the lyrical
interludes no longer forming an essential part of the piece,
the dialogue itself, which now composes the whole of the
tragedy, appears at once poor and unsatisfactory. To
remedy in some measure this defect, Euripides has recourse
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 65
to a perplexing intricacy of plot, to perpetual surprises and
recognitions, to double catastrophes, and to wiredrawn in
trigues, which increase, indeed, the amusement of the
spectacle, but can ill be reconciled with the true nature and
dignity of tragic poetry.
The last Athenian poet, who represented human life in a
manner new and peculiar to himself, was Menander the
inventor, or at least the perfecter, of the new comedy as it
was called. His method of composition, although his own
works have almost entirely perished, is in some measure
known to us by means of the translations or imitations of the
Kornan poet Terence. The dramatic poetry of the Greeks,
which had begun, in 2Eschylus, with the heroic greatness
and marvels of fabulous antiquity, had now reached the
last stage of its history : it had been gradually descending
from the lofty images of a poetical past, towards the more
humble concerns of the actual present; and it now termi
nated its career, with a spiritual and lively representation
of all the circumstances, characters, situations, and in
trigues which are to be met with in the everyday life of
undignified men. Whether the representation of common
life, or in other words, the popular comedy of Menander,
belongs, properly speaking, to the class of poetry, was a
question much agitated among the ancient critics. Many
determine it in the negative, because, according to their
opinion, not only versification, but mythology, is necessary
to the existence of poetry. But, according to our ideas of
poetry, the lively representation of human life, although
this should be altogether unaccompanied with the marvel
lous, or even with the elevated, can in no way be separated
from the region of poetry. According to modem critics,-
the first and original end of all poetry if we consider it as
it is to have influence on men and on life, and, in one word,
as it is to be national is to preserve and embellish the
peculiar traditions and recollections of the people ; and to
preserve alive, in the memories of men, the magnanimity
and greatness of ages that are gone by. The peculiar
E
66 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sphere of this poetry is epic narrative, where there is the---
utmost scope for the introduction of the marvellous, and
where the poet cannot move a step without the assistance
of mythology. But a second end of poetry is to place""
before our eyes a clear and speaking picture of common
life. This may certainly be done in many modes of writ
ing; but most powerfully, without doubt, in the drama.
Poetry, however, such as deserves the name, can never
consist entirely in representations of external life ; it must
always be intermingled with something of a higher nature,
and have for its object the intellect and feeling of which-" "
that life is the symbol. Perhaps it might even be said that
the essence of poetry, as directed to this second purpose,-^
consists, in truth, in this, at first sight, unessential element
of higher and more refined feeling with which the whole
substance of the composition is apparently diversified, but
really inspired. This feeling and inspiration form, indeed,
a constituent part of all poetry ; but in proportion as they
come to be predominant qualities, the compositions in which
they are embodied approach nearer to the nature of lyricaK"
poetry.
The essence of all poetry may be said to consist in three
things INVENTION, EXPRESSION, INSPIRATION. In a great
inventive genius, the other two elements, expression and
inspiration, can scarcely be absent. But without any
creative or inventive power, properly so called most cer
tainly, without any admixture of the marvellous a work
of intellect and language may, by the power of expression
alone which it displays, or by the inspiration with which it
is animated, fulfil the ends, and be entitled to the name, of
-poetry.
Menander was the last original poet of Athens who re
presented human life, and whose writings exerted their
influence on human affairs. If we consider his comedies as
the conclusion of Attic literature, the whole period during
which that literature existed, reckoning from the time of
Solon, does not extend beyond three centuries.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 67
The poets who arose at an after period, when the lan
guage of Greece had become known over the greater part
of the world, by means of the conquests of Alexander, and
who attached themselves, for the most part, to the court
of the Egyptian Ptolemies, are only to be considered as
gleaners, who came after the rich harvest of Greek poetry
had been already gathered in. These courtly literati the
academicians and librarians of Alexandria have, however,
been of much service to the world, in consequence of the
labour which they bestowed on preserving entire the purity
and clearness of the Greek language, as well as of the
erudition and criticism which are embodied in their own
works. As poets, they have all the defects into which
learned poets are apt to fall : their mode of expression is
rarely unaffected, and very often altogether obscure. Those
of their number who attempted epic poetry, or, in general,
who treated of subjects connected with mythology, are at
least valuable on this account, that their works have mainly
contributed towards enabling us, in modern times, to un
derstand the allusions, and feel the force of the more an
cient poets. It is, for instance, extremely fortunate for
us, (especially as the writings of so many older poets who
handled the same fable have perished,) that the chivalric
expedition of the Argonauts forms the subject of one of the
most elegant of these later poets Apollonius. In conse
quence of the immense profusion of ancient poems which
were at that time extant, it was perhaps easy for these
Alexandrians to penetrate into the original meaning and
connexion of the mythological fictions, more deeply than
had ever been consistent either with the views or tne
opportunities of the narrative poets of the flourishing era.
Callimachus, in particular, was conspicuous for the pro
found knowledge which he possessed of the ancient tradi
tions of Greece ; mythology was the exclusive subject of his
poetry, and he often treated it with the true fire of a poet.
That he was by no means deficient in this, is indeed evi
dent from the writings of the enthusiastic Propertius, who
68 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
made him his model in the composition of his Elegies. It
was at this period very common to treat of mythological
events in a formal manner, collecting all the fictions of a
similar class into the same work. Nothing, however, conld
be more vain, for there is, in truth, no sort of connexion
between many of these inventions. They are often various
editions of the same fable ; and to arrange them in a con
secutive order, could only be accomplished by means of
such artificial omissions, and unnatural interlacings, as are
to be met with in the Metamorphoses of Ovid.
It has every where been the fate of poetry, in its decline^-
to be more and more taken away from its proper subjects,
and applied to matters altogether incapable of poetical
illustration. It requires no great acuteness to see, that
scientific astronomy is a subject of this kind ; and that a
dissertation on some particular department of botany, or a
series of medical lectures, although composed in verse, can
never form a poem. It is evident that the whole body of
this learned poetry which has come down to us from the
Alexandrian age, belongs to a false and utterly artificial
class of compositions. The moderns should have been the
more careful to avoid imitating these productions, that
such subjects are even more difficult to be handled in a
poetical manner now, than they were in the time of the
Greeks. In the first place, the Greeks of a more early
period had applied didactic poetry to a great number of
subjects entirely scientific in their nature, not with the
design of displaying their skill in the treatment of difficult
and repulsive materials, but for the real purpose of com
municating knowledge at a time when prose writing was
either entirely unknown, or in a state so unpolished as not
to be a fit vehicle for general information, or not so easy
for the authors themselves as the hexameter verse. Their
scientific poetry was therefore unaffected in its origin, and
proceeded from the natural audacity of the Grecian intel
lect a circumstance which must have been of great use
to the artificial poets who treated of scientific subjects at a
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 69
later period. The mythology of the Greeks, moreover,
embraced the whole visible world within the circle of its
bold personifications and delightful fables ; so that nothing,
in truth, could be imagined, which was not connected in
some manner with these beautiful fictions, and thus placed
within the proper province of ancient poetry. Even in
treating of a botanical or medical subject, innumerable cir
cumstances must have occurred to a Grecian poet, which
might give him an opportunity of borrowing poetical illus
trations from the world of fables, and of introducing, with
out any appearance of stiffness or constraint, those episodes
which formed, in truth, the principal charm of his composi
tion, but which must always be far-fetched and artificial in
the writings of a modern.
There is one species of poetry invented in this period,
which is much more agreeable to our taste, because it is
not a mere display of art and imitation, but professes to
set before us the peculiarities of a particular mode of life :
I mean the bucolic and pastoral poetry the Idylls of Theo
critus, and other ancient writers of the same class. The
country life certainly abounds in circumstances susceptible
of poetical embellishment ; but, I confess, I can perceive
no good reason why it should be considered in an isolated
manner, and abstracted from its due situation in that gene
ral picture of the world and of human life, which it is the
province of poetry to unfold. Let us reflect for a moment
on these passages in the heroic poems of antiquity, or in
the chivalric romances of the moderns, which afford us
glimpses of the simplicity and repose of rural manners:
their simplicity appears still more innocent, and their re
pose still more peaceful, from the situation in which they
are placed in the midst of the guilty tumult of wars, and
the fierce passions of heroes. Here every thing appears
in its true and natural connexion ; and the poetry is as
varied as the world and the men which it professes to
represent. The cutting off of rural life, and making the
description of it a separate department of writing, has led
70 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
poets into perpetual tautologies and repetitions, and induced
the more ambitious of them to have recourse to the most
unnatural exaggerations. It is very singular that this spe
cies of writing should have always been cultivated and
popular only in ages of great social refinement. The
excess of refinement in the life of cities, has been the -
means of leading us back to nature and the country. Most
Idylls, indeed, betray their origin ; and it is too often quite
evident, that the shepherds and shepherdesses whom they
represent, are in fact gentlemen and ladies in disguise. In
Theocritus, without doubt, and in many of the other bucolic
poets of antiquity, we sec some true rustics, and hear the
natural language of unsophisticated shepherdesses. But,
even in them, there is introduced so much elegance of
language, and so much play of wit, that we are, every
now and then, led to forget the rural scenes in which we
are supposed to be placed, and to feel that we are still in
the midst of the social refinements of the courts of Ptolemy
or Augustus. In general, the Idylls were what their name
expresses little poetical pictures, representations in mi
niature, sometimes of mythological subjects, at other times
of matters in common life, but almost always amatory in
then- purpose and termination. Poetry had now become
utterly degraded from her ancient dignity, split into un
natural divisions, and deprived of the strength which she
formerly possessed. The exhaustion of her powers became
daily more and more manifest, in the diminutiveness of all
her productions. She soon gave birth to nothing but little
trifling buds and flowerets. Puns, conceits, and quibbles,
were the fashion of the day. The age of poetry was gone
when that of anthologies commenced.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 71
LECTURE III.
RETROSPECT rINFLUENCE OF THE GREEKS ON THE ROMANS SKETCH OF
ROMAN LITERATURE.
AFTER the Greeks had ceased to be a nation, their lite
rature became daily more and more unconnected with the
affairs of active life. This was first and most conspicuously
the fate of their philosophy whose scientific principles
were at all times in opposition to the popular faith, and
whose lofty conceptions were now no longer in unison with
the degraded feelings of that fallen nation. Historical
information became, indeed, much more extensive ; and
historical literature received a more scientific form, and was
applied to a greater variety of subjects than of old ; but
the vigour of ancient conceptions, and the free spirit of
ancient enquiry, were for ever gone, The art of rhetoric
increased daily in public opinion, and soon came to form
almost the only subject of public interest and amusement.
If a fantastical and sophistical abuse of this art was not
uncommon, even in the older and better times of Greece,
it is easy to see to what extent that must now have pre
vailed when her political independence was entirely lost,
and the public taste, even in language, was utterly debased.
Even poetry, with which the whole mental cultivation of
Greece began, had descended from her original eminence,
and become reduced to the rank of an art which men sup
posed might be acquired by means of rules and practice,
like a handicraft. Even poetry could not be exempted
from the influence of the degradation which surrounded
her. The fate of sculpture was much more fortunate : per
haps because that art has less connexion with the affairs of
active life. The artist laboured on, in the seclusion of his
72 HISTOKY OF LITERATURE.
workshop, to embody in marble the lofty conceptions of
preceding ages, without regard to the political degradation
or moral corruption of the time in which he lived. It is
true that the relaxation of manners gave rise to a certain
eifeminacy and perversion of taste even in sculpture ; but
this evil was far from being so widely prevalent as the
corresponding corruptions in the sister arts. There is no
doubt that very many of those Avorks of ancient sculpture
and architecture, whose beauty and perfection still appear
to us unrivalled, were the production of the same age
which saw oratory and poetry reduced altogether to a state
of decay and degradation.
In those sciences which are the most unconnected with
external life, and have little dependence on the political or
private manners of a nation, the inventive genius of the
Greeks still displayed itself in all its brilliancy and strength.
In the mathematics, although they were destitute of many
instruments which have been invented by modern inge
nuity, and which now appear altogether indispensable,
they made great progress both in geometry and astronomy ;
and the true system of the universe, which had, it is sup
posed, been guessed at, in a much earlier age, by the Pytha
goreans, was now perfectly known and recognised by at
least a great number of then- philosophers. The wonder
working science and ingenuity of Archimedes were such,
as to strike even the Romans with terror and amazement
and although they had no better system of numeration
than the very defective one of letters, and were even igno-
rent of reckoning by decimals, the Greeks may boast of
having produced, in Euclid, a geometrical writer whose
works are esteemed of classical authority even by the
profoundest mathematicians of modern times. Medicine,
which had always been a favourite pursuit among the
Greeks, now became one of their principal occupations, and
furnished them with free scope for the exercise of all their
acuteness, inventiveness, and love of systems. " It was not
only by means of their literature, and their eminence as
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 73
rhetoricians and grammarians, but also, in no inconsider
able degree, by means of their skill as artists, mathema
ticians, and physicians, that the Greeks acquired their
power over Roman intellect ; a power which, however
much the old Roman prejudices were at first against it,
made daily progress after the two nations had been brought
fairly into contact ; and, in consequence of the capture of
Tarentum, and the subjection of Magna Grascia and Sicily
to the Roman arms, soon became a matter of indispensable
necessity to the whole habits of the victorious people.
Twice were the Greek rhetoricians and philosophers banished
from Rome by a decree of the senate ; and the elder Cato,
that undistinguishing enemy of every thing that was Greek,
could not even abide that Greek physicians should cure
Roman maladies. He depicted these practitioners as im
pious sorcerers, who contradicted the course of nature, and
restored dying men to life by means of unholy charms ; and
advised his countrymen to remain steadfast, not only by their
old Roman principles and manners, but also by the vene
rable unguents and balsams which had come down to them
from the wisdom of their grandmothers. How necessary
the Greek rhetoricians, and the teachers of the Greek arts
and language had become to the Romans, may be gathered
from the speedy appearance of a second decree of banish
ment, which shows that veiy little attention had been paid
to the injunctions of the first. Nor is it difficult to discover
the origin of all this. The Greek language was at that
time universally diffused throughout the whole of the civi
lised world. The poems of Homer were read in the re
motest districts of Asia ; even the Indians were not, in all
probability, entirely ignorant of Grecian literature ; while,
in the furthest extremity of the west, Carthaginian navi
gators described their voyages of discovery, and Hannibal
himself wrote the history of his wars in the language of the
Greeks. After the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily?
whose language was almost entirely Greek, and still more
after they had by degrees acquired the dominion of Mace-
74 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
donia and Achaia, a knowledge of this language must have
become every day more and more necessary to the Romans,
especially on account of the many historical works which
the Greeks possessed, respecting all those nations and
countries with which the extended circle of their political
operations had now brought that ambitious people into
contact. The Greek language was adopted even by the
Romans, who attempted, about that period, to write the
history of their own nation ; and the Greek Polybius, who
came to Rome as a hostage in the course of the Achaian
wars, was the first who described to this great people the
state of the world, and the political relations of its inhabi
tants, in a work which, at least in a political point of view,
must always be considered as classical even by the latest
posterity. Livius Andronicus, a Greek taken captive at
Tarentum, who was acquainted with the Latin language,
first enabled the Romans to hear and read the Odyssey in
the rude disguise of their native tongue ; and afterwards, by
means of his translations, introduced them to some acquaint
ance with the pleasures of theatrical exhibitions and the
riches of the Grecian drama. But it is not to be denied that
the principal inducement which led first the Romans of high
rank, and afterwards the whole of the nation, to admire and
imitate the institutions and language of the Greeks, was
unquestionably this, a knowledge of the language and
manners of the Greeks was a necessary step to an acquaint
ance with their rhetoric. Eloquence, even in Rome, ex
ited over political events an influence always powerful not
unfrequently imperative and conclusive : and, in the more
troublesome times which followed the period of Gracchus
the popular passion became every day more violent for all
the instruments of this art,-in spite of the remonstrances
of some sturdy patriots, who condemned it as a system of
sophistry, not only dangerous to the welfare of the state,
t utterly inimical to the progress and soundness of the
human intellect.
The later literature of the Romans is such as to keep us
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 75
perpetually in mind of its origin ; and few are now dis
posed to question the truth of the common assertion
that the Koman writers are in general mere imitators of
the Greeks.
It is absolutely necessary that those nations who make
their appearance at a later period of the history of the
world, as well as of the general development of human
intellect, should derive a great part of their mental culti
vation as a legacy from the polished nations of the more
early times ; and this implies, in itself, no reproach. It
were preposterous to introduce into literature the petty
ideas of a mercantile town, and to insist that the writers
of each nation should labour to make their productions as
different as possible from those of their neighbours. To
make use of the cultivation of another people is far from
disgraceful : it is only necessary that we preserve our sub
stantial individuality as a nation ; that we do not part with
the original peculiarities of our language and mode of think
ing ; nor sacrifice what is most our own, out of an extra
vagant admiration for what belongs originally to others.
Knowledge is, in itself, the common property of all na
tions ; and the genius of a poet or of a philosopher, who
aspires to exert a commanding influence on his fellow-
countrymen, is exalted and enriched by a retrospect to
the high points of perfection in art, in reflection, in spirit,
and in language, to which the men of former ages and
other countries have attained.
That imitation alone is lifeless which aims not to extend
the field, and increase the power of native genius, but
merely to appropriate peculiar species of writing used by
a foreign nation an attempt which can seldom be crowned
with entire success and to reach, by elaborate artifice,
beauties, whose very existence depends, in a great measure,
on their being altogether natural and unsought.
The literature of Rome has fallen in some measure into
both of these errors. Her writers both neglected the an
cient and national traditions of their own country, and
76 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
bestowed much unprofitable labour on the imitation of
foreign modes of writing, which, as soon as they are trans
planted from their native soil, for the most part assume the
appearance of unproductiveness, coldness, and death ; or, at
best, protract a lingering and inefficient life, like the sickly
exotics of a greenhouse.
There is, nevertheless, a character peculiar to the writers
of Rome, by means of which in spite of the servility with
which they have, in general, imitated their models and
originals in the literature of Greece their works have ob
tained an appearance of dignity and worthiness, that are
altogether their own. This, indeed, belongs not so much
to themselves as to their nation to Borne, the great point
of union between the ancient and the modern world.
The artist who excels in sculpture or painting, must be-"
altogether animated and inspired with one great and in
dwelling idea, which occupies his whole soul ; an idea for
which he forgets all others, and in which alone he lives, and
to which all his works are entirely subservient. His master
pieces are mere attempts to body forth, and render visible
to others, the greatness of those conceptions which have
their residence within the depths of his own mind. In
like manner, every true poet, and every great inventive
author, must be filled with some idea peculiarly his own,
and all-powerful over his soul which is the central point
and focus of his intellect to which every thing else is sub
ordinate ; and of which the writings, wherein he embodies
his spirit, are but the ministers, interpreters, and tools.
Here it is that the superiority of Greeks over Romans is
manifest and triumphant. Think only of the great poets of
the glorious time of Greece of JEschylus, Pindar, Sopho
cles ; or of the patriotic poet of the populace, Aristophanes ;
or of the orator Demosthenes or of the two first of his
torians, Herodotus and Thucydides or those profouudest
of thinkers, Aristotle and Plato. In each of these great
authors we shall find a distinct and peculiar spirit of re
flection, a peculiar manner of narration, a peculiar form of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 77
composition ; even with regard to style and language, the
first time we open the pages of one of these master-spirits,
we feel as if we were transplanted into an unknown world.
Thus rich and manifold was the genius of the Greeks ; but
we should seek in vain for so great a spirit of originality
among the Roman writers. Yet there is something in
them which atones for this defect; they also have their
high, their great idea not that the individuals are so fa
voured but the possession is common to them all : it is
th^J.dea_of_E,OME of Rome so wonderful in her ancient
manners and laws, so great even in her errors and her
crimes ; of Rome, so eternally remarkable for the unrivalled
dominion with which she ruled the world. It is this spirit
which breathes from the lips of every Roman, and which
stamps a character of independent dignity and grandeur,
even on his most slavish imitations of the writings of the
Greeks.
The greatness and the political activity of the state, on
the one hand, and the power and audacious exertion of
intellect in the individuals of which the state is composed,
on the other, are, by the nature of things, in some measure
opposed to each other ; although it be unquestionably both
a natural and a proper feeling, which makes every good
citizen wish equal success to political energy and indivi
dual genius, in the country to which he belongs.
As affairs are constituted, this much is certain, that so
manifold and various a development of human faculties as
that which took place in Greece, can never occur in any
state where the principle of patriotism has attained a cer
tain point of predominance where men have no thoughts
and no feelings which are not occupied and penetrated with
the greatness and the glory of their country. It was ne
cessary that Athens should have been as free as she really
was sufficiently free to allow a large portion of her citizens
to abstract themselves altogether from political concerns,
without any danger to their political privileges before
she could have displayed, as she has done,, in every de-
78 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
partmeut of intellect and art, the unrivalled energies of the
Grecian genius. Sparta was the only state in Greece, con
stituted as such, at once virtuously and powerfully ; the
only state whose triumphs were not confined to temporary
dominion and success, but extended to a strong, a sound,
and an enduring political existence. These advantages were
not to be gained without some sacrifice : and Sparta chose
to obtain them by adopting a system of municipal institu
tions, the tendency of which was to confine the whole
thoughts and manners of her citizens within a particular
range. She was content to be without philosophers and
poets, provided she could only have sagacious statesmen
and intrepid warriors ; and he who, had he been born in
Athens, might have become a Sophocles or a Plato, envied,
at Lacedaemon, no other names but those of Lycurgus and
Leonidas.
But I must illustrate the truth of my position respecting
the Roman authors, by a recurrence to individual examples.
Is it not clear, that in Caesar, or even in Cicero, (consider
ing both of these merely as writers,) there is a something
which sets them at once far before the rhetoricians, gram
marians, philosophers, and sophists, whose pupils they evi
dently are in all that regards language, eloquence, and
mode of thinking, and to whom they are so often and so
obviously inferior in the acuteness and the scientific know
ledge, which it is one principal object of their writings to
display ? Every one must feel that here, as in all the works
of the great Roman writers, there breathes a spirit very
different from that of the corrupted sophistry of the later
age of Greece. This is not the genius, or the peculiar
spirit of the authors themselves : it is the idea of Rome
the idea of the solitary grandeur of their country, which,
although its operations be very different, alike animates
them all ; and, like the unseen spirit of life, pervades and
illuminates the whole body of their writings.
That the Romans learned or borrowed every thing from the
Greeks, and had, in reality, nothing which was peculiarly,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 79
and from antiquity, their own, is very far from the truth.
We should come nearer the mark if we should say, that,
through the overmastering influence of Greek manners and
Greek authors, the Romans of a later period were induced to
forget what they ought most carefully to have cherished and
preserved the old heroic tales and national poems of their
ancestors. These surely were the productions of an age far
preceding any knowledge or imitation of Grecian models ; and
yet, so much have they been despised, that we can scarcely
perceive any trace of their existence, except in certain relics
which have been transferred from true poetry to the half-fabu
lous histories of the infant ages of Rome. In many passages
of those Roman writers who were the best acquainted with
the ancient usages and manners of their country, allusion is
made to the existence of certain old songs, whose purpose
was to celebrate the illustrious actions of their early ances
tors, and which had commonly been sung at their religious
festivals, as well as at the private entertainments of the Ro
man nobles. There, then, were heroic poems, wherein the
patriotic feelings and the poetical genius of the Romans
found means to express themselves, long before the Romans
became the pupils of the Greeks, and acquired from them,
along with that sophistical eloquence of which I have al
ready said so much, a style of poetry more regular and
learned, and, in every thing which respects prosody and
language, incomparatively more polished than that which
they had of old possessed. If it should be asked what were
the subjects of these old Roman poems, the Roman histo
ries, I conceive, may easily furnish us with an answer. Not
only the fabulous birth and fate of Romulus, and the rape
of the Sabine women, but also the most poetical combat ot
the Horatii and Curiatii the pride of Tarquin the mis
fortune and death of Lucretia, with their bloody revenge,
and the establishment of liberty by the elder Brutus the
wonderful war of Porsenna, and the steadfastness of Sca>
vola the banishment of Coriolanus, the war which he
Mndled against his country, the subsequent struggle of his
80 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
feelings, and the final triumph of his patriotism at the all-
powerful intercession of his mother: these, and the like
circumstances, if they be examined from the proper point
of view, cannot fail to be considered as the relics and frag
ments of the ancient heroic traditions and heroic poems of
the Romans. As such, they are of great value ; and that
cannot be diminished by any difficulties which the mere
historical student may experience, in reconciling the dis
crepancies of narrative, or explaining the obscurities of al
lusion, with which, in their present condition, they abound.
That many things which, of right, belong to these ancient
poems, still exist under the disguise of an historical cloth
ing ; that in Livy, above all, the spirit and power of these
old songs is often the predominant inspiration of the nar
rative, has, indeed, very frequently been conjectured. But
it was reserved for a learned inquirer of our own time,
Niebuhr, to take these compositions to pieces, and to detect,
with a felicity which has seldom been equalled, the modern
inventions and additions by which incidents, in themselves
unconnected, have been artificially conjoined. This critic
has, indeed, taken away from the Roman history ; but we
have gained through his means a more accurate acquaint
ance with the nature of the ancient Roman traditions
which we possess. Before the rhythm and artifices of
Greek versification had weaned Roman ears from their
affection for the simple sounds of their own songs, these
historical or heroic adventures were sung in a loose sort of
verses, which the ancient Italians called Saturnalian ; and
which, excepting that they had no rhyme, bore a strong
resemblance to those lawless Alexandrines, as they were
called, of which almost all the nations of Europe made nse,
during the period of the middle ages.
These heroic ballads of the more early Romans if we
may judge of their general import from the materials which
they have furnished to the Roman historians seem to have
aimed at the narration of no incident which did not belong
to their country, and at the expression of no feelings but
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 81
such as were purely patriotic. We perceive in them, indeed,
no inconsiderable admixture of love for the marvellous ; but
even that propensity seems to have been exclusively na
tional in its character and spirit ; for the Roman fablers
appear to have indulged themselves in the creation of no
wonders which might not redound in some measure, to the
honour of their ancestors. It is much to be regretted, that
the manifold witchery of the Odyssey, and the perfect har
mony of the ever various hexameter, should have made so
entire a conquest of the ears and souls of the Romans, as to
leave no room for a more affectionate preservation of these
ancient poems of their country.
There is, however, another reason which tended, in no in
considerable degree, to render the Romans indifferent, if not
averse, to their heroic legends ; and which must have mainly
contributed towards bringing these into a state of neglect,
the consequences of which have been, that, with the excep
tion of those fragments which have been imperfectly pre
served in the shape of a half-fabulous and ill-connected
chronicle, they have been utterly lost, not only to the his
tory of Rome, but to that of the world itself, of which Rome
became afterwards the mistress. The last heroic personage
of the old Roman history is Camillas, who delivered Rome
of her invaders, the Gauls. He falls within the period both
from tradition and of poetry ; and there can be no doubt that
his fame was transmitted, in songs, to the posterity of those
whom he had set free. With the expulsion of the Gauls,
the historical period of Rome begins. During the time when
they ravaged the country, the ancient monuments must in a
great measure have perished ; for every thing previous to
this epoch is dark and doubtful, even that which is founded
on fact is perpetually intermingled with a texture of fabu
lous inventions. From this time, moreover, the true period of
Roman greatness commences. In a historical point of view,
it is even the proper period of Roman heroism ; and to it we
may probably refer the composition of those old heroic songs,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of which Cato and Cicero make mention, and which Enuius
and even Livy had perpetually before their eyes.
:Now, the older traditions concerning the kings and heroes
of the infant city, the establishment of its republican gov
ernment, and the vicissitudes of its early fate, were near
enough to this age of Roman valour and virtue, to be still
felt with all that power and pressure which are necessary
to make such events the fit subjects of national poetry. But
at a period somewhat later, the case was widely different.
After the subjection of Tarentum, Italy, Sicily, Macedonia,
Carthage, Spain, and Achaia, there could have been com
paratively little sympathy between the petty Rome of anti
quityof her that made war against the Sabines, or belea
guered the town of Veii for as many years as Agamemnon
did Troy and mighty Rome pressing on to the dominion of
the world, with an irresistible rapidity and an unwavering
confidence in the ascendency of her victorious star. The
Greeks were, even from the remotest times, a numerous
nation, divided into many tribes, and having possession of
extensive territories. But the original patrimony of the
Romans consisted of a single village ; and they had formed
themselves, first, into an independent, and afterwards into
a conquering people, entirely by the incorporation of fo
reigners who took little interest in the traditions of their
earliest achievements.
It was, therefore, an inevitable consequence of the nature
of the things themselves, and of the progress of events, that
these ancient patriotic traditions and poems should gradually
sink into neglect at least that they should never form the
groundwork of a polished and developed literature ; and,
in short, that the Romans should adopt in their stead the
thoughts, the recollections, and the poetry of the Greeks.
The blame of this should by no means be exclusively
attached to Ennius ; although it be true that the acute
historical critic, whom I have cited above, has accused that
writer of maliciously calumniating and depressing these
HISTOKY OF LITERATURE. 83
ancient compositions, in order that he himself might be con
sidered as the author and founder of Roman poetry. It is,
however, certain that Ennius boasted, with much openness,
that he was animated with three different souls in allusion
to his knowledge of three languages Greek, Latin, and
Oscian, or ancient Italian. And there is no improbability
in the supposition that a man who did so, was not a little
proud of his success (imperfect as that really was) in
transferring the music of the Greek hexameter into another
tongue. The greatest of poets are not always exempt from
this sort of vanity, and often attach a very undue weight
to some merely external circumstances in their composition.
They judge too much of the value of what they have done,
by the labour which it has cost them to do it ; and think
little, on the other hand, of those qualities which form their
real excellence nay, are sometimes almost unconscious of
the existence of that internal inspiration which animates
their genius, and awakens our sympathy. Ennius, for
instance, appears to have thought more about his versifica
tion than his poetry ; and to have too much despised the old
poets of his native country, merely because they had not,
like himself, made use of the rich and various measures of
the Greeks. Yet there is no doubt that Ennius was a true
poet. In many of his verses which have been preserved by
succeeding writers, there breathes the noble spirit of genuine
emotion. But even if every fragment of his writings had
perished, the admiration with which he was regarded by
Lucretius would have been sufficient to place him high in
our esteem. That illustrious poet, it is well known, con
sidered Ennius as his master and his model. His genius
was of a kindred order; and he bore to him a strong
resemblance, both in the turn of his thoughts and the flow
of his diction.
From this time the imitation of the Greek writers pro
ceeded rapidly, although not with uniform success. Of all
the compositions of the Greeks, their histories and their
orations were most interesting to the Romans, and most
84 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
akin to their political habits. They were, consequently,
most fortunate in their imitations of these modes of writing.
The Greek philosophy, on the other hand, was always
foreign to them ; and the success of their imitations of
Greek poetry was very different in the different departments
of the art.
In the drama the Romans were perpetually making
attempts, from the time of Ennius downward. In truth,
however, they have left nothing in that department of
poetry except translations from the Greek, more or less
exact, but never executed with sufficient spirit to entitle
them even to the less servile name of imitations. The lost
tragedians, Pacuvius and Attius, were mere translators ; and
the same thing may be said of the two comic poets, Plautus
and Terence, whose writings are in our hands. That old
domestic species of bantering comedy, which was known by
the Oscian name of fabula attdlana, was not, however,
entirely laid aside : it still preserved its place as an amuse
ment of society in the merry meetings of the nobles ; who,
in the midst of all their foreign refinements, were willing,
now and then, to revive in this way their recollections of
the national sports and diversions of their Italian ancestry.
With the exception of this low species of buffoon writing,
the Romans never possessed any thing which deserved to
be called a dramatic literature of their own. With regard
to their translations from the Greek tragedians, one princi
pal cause of their stiffness and general want of success was
this that the mythology, which forms the essence of these
compositions, was in fact foreign to the Roman people. It
is very true that the general outline of the Roman mytho
logy was originally copied from that of the Greeks, but the
individual parts of the two fabrics were altogether different
and local. Iphigenia and Orestes were always more or less
foreigners to a Roman audience ; and the whole drama, in
which these and similar personages figured, never attained
in Rome any more healthy state of existence than that of
an exotic in a greenhouse, which is only preserved from
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 85
death by the daily application of artificial heat and unsatis
fying labour. The names of the individual tragedies, which
were supposed to be the best of their kind in the time of
Augustus, may suffice to show us how narrow was the circle
in which the Roman dramatists moved, and how soon their
tragic art has reached the termination of its progress. The
same thing may easily be gathered from a consideration of
those orations in dramatic form which are commonly as
cribed to Seneca. In like manner, the representation of the
foreign manners of Athens, which perpetually occupied the
Roman comedy, must have appeared to Roman spectators
at once cold and uninteresting. It is no difficult matter to
perceive the reasons why the witchery of pantomime and
dance soon supplanted at Rome every other species of dra
matic spectacle.
There is one of a still more serious nature upon which I
have not yet touched. The Roman people had by degrees
become accustomed to take a barbarous delight in the most
wanton displays of human violence and brutal cruelty.
Hundreds of lions and elephants fought and bled before their
eyes ; even Roman ladies could look on, and see crowds of
hireling gladiators wasting energy, valour, and life on the
guilty arena of a circus. It is but too evident that they
who could take pleasure in spectacles such as these, must
very soon have lost all that tenderness of inward feeling,
and all that sympathy for inward suffering, without which
none can perceive the force and beauty of a tragic drama.
Still, however, it may unquestionably appear a strange
thing, that, since the Romans did make many attempts
at the composition of tragedies, they should never have
chosen their subjects from the ancient history or traditions
of their country ; more particularly when we consider that
the tragedians of modern times have borrowed from these
very sources many subjects of a highly poetical nature,
and, at the same time, far from being unsusceptible of dra
matic representation, such as the combat of the Horatii,
the firmness of Brutus, the internal conflict and changed
86 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
spirit of Coriolamis, restoring in this way to poetry what
was originally among the most rightful of her possessions.
To find a satisfactory solution of this difficulty, we must
examine into the nature of these neglected themes. The
patriotic feelings embodied in these traditions were too
much akin to the feelings of every Roman audience, to admit
of being brought forward upon a stage. The story of Corio-
lanus may serve as an example. How could a Roman poet
have dared to represent this haughty patrician in the full
strength of his disdain and scorn of plebeians, at the time
when the Gracchi were straining every nerve to set the
plebeians free from the authority of the nobles? What
effect must it have had to introduce the banished Corio-
lanus upon a Roman stage, reproaching, in his merited
indignation, with bitter words and dear-bought mockery,
the jealous levity of his countrymen, at a time when the
noblest and the most free-spirited of the last Romans, Serto-
rius, from his place of exile among the unsubdued tribes of
Spain and Lusitania, meditated more complete revenge
against similar ingratitude, and was laying plans for the
destruction of the old, and the foundation of a second Rome?
Or how could a Roman audience have endured to see Corio-
lanus represented as approaching Rome at the head of a
hostile and victorious army, at the time when Sylla was in
reality at open war with his country ; or even at a somewhat
later period, when the principal events of his history must
have still been familiar and present to the recollection of
his countrymen? Not in these instances alone, but in the
whole body of the early traditions and history of Rome,
the conflict between patricians and plebeians occupied so
pre-eminent a place, as to render Roman subjects incapable
of theatrical representation during the times of the republic.
Much more does this apply to the age of Augustus and his
successors, when, indeed, Brutus and the ancient consular
heroes could not have failed to be the most unwelcome of
all personages. We may find sufficient illustrations of these
remarks in the history of the modern drama. For, although
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 87
Shakespeare has not hesitated to represent the civil wars of
York and Lancaster on the English stage, we must observe,
that before he did so, these wars had entirely terminated ;
and the recurrence of similar events could not easily have
been foreseen by one living in the pacific times of James.
With regard to our German drama, it is true that our tragic
poets have chosen many of their most interesting subjects
from our civil tumults particularly from the thirty years
war ; but even here the case is very different from what it
would have been among the Komans. The Germans are,
indeed, countrymen, but they are not all subjects of the
same state. And yet with us, the poets who handle sucli
topics at much length, have a very difficult task to perform ;
they have need of much delicacy to avoid wounding, or per
haps reviving the feelings of parties, and thus destroying
the proper impression which their poetry should make.
Such are the reasons why the Romans had no national
tragedies, and why, in general, they had no such thing as
a theatre of their own.
Among their poets who applied themselves to other de
partments of the art, Lucretius stands by himself in Roman
literature, whether we consider the subjects or the spirit of
his writings. Perhaps, indeed, he may give us something
like an idea of the style and manner of the more ancient
Roman poets. By the later Romans he was little thought
of: they neither felt his beauties, nor appreciated his genius.
His work concerning the nature of things, belongs to that
species of writing which arose among the Greeks out of
particular circumstances in their history, and which, among
them only, was a national mode of composition the didac
tic poetry of science. The philosophy which he has chosen
to illustrate, was the worst which he could have selected,
either as a Roman or as a poet. The system of Epicurus,
I mean which annihilates all belief and all lofty feeling ;
which, in a scientific point of view, is connected with the
most absurd of hypotheses ; which, in its influence on life,
if not immoral, is at least selfish and unpatriotic ; and which,
88 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
above all, is the deadly enemy of every thing like fancy and
poetry. It is true that Lucretius has mastered all these
difficulties ; but who can see, without regret, a spirit so noble,
as that which is every where apparent in his writings,
devoted and enslaved to a destructive system of Grecian
sophistry? In inspiration, and in sublimity, he is the first
of Roman poets ; as a painter and worshipper of nature, he
is the first of all the poets of antiquity whose writings have
come down to us. With regard to the species of writing
which he adopted, and in general with regard to the place
which nature should occupy in poetical compositions, I shall
now make a few general remarks.
And in the first place, I think it will be admitted on all
hands, that poetry may choose the subject of her descriptions
as well as the source of her inspiration, not only in human
beings themselves, but with equal propriety in the external
nature with which they are surrounded. In the poetry of
nature, as in the poetry of man, there is room for a three
fold distinction. The poetry of man may be, first, a clear
mirror of actual life and the present ; or, secondly, an em
bodying of the recollections of a marvellous antiquity, and
departed age of heroic actions and adventures ; or, thirdly,
if it be in the hands of a poet who desires rather to inspire
than to describe, it may consist in a stirring up and
awakening of the hidden depths of human feeling. All
this might be equally well said of the poetry of nature.
For this poetry may, in the first place, give us a picture of
the external appearances of things ; and for this purpose
introduce all that is quickening and enlivening in spring ;
all that is generous or powerful in animals ; all that is beau
tiful and lovely in flowers and trees ; all, in short, that
seems to the eyes of men sublime or pleasing, whether in
the heavens under which they move, or on the earth upon
which they tread. The only difficulty here is to avoid
exuberance ; for descriptions which are too full, even al
though they should be perfectly just, are distressing to us,
and destroy their own effect 5 while solitary flowers from
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 89
the fulness of nature, inserted at due intervals into the web
of poetry, lend a charm to the whole texture which no
other ornament can rival. But nature also, in the second
place, had her wonderful past ; she also has had her times
of gigantic dimension and unfettered energy, which corres
pond with the heroic ages in the history of man. To be
convinced of this, we need only attempt to analyse the feel
ings with which we ourselves survey nature in her wildest
forms ; the awe with which we are struck when we enter
into some savage wilderness, where rocks and hills, and
woods and waters, are all mingled together in the shapeless
majesty of chaos. Or we may reflect for a moment on the
tenor of all ancient traditions they abound in the display
of the great physical catastrophes of the past. All the
more unusual and terrific appearances of nature storms,
tempests, floods, and earthquakes seem to be scattered
remnants of this ancient state of things, and carry us back
for a moment into the bosom of this mysterious past. These
are among the most proper and the most dignified subjects
of poetry, and of them, accordingly, the great painter of
nature, Lucretius, has made frequent use. But here, also,
the poet must be contented with the general representation
of a state of things more wild and free a past age of
greater and more terrific operations. He must be con
tented with the possession of a theatre on which nature
may perform her most awful tragedies ; but he must not
scrutinise with too close an eye the mysteries of her work
ing. It is no part of his province to explain the scientific-"
causes of these great phenomena. If he should begin to
teach us how the mountains were framed it makes no dif
ference whether he adopts the theory of fire or water he
has overstepped his limits ; he has entered upon a topic as
remote from his art as that system of atoms which even
the unrivalled imagination of Lucretius could not represent
in a manner thoroughly poetical. But there is yet a third
mode in which the poet may make use of nature. Between^
the poet and nature, no less than between the poet and
90 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
man, there is the sympathy of feeling. Not only in the
song of the nightingale, or in those melodies to which all
men listen, but even in the roar of the stream, and the
rushing of the forest, the poet thinks that he hears a kindred
voice of sorrow or of gladness : as if spirits and feelings like
our own were calling to us from afar, or seeking to sympa
thise and communicate with us from the utmost nearness
to which their nature will allow them to approach us. It
is for the purpose of listening to these tones, and of holding
mysterious converse with the soul of nature, that every great
poet is a lover of solitude. The question of the philosophic
enquirer, whether nature be, in truth, so animated, or whe
ther all this be not mere self-deception, is one of no avail.
It is sufficient that this feeling and this aspiration are things
which exist, more or less, in the fancy and the breast, not
of poets only, but of all men. In the writings of the Greeks
and Romans, we have only a few traces of this sort of poetry:
they are more abundant in those of our northern ancestry,
because these lived less in cities, and were, of course, more
intimate with the simple forms of nature. But the truth is,
that all these descriptions and feelings of nature should
never, in poetry, be cut off and separated from the represen
tation of those human beings, of whose real life they form
the most beautiful ornaments. When they are insulated and
set forth by themselves, the great and perfect picture of the
world, which it is the business of poetry to place before our
eyes, becomes contracted in its limits : the harmony is irre
mediably destroyed, and that power, which is so irresistible
when all is together, becomes broken, dissipated, and inef
fectual. The scientific poetry of nature which is to be found
in Lucretius is, in fact, as defective, as a mode of writing,
as the doctrines which he defends are destructive as a sys
tem of philosophy; and this is not the less true, because
Lucretius himself is entitled, as a man, to much respect as
a poet, to our most enthusiastic admiration.
The great writers of Rome may be best classed and
arranged according to the periods in which they were pro-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 91
duced. The last ages of the republic were somewb at less per
fect in point of language, but perhaps in every other respect
richer, than the age of Augustus. Cicero, considered as an
orator, possesses great variety of materials, and is sufficient
ly skilful in his application of them to the purposes of his
art : perhaps the greatness of the events of which they treat,
and the high place which Cicero himself holds in the history
of the world, have . conferred on these orations a character
of still higher importance than that which they intrinsically
deserve. It seems, at least, by no means easy to be ex
plained, why compositions so often overflowing with ver
bosity, should have come to be considered as standards of
good writing. Even his contemporaries used to reproach
him with imitating the swell and pomp of Asiatic eloquence.
But, in truth, the influence which Cicero exerted on the
literature and general character of the Roman people, pro
ceeded principally from his having been the introducer of
the more elevated moral philosophy of the Greeks. For
those more abstruse speculations, among the labyrinths of
which the spirit of the Greeks was so delighted to find a fit
exercise for its subtleness and ingenuity, neither Cicero nor
any other Roman writer possessed either feeling or talent.
But as a friend and lover of philosophy, Cicero must ever be
conspicuous. He found in it consolation in private adver
sity, comfort in political misfortunes, occupation in retire
ment, and amusement in exile. The philosophy of Plato
was his principal favourite ; he considered him as the most
happy specimen of an universally beautiful and cultivated
intellect, and agreed with all antiquity in esteeming his
works the models of perfection, both in reasoning and in lan
guage. But Plato, however skilfully he had elaborated the
individual parts of his philosophy, had never reduced its
whole doctrines to any regular system ; in consequence of
which circumstance, the later disciples of the Platonic school,
through the medium of whom the whole of the Platonic
doctrines became known to the Romans, had returned, in a
92 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
great measure, to the prejudices of scepticism. This was
attended with the worst consequences in the department of
Ethics, and accordingly Cicero very often, in regard to that
subject, made use of the doctrines of Zeno ; or where he
found the austerity of these too repulsive, had recourse to
those of Aristotle, who, as he professed in every thing to
prefer the medium, so in morals he formed himself the me
dium between the severity of the Stoics and the laxity of
the Epicureans. To this last school Cicero was uniformly
hostile, and certainly not without reason. It would, in
deed, be too much to believe that all those ancient philo
sophers who, like Epicurus, considered pleasure as the last
and highest end of human existence, really extracted from
this opinion, and exemplified in their practice, all the evil
which we can trace to the adoption of similar principles.
But even allowing that by this pleasure, which they consi
dered as the chiet good of man, they understood not posi
tive sensual gratification, as was the case with Aristippus,
but only a painless state of intellectual enjoyment which
the best of the Epicureans, like the other philosophers of
Greece, conceived was only to be found in the exercise of
intellectual energies, and the society of congenial Mends ;
even allowing this, and laying out of the question all that
grossness of abuse which has been heaped on Epicurus and
his disciples, these philosophers were all in so far wrong,
that they taught mankind to seek for their best happiness
any where else than in a vigorous discharge of their active
duties as men and as citizens. These doctrines tended, at
least, to make men regard themselves too exclusively as
beings independent of political events ; and the adoption of
them at Rome was probably extremely hurtful to the Eoman
constitution. Cicero, in his enmity to Epicurus and his
doctrines, was guided by the feelings of a wise and reflect
ing patriotism. And on this account it is that his philoso
phical writings have been the favourite study of many active
statesmen who had not leisure to follow out Ions? trains of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 93
profound reasoning, but were willing to diversify their mo
ments of leisure by the perusal of works abounding in sane
and rational views of human actions and principles.
In the form, as well as in the style of his composition,
Cicero is extremely unequal ; but this is a fault with which
almost all the Roman writers are more or less chargeable,
and is, indeed, a natural consequence of the difficulty which
they must have experienced in reducing that which they
had borrowed or learned from the Greeks to an entire har
mony with the thoughts, feelings, and expressions which
were original in themselves.
We have the first specimen of a perfect equality of ex
pression in Ca3sar. In his writings he displays the same
character which distinguished him in action : all is directed
to one end, and every thing is better adapted to the attain
ment of that end than any thing which could have been
substituted in its room. He possesses, in the utmost per
fection, two qualities which, next to liveliness, are the most
necessary in historical compositions clearness and simpli
city. And yet how widely different are the distinctness
and brevity of Ca3sar, from that open-hearted guilelessness.
and almost Homer-like loquacity and clearness, which we
admire in Herodotus. As a general arranges his troops
where they can act the most efficiently and the most secure
ly, and is careful to make use of every advantage against
his enemy, even so does Caesar arrange every word and
expression with a view to its ultimate effect and even so
steadfastly does he pursue his object, without being ever
tempted to turn to the right hand or to the left. Among
these ancient generals who, like him, have described their
own achievements, Xenophon, with all the perfection of his
Attic taste, occupies, as a commander, too insignificant a
place to be for a moment put in comparison with Caesar.
Several of Alexander s generals, and Hannibal himself,
wrote accounts of the remarkable campaigns in which they
had been engaged, but unfortunately, their compositions
have entirely perished. The Roman, even as a writer, when
94 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
we compare him with those who, in similar situations, have
made similar attempts, is still Caesar the unrivalled and
the unconquered.
In the drawing of characters, and indeed, in general, as a
historical painter, Sallust has few equals ; but he is neither
so clear nor so consistent a writer, nor endued with so deli
cate a sense of propriety, as Cassar. Here and there we
perpetually meet with something forced in his style, and
detect the elaborate artifice of a practised writer. Even in
history a form of writing which was more easily than any
other transplanted to Rome from the Greek republics, where
it had its origin the close imitation of any individual model
never failed to produce disagreeable consequences ; and of
this we have a striking example in Sallust, whose strict
imitation of Thucydides has gone far to lessen the effect of
his own great original genius.
In this first flourishing age of Roman authors, it is easy
to perceive of what advantage it is to the literature of any
nation, that men of the most elevated rank should take a
part in it, and co-operate with their inferiors in the for
warding of its development. Their influence insensibly
extends itself to every department of literature ; and their
countrymen learn to treat of every thing, and to judge of
every thing, as if they were all animated with the dignified
spirit of nobility. It is to this circumstance that the
Roman literature is indebted for a great part of its charac-
terestic greatness of thought and expression. As after the
death of Brutus, a new order of things commenced in the
political world, the world of letters experienced a corre
sponding revolution. The literature of the age of Augustus
is distinguished by a tone of spirit entirely its own. The
free voice of eloquence was stopped ; and the consequence
was, that men returned again with redoubled affection to
poetry, which had been mute, in a great measure, during
the tempestuous periods of the civil wars. Nothing, it was
now supposed, could so well celebrate and adorn the resto
ration of peace, and the happy reign of Octavius, as the ap-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 95
pearance of great national poets, who might supply the chief
defect in the literature of their country, and create a body
of classical works, in which the ancient Roman traditions
might be handed down to posterity. With a view to this,
not Virgil alone, but also Propertius and Horace, were flat
tered, courted, and enriched in a manner to which the lite
rary men of all other ages and countries have been strangers
by the liberal courtiers of Augustus. Propertius, by the
richness of his style, seems to have been well qualified for
epic poetry ; but he would not sacrifice for fame the free
dom of his own inclinations : he lived only for himself, and
those feelings of friendship and unfortunate love which
filled all his soul, and which animated all his writings with
a tenderness unequalled in any other author of his country.
Horace, perhaps, exceeds all the Roman writers who have
come down to us, in true feeling for heroic greatness. He
was a patriot who locked up within his own breast his sor
row for the subversion of the commonwealth ; and who had
recourse to all manner of pleasures, perhaps even to poetry
itself, with a view to dissipate the grief with which he was
oppressed. On every occasion we can see the inspiring flame
of patriotism and freedom breaking through the mist of lev
ity in which his poetry is involved. He could not, indeed,
have framed any great poem out of the early history or tra
ditions of his countiy, without perpetually betraying feelings
which were no longer in season, and could not have been
listened to without a crime. He constrained his inclina
tions, and endeavoured to write like a royalist ; but, in spite
of himself, he is still manifestly a republican and a Roman.
The calm, industrious, and feeling Virgil was, by his love
for nature and for a country life, peculiarly qualified to be
the national poet of the Romans. The old Roman, or in
general, indeed, the old Italian mode of life, was entirely
agricultural and rural ; while the Greeks, on the other hand,
were chiefly, and that from their earliest days, a traflicking,
seafaring, and commercial people. Even the most illustri
ous and noble of the citizens of Rome lived, in the best
96 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
days of the republic, entirely according to the old customs
of their countrymen ; and even in the later periods, not
withstanding the great corruption of the metropolis itself,
that soundness and strength of moral feeling, and that pu--
rity of manners, which belong to an agricultural and rural
nation, were far from being entirely banished out of the sur
rounding districts of Italy. To dwell on rural enjoyments,
and make use of simple feelings, therefore, was quite neces
sary for one who aspired to be the poet, not of the metro
polis, but of the nation. Virgil s love for nature and a country
life is evident, indeed, in the first work of his youth, the
Eclogues ; but he has displayed it with the richest eloquence
in the most perfect of all his works the Georgics. If he
had only paid due honour to this species of poetry, in itself
so masterly so well adapted for Rome, (restored as she was
to peace after a succession of wars and revolutions,) and, in
truth, so kindred to the general feelings and propensities of
all Italians, and refrained from embodying it in the foreign
and artificial form of the Alexandrian didactic : if he had
only given to agriculture and rural feelings as prominent a
place in his great work, as they really occupied in the an
cient ages of his country, and so presented us with one com
prehensive and perfect picture of the old Italian life, the
heroic traditions, which it was his chief purpose to revive,
would have then obtained a faster hold on our feelings, and
a closer connexion with the thoughts of all men and all ages ;
and, in short, would have been presented to us with a con
centrated spirit and a life, which the plan he has adopted
was the most infallible way to dissipate or extinguish. The
whole scope of his heroic poem would then have been en
larged, and the connexion of its parts would have become
infinitely less artificial. In the very stiff arrangement which
he has adopted, the latter part of his poem, which is exclu
sively dedicated to Italian subjects, appears to infinite dis
advantage when compared with the first, in which he has
so happily connected the origin of the Eomans with the he
roic tales of the Trojan period, and made such liberal use of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 97
all the rich inventions of the old poets of the Greeks. Not
withstanding all these defects, however, the JEneid, al
though Virgil himself despised and even wished to destroy
it, has always kept its place as the peculiar national poem
of the Romans. Were we to judge merely by the high flow
of inspiration, and the unlaboured felicity of inborn talent,
we might perhaps consider Lucretius, or even Ovid, as a
greater poetical genius than Virgil : what secures to him
the preference, is that national feeling which forms not the
occasional charm, but the perpetual inspiration of his poetry.
Still, the 2Eneid can never be looked upon as a perfect poem.
The same struggle between borrowed art and native strength,
which may be remarked in almost all Roman poets, is evi
dent in Virgil ; and in him, not less than in the others, a
consequent want of harmony in materials, and even in lan
guage, may not unfrequently be observed.
But if Virgil be not exempt from this fault, it is undoubt
edly far more apparent in Horace and the other lyrical poets.
The epic poetry of different nations has always many points
of coincidence ; although it is evident enough that the rigid
imitation of Homer has weakened and confined the genius
of Virgil, and drawn both him and many more recent poets
into the most glaring errors. But, laying the form of com
position altogether out of the question, the heroic legends of
one people can in general be pretty easily ingrafted on those
of another. In the early traditions of nations the most re
mote from each other, we find invariably a thousand circum
stances wherein the resemblance is too striking to escape the
most superficial observer. I shall not, on the present occa
sion, pretend to decide whether this resemblance be merely
the result of a necessary similarity in the situation of all
nations in the infant periods of society ; or whether it be not
so remarkable in many circumstances, particularly in the
marvellous fictions and not very obvious symbols which
have so generally been adopted, as to warrant the conclu
sion, that the coincidence could only have proceeded from
the common origin of nations apparently the most uncon-
G
98 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
nected. In serious dramatic poetry, the knowledge of what
degrees of perfection have been attained by other nations,
is of great use ; for it supplies us with specimens of what
may be attained, and with a standard by which we may
judge of the success of our own attempts. Still, however,
the mere form of a foreign drama should never be imitated :
the stage which aspires to exert an universal influence,
must assume a character conformable to the manners, edu
cation, temper, and modes of thinking which prevail among
the nation who are to survey its exhibitions. The drama
is always powerful exactly in proportion as it is peculiar.
But in no species of composition is imitation so hurtM-"
and despicable as in lyrical poetry. The whole charm and--
excellence of this sort of writing consists in its being the
free emanation of individual feelings. The whole beauty
of it vanishes the moment we detect a single trace of imita
tion ; it is only tolerable because it is natural ; and the ap
pearance of art renders it immediately disgusting. But in
the writings of Roman lyrical poets, there is nothing more
common than to be able to point out, with the utmost pre
cision, the line where imitation of some Greek original ends,
and the poet begins to speak from his own feelings. It is
perhaps the best proof of the power of Horace s genius, that
in spite of this defect, which is as common in his writings as
in any others, he is still of all Roman poets the one who
commands the greatest share of our sympathy, and stirs up
pur enthusiasm with the most potent magic. His greatness
is ever most conspicuous where he speaks altogether as a
Roman, when he dwells upon the sublime magnanimity of
antiquity, on the solitary grandeur of the exiled Regulus, or
on those other heroes who, in his own phrase, " were pro
digal of their great souls" in the service of their country.
In satire, the only species of writing which can be said to
have been an invention of the Romans, Horace is equally
illustrious. This sort of writing, which belongs, indeed, to
the common class of ludicrous lyrical poetry, but which
received at Rome the rank and characteristics of a separate
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 99
species of composition, and gave rise to a new and less
stately form of the heroic measure, is exclusively Roman,
not in these respects only, but also in the spirit with which
it is animated, and the whole subjects of which it treats. It
is entirely confined to the capital itself the social habits and
customs, amusements, spectacles, and assemblies of its in
habitants ; but perhaps its most favourite topic is the cor
ruption of Roman manners, which were now daily approach
ing to the last stage of possible viciousness ; this great city
having became not only the seat of universal government and
wealth, but also the centre-point of attraction to the whole
family of adventurers the magnet which was perpetually
drawing within its circle the collected filth and worthless-
ness of the whole world. The only perfect picture which
poetry can set before us of common life is in the drama :
individual traits or scenes, however masterly, can never
satisfy us. The Roman satire, therefore, in the hands of
such a writer as Horace, is merely a substitute for that
comedy which the Roman people ought to have possessed.
With regard to the satires of Juvenal, their chief interest
depends on the vehement expression of scorn and indigna
tion excited by the contemplation of the execrable vices :
the spirit in which they are conceived may be morally sub
lime, but can scarcely receive the name of poetical.
In their prose writings the Romans attained much higher
eminence than in their poetry. Livy may be said to be per
fect so far as language is concerned ; for in him we have a
faultless specimen of that rhetorical species of history which
was peculiar to the ancients.
The first half of the long reign of Augustus commonly
receives the credit of having produced a number of great
geniuses, whose talents, it is very true, were first perfectly
developed during that period, but who had, in fact, been,
almost all of them, born in the last years of the republic ;
who had seen with their own eyes the greatness of their
country, and been animated in their youth with the breatli
of freedom. The younger generation who were born, or .
100 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
who, at the least, grew up to manhood, after the commence
ment of the monarchy, were altogether different. In the
last years of Augustus, we can already perceive the symp
toms of declining taste ; in Ovid particularly, who is overrun^
with an unhealthy superfluity of fancy, and a sentimental
effeminacy of expression.
How soon even history, in which the Romans were most
successful, yielded to the depressing influence of the follow
ing Caesars, and became corrupted even as an art, may be
easily seen in the timid style of Velleius, to say nothing of
the flattering meanness with which that writer often dis
guises the true import of the incidents which he narrates.
The proper head and founder of a new and most artificial
taste in writing, which soon afterwards became predomi
nant, was Seneca the philosopher. The more despotic the
government became, the more were those, whose spirits
were still unsatisfied, inclined to throw themselves into
the arms of Stoicism; the principles of that philosophy
were agreeable to the pride and freedom of strong minds,
exactly in proportion as every thing noble and free was
banished from the principles and practice of the tyrants
under whom they lived. An unnatural pomp, and extra--"
vagance even, of expression, has been, in more instances
than this, produced by the political and social depression
of a nation. But Lucan furnishes, perhaps, the most strik
ing example of this seemingly strange consequence of des
potism : in him we find the most outrageously republican
feelings making their chosen abode in the breast of a
wealthy and luxurious courtier of Nero. It excites sur
prise, and even disgust, to observe how he stoops to flatter
that detestable tyrant, in expressions the meanness of
which amounts to a crime ; and then, in the next page,
exalts Cato above the gods themselves, and speaks of all
the enemies of the first Caesar with an admiration that ap
proaches to idolatry. The Roman poetry, as if unwilling
altogether to deny its most ancient though nearly-forgotten
destination, came back, in the hands of Lucan, to the cele-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 101
bration of the heroes of Roman history. There can be no
doubt that a great historical event may in itself be very
well fitted to form the subject of an heroic poem ; how
near or how distant this event may be in a chronological
point of view is, I think, a matter of little consequence :
the nature, not the date of the incidents, should be princi
pally considered. The historical event which is to form the
subject of an epic poem, should be one wherein feeling and
audacity seem to have exerted a more predominant influ
ence than reasoning and calculation, one, in short, which
affords room for the play of fancy. The life and achieve
ments of Alexander the Great, for instance, the fall of
Darius, and the expedition to India, might, I have no
doubt, furnish an excellent epic subject in the hands of a
poet capable of doing justice to such a theme. The civil
war between Ca3sar and Pompey, on the other hand, a
contest, strictly speaking, not of men or heroes, but of
parties and political systems, has formed the groundwork
of several excellent tragedies in modern times ; but I am
at a loss to conceive the possibility of its ever being formed
into a fit subject of epic poetry by the art or the genius of
any writer. The picture of the taste of this period is com
pleted by the obscure Persius, and the forced style of the
elder Pliny. This last author may furnish us with some
idea of the extent to which the Romans might have en
larged the field of human knowledge, had they made use
of the facilities which were placed within their reach by
the political position of their country, and made it their
business to collect together the natural curiosities of the
different regions to which their influence extended.
Better times, however, succeeded to these : the civilised
world was destined to be governed for a season by a genu
ine Roman of the ancient school sitting on the throne of
Augustus. As Trajan was the last of the Ca3sars who
thought like a Roman, and rivalled the old Roman great
ness both in his principles and his achievements, so, very
shortly before his reign, the kindred genius of Tacitus con-
102 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
eluded the series of great authors whom Rome was destined
to produce. This writer had received his education during
the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, times which appeared
happy, because they had been preceded by the atrocities of
Nero ; he had learned to meditate and to be silent under
Domitian, and under Nerva he saw the beginning of that
more fortunate period which was to appear in the fulness
of its glory under the blessed reign of Trajan.
The profound thoughtfulness of his spirit, and the cor
responding, though, perhaps, yet more peculiar depth of his
expressions, appear always the more inimitable the more
attempts are made at their imitation. Even in style, he
may be said to be perfect, although the language of his
day neither was, nor could be, any longer the same with
that of the time of the great Ca3sar or of Livy. In these
three authors, according to my apprehension, the language
of Rome is displayed in its utmost purity and perfection :
in CaBsar it appears in unadorned simplicity and greatness ;
in Livy it wears all the splendour and ornament of elabo
rate rhetoric, but is still free from exaggeration, beautiful
and noble in its construction; in Tacitus, although he is
very far from either the chaste simplicity of the one, or
the polished elegance of the other of these writers, it as
sumes an appearance of depth, power, and energy, to which
it had as yet been a stranger. It would seem as if the
memory had been even more powerful than the presence
of Roman greatness, and stamped a character of loftiness
on the historian of despotic cruelty, to which none of those
who celebrate liberty and victory could attain.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 103
LECTUEE IV.
SHORT DURATION OF THE ROMAN LITERATURE NEW EPOCH UNDER HADRIAN-
INFLUENCE OF THE OPINIONS OF THE ORIENTAL^ ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF
THE WEST MOSAIC WRITINGS, POETRY OF THE HEBREWS RELIGION OF
THE PERSIANS MONUMENTS OF THE INDIANS MODES OF INTERMENT AMONG
THE ANCIENT NATIONS.
I HAVE already said, that literature and philosophy were,
at the best, plants foreign to the soil of Rome, and now I
imagine all will be inclined to join in my opinion who com
pare either the number of great Roman writers with that of
great Greek writers, or the period during which art and
literature flourished in Rome, with the time during which
Greece Avas so eminently distinguished for her attainments
in both.
Rome possessed many translators from the Greek, as well
as some poets and original writers of her own, from the
time when the Scipios began to patronise Greek literature
and rhetoric ; when Cato began to inquire into the history,
antiquities, and language of the Roman people with a view
to counteract the influence of the Greek taste introduced by
the Scipios ; and when Ennius, in part, at least, began to ap
ply the art and poetical measures of the Greeks to Roman
subjects, and to lay the foundation of a Roman school of
poetry. But to complete the idea of a flourishing litera
ture, we require something more than a few individual
inquiries and works, and these, too, as in the present case,
sometimes not a little at variance with each other ; we look
for a certain connexion and unity among all the parts of
literature, a determinate and regular fixing of language,
particularly of prose ; in short, we expect to see the effects
of general education, and a wide-spread cultivation of all
those branches of knowledge which regard either language
104 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
or rhetoric, or even the higher departments of philosophy.
The literature of Rome can scarcely be said to have existed
till the time of Cicero, who had a greater share in its for
mation than any other individual, and may, indeed, almost
be said to have created the peculiar character by which
it was at all times distinguished. Before his time, the
whole education of his country, whether with a view to
eloquence, or in general to polite letters, was conducted
on Greek principles, after Greek models, and in the Greek
language. He first demonstrated the possibility of carry
ing on an extensive and scientific education in the Roman
language, by framing and fashioning its constructions so as
to embrace, in the happiest manner, the subjects of philo
sophy, and, in particular, the theory of rhetoric. The
Roman language was not only enlarged, it was also fixed
and settled, by the writings of Cicero. To this, however,
many illustrious writers contributed very greatly about the
same period ; above all, Caesar and Varro, by their gram
matical writings. Next to Cicero, these had certainly the
greatest part in the formation of the proper literature of
Rome ; Caesar, by the improvement which Roman speakers
derived from the example of his eloquence in the senate,
but still more by the labour which he bestowed on giving
to the language of which he was so perfectly master, a
scientific shape and consistency, and so enabling it to effect
its purposes with greater power and certainty in time to
come ; Varro, scarcely less than Caesar, by his extensive
erudition and the formation of his great library, as well as
by his profound investigations of antiquities and language.
The united excellencies of these three authors entitle the age
in which they lived to be considered as the most impor
tant epoch of Roman literature. I have already endeavoured
to give a very short sketch of the most remarkable Roman
writers down to the time of Trajan. The panegyric of that
prince by the younger Pliny may be considered as the last
exertion of the flourishing literature of Rome. His virtues
were well deserving of such a celebration; but Roman
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 105
eloquence, after this successful attempt, soon sank into a
state of utter decline. The imbecility of the imitators of
Pliny was as remarkable as the inferiority of the despicable
tyrants whom they panegyrised, to the manly virtues of
Trajan.
The classical period of the Roman literature, then, reckon
ing from the consulate of Cicero till the death of Trajan,
included no more than one hundred and eighty years.
Within the same period, also, the science of jurisprudence,
the only original intellectual possession of great value to
which the Romans can lay undisputed claim, received its
first development, and began to assume the appearance of
a science. Cicero and Cajsar were both impressed with a
sense of the necessity which, even in their time, existed
for collecting into a complete body, and arranging in a
perspicuous manner, the immense and discouraging masses
of Roman statutes : under Augustus, and in the reigns im
mediately following his, both departments of jurisprudence
that of strict law on the one hand, and that of equity on
the other began to be valued according to their merits,
and to have the limits of their respective application ascer
tained. It was reserved for Hadrian, by the publication of
a complete code, (the perpetual edict, as it was called,) to
accomplish that which had been the object of wish, rather
than of hope, both to Cicero and Caesar.
With Hadrian there commences a period altogether new,
not only in the principles of government, but also in the
general mode of thinking adopted by the Roman people.
The Greek language and literature began daily to recover
the attention which was due to them, to receive ample
atonement for the neglect under which they had for some
time lain, and to secure for themselves an ever increasing
intellectual dominion over the whole civilized world
united as that now was, in a political point of view, under
the government of the Roman Caesars.
While the Roman writers of any note were becoming
every day fewer after the time of Trajan, and while of
106 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
these even the best were at all times unworthy of being
compared for a moment with those of the ages which pre
ceded them, the fate of Grecian letters exhibited an exactly
opposite appearance. The literature and philosophy of
Greece seemed, about the very period when these were
utterly extinguished among the Komans, to have received
a new life, and an accession of universal intellectual acti
vity. There grew up forthwith a rich after- crop of Grecian
genius, not altogether unworthy, either with regard to its
substance or its appearance, of the richer harvest that had
gone before it ; at all events, incomparably superior to any
thing which had been produced for some ages immediately
preceding. In poetry, it is true, it does not appear that any
thing either very new or very excellent sprung up among
them ; but to atone for this, philosophy and rhetoric (things
which in the old Attic period were regarded as altogether
separate and irreconcilable) began now to be studied with
unprecedented ardour, and blended together into the most
complete co-operation. The old Socratic method of treating
philosophical subjects (a method of which we have the best
specimens in the dialogues of Plato) could now no longer be
adopted ; the manners and mode of life which that method
took for granted had entirely passed away, and that simple
form of philosophising was altogether unsuitable for those
which had succeeded them. The scientific and rigid accu
racy of Aristotle was at all times adapted only for a few.
The consequence was, that there arose a more rhetorical
manner of treating scientific subjects, which continued in
fashion from the reign of Hadrian and the two Anto-
nines, down to the Emperor Julian, and which has been
adopted even in these modern times, by a great many
writers of distinguished eminence. And here I may re
mark, in passing, that the Greeks displayed, indeed, at
some particular periods, the highest reach and inventive
ness of poetical genius ; but that rhetoric was, beyond all
question, the art most peculiarly their own. It was born
with them, and remained even truly and indisputably theirs
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 107
from the earliest times till the latest : if now and then it
seemed as if it had deserted them, it was only to spring up
again under some other form, and to cling to them yet
more fervently than before.
Among the great crowd of writers belonging to this latter
period of ancient Greek literature, who are in general useful
only as sources of historical information, or as supplying, in
some measure, the place of those older and better works out
of which they derived their materials, we find, nevertheless,
some few who possess a value more universal, and more
their own. Of these, the first is Plutarch, whose Lives,
with all their defects in writing, as well as in thought, have
brought down to the modern world a true treasure of moral
wisdom, which is even, at the present day, altogether inva
luable. His style is overladen, and not unfrequently cor
rupt. Among the overflowing fulness of remarks with which
he has garnished the lives of his heroes, we must be careful
to make our selection : there are among them not a few
which are altogether unsuitable and childish. On the
whole, however, Plutarch shows himself every where to have
been a man of the most praiseworthy intentions, and one
who had, so far at least as morals are concerned, made
himself master of the whole riches of the flourishing and
classical ages of Greece, was familiar with all the disputes,
and penetrated with all the most dignified conceptions of the
old sages of his country. In Lucian, again, we find the
clearest evidence, that the true elegance of Greek style, and
the spirit of the Attic wit, had not yet altogether passed
away. There are few authors, of any age or country, who
can be put in the same rank with Lucian as writers of
satirical and miscellaneous philosophy. His highest value,
however, consists, without doubt, in his pictures of manners.
Even in history, Arrian (who has been commonly called the
best historian of Alexander) deserves, on account of his
beautiful and unaffected style, to be placed near Xenophon.
And Marcus Aurelius occupies so great and glorious a place
in the history of the human kind, that the meditations of
108 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
this last of the great and virtuous of Roman sovereigns,
written as they are in the Greek language, and exhibiting
the most perfect acquaintance with the philosophy of the
Stoics, must always be sought after with great curiosity,
and dwelt upon with the profoundest interest, by every lover
of virtue, as well as of letters.
The history of the unworthy successors of Marcus Aure-
lius, is written by Herodian in a style which we could
scarcely have looked for at the period in which he lived.
Antoninus Pius was the first who introduced into the
Roman empire the Greek philosophers of different sects as
instruments of education, and enlisted, so to speak, that
important body of men in the service of the state. Philo
sophy, particularly that of the Stoics, was now called in to
prop up, if possible, or, at least, to supply the place of that
popular belief which was hurrying irresistibly to its rain.
How much the belief in the old gods had become sunk and
weakened how widely doubt, freethinking, and infidelity
had now become spread abroad in the Roman world we
can gather without difficulty from Luciau. But the true
type of that universal fermentation of opinions, and restless
activity of enquiry, which distinguished this age, must be
sought for in the most undisguised of all ancient sceptics
Sextus Empiricus. We may also learn from Lucian, how
prevalent, at the same period, was the propensity to super
stition, by what rapid strides a sort of philosophical credu
lity began to take the place of the old poetical credulity of
the popular creed ; how a belief in astrology, and a leaning
to the magical sciences, were fostered by the ruling influence
of secret societies and brotherhoods, tiU at last they were
openly professed in the writings, as well as oral communica
tions, of the philosophic teachers of the day. The influence
of oriental opinions and principles was, indeed, becoming
every day more powerful, and this introduced not only a
more near acquaintance with the old and pure fountains of
truth, but also a stream of wilder superstitions than could
have sprang out of the cold soil of the west. We can trace
HISTOKY OF LITERATURE. - 109
this tendency to orientalism even in the architecture of the
age of Hadrian, which was remarkable for its recurrence to
an almost Egyptian massiness. Plutarch, although classed
among the followers of Plato, exhibits the Platonic philo
sophy under an aspect altogether new : when she had begun
to embrace within her range all the rules of those original
Egyptian doctrines which were at that time ascribed to
Pythagoras, and to approximate more and more nearly to
all the relics of that old oriental wisdom, from which Plato
himself had derived the most sublime of his conceptions.
This new Platonic philosophy very soon came to be the
only one in vogue : the other sects, such as the Sceptical,
the Epicurean, and even the Stoical, ceased to preserve
their distinct and individual appearance. Yet not a few of
the peculiar opinions of the Stoics entered into the com
position of this inclusive philosophy of the later Greeks,
which derived, from the chief of its component parts, the
name of New-Platonic. It was this philosophy which, for
a long time, contended against Christianity with the most
violent exertions of intellectual strength which had hopes,
in the days of the Emperor Julian, of acquiring an entire
victory, of preserving unbroken the old popular creed, and
infusing into it the elements of a new life, by interpreting
its allegories, and spiritualising its personifications.
This contest between Christianity and the heathenish
philosophy between the old polytheism and the new belief,
a poetical mythology and a religion of morality is the most
remarkable intellectual contest which has ever been exhi
bited and determined among the human race. It forms not
only the wall of partition between the two worlds the ages
of antiquity which terminated in it, and these of modern
times which sprung out of it ; in the history of all culture,
it is the keystone upon which every thing hangs; in the^"
history of the development of the human intellect, it is the
central point from which all illumination must be derived.
To set before you this great contest with that clearness at
which a complete history of literature ought to aim, to point
110 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
out its influence not only on language and art, but also on
the fate of nations and the general destiny of man, would
require limits which are far beyond my reach. To give any
idea of it which can be at all satisfactory, it is necessary
that I should begin with some enquiries into the peculiar
spirit of the Greek philosophy ; that I should point out the
place which the Christian doctrines and Scriptures occupy
in the history of the human mind ; and that I should briefly
explain the nature of those other relics of oriental wisdom,
which are in part in harmony with the doctrines of Moses
and of Christ, and were in part the most ancient fountains
from which the sublime visions of the Greek sages were
derived.
Concerning those minor results of this contest, which may
be termed the ornamental ; concerning the relative influence
of the two religions on the beautiful fictions of poetry and
the progress of the imitative arts, I shall at present say
nothing. Many opportunities will occur in the sequel, not,
indeed, of doing justice to these topics, but, at least, of apo
logising for the deficiency both of my plan and my execu
tion. For the present, I must confine myself altogether to
one topic, to which, by an irresistible and inborn curiosity,
we^are at all times compelled to devote our first enquiries
which we never cease to consider as the great hinge on
which the whole history and revolutions of the human intel
lect depend.
Plato and Aristotle were the two greatest masters, it
may even be said, that they alone mark on every side the
limits of the knowledge of the Greeks. Plato treated of
philosophy altogether as an art, Aristotle as a science. In
the first, we see the thinking faculties in the calm state of
contemplation, reposing with awful admiration on the spec
tacle of Divine perfection. But Aristotle considers intellect
as something perpetually at work, and delights to trace its
unceasing operations, not only as the moving power of
human thought and being, but also as the secret principle of
the activity of Nature, and the master-spring of all her most
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. Ill
varied demonstrations. Plato is the model of Greek art ;
Aristotle furnishes the best idea of Grecian science.
When Plato enters the lists against the Sophists, and
pursues them into the mazes of their errors, he displays
great acuteness and nicety of penetration ; but with all his
Attic taste, and all his fineness of understanding, with all
the clearness, and all the skilful adaptation of his language,
he becomes not unfrequently dark and sophistical, like those
against whom he strives. But the leading principle of his
philosophy is at all times clear and perceptible. From an
original and infinitely more lofty and intellectual state of
existence, there remains to man (according to the philosophy
of Plato) a dark remembrance of divinity and perfection.
This inborn and implanted recollection of the godlike, re
mains ever dark and mysterious ; for man is surrounded by
the sensible world which, being in itself changeable and
imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, change-
ableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual
obscurity over that light which is within him. Wherever
in the sensible and natural world he perceives any thing
which bears a resemblance to the Godhead, which can
serve as a symbol of the highest perfection, the old recol
lections of his soul are awakened and refreshed. The love
of the beautiful fills and animates the soul of the beholder
with an awe and reverence which belong not to the beauti
ful itself at least not to any sensible manifestation of it
but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the
type. From this admiration, this new awakened recollec
tion, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher
knowledge and truth. These are not the product of cold,
leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a
station far superior to what either thought, or art, or specu
lation can attain ; and enter into our inmost souls with the
power and presence of a gift from the Divinity.
Plato, therefore, considers all knowledge of the Godhead
and divine things as only to be derived from higher and
supernatural sources ; and this is the distinguishing charac-
112 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
teristic of all his philosophy. The dialectical part of his
works is only the negative, in which he combats and over
throws error with great art ; or, with art yet greater and
yet more inimitable, leads us step by step towards the
fouutainhead of truth. But .where it is his purpose to
reveal this itself that is in the positive part of his works
he expresses his meaning altogether after the fashion of his
oriental masters in emblems, and fables, and poetical mys
teries, ever true to his belief in supernatural means of
knowledge, and acting in all things as if he were really the
organ of some inspiring and awful revelation. It is not to
be denied that his philosophy is essentially incomplete, and
that he himself seems never to have attained perfect clear
ness and precision in his conceptions. This is sufficiently
evident from the ill-defined limits assigned, in all his writings,
to reason on the one hand, and love or inspiration on the
other. When he speaks of the love of the beautiful, and of
divine inspiration, when he expressly acknowledges that
these are the only conductors to all sublimer truths, and
asserts, that they elevate us far beyond the cold regions of
human reason and reflection, and reveal to us something far
more lofty than these could ever reach, we are willing to
believe that Plato had conceptions, at once lively and feeling,
of God and his perfections. But, on the other hand, when he
exerts only his dialectic art, he often sinks into the common
errors of his brethren, and seems as if he acknowledged no
higher idea of perfection than is to be found in that of an
unchangeable and unoccupied unity of reason. It is true,
that in all this he was much limited and fettered by the
influence and opinions of the older philosophers. In general
however, his philosophy remained at all times as imperfec
as he left it, attributing all knowledge of divine truth to
vague individual recollections, and expressing it only in
dark hints and forebodings having, in short, no higher
merit than that of ingrafting on the old Greek philosophy,
and adorning with all the beauty of Attic art, and all the
shrewdness of Socratic ethics, some obscure recollections of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 113
the old eastern wisdom, and some mysterious presentiments
of the doctrines of Christianity.
The connexion of Plato with Socrates, in some degree,
indeed, kept both him and his immediate followers in
Athens free from falling into the extreme of mysticism and
enthusiasm. His disciples were, indeed, sensible in some
measure of the imperfection of his system, but this discovery
only tended to drive them backward to the old refuges of
doubt and scepticism. That leaning to mysticism, however,
which was so conspicuous in his later followers, w r as in fact
inherent in the mode and substance of their master s prin
ciples. It is almost impossible that any one should receive
the doctrine of a supernatural source of knowledge in the
undefined manner in which he has shadowed it out, as a
dark recollection a mysterious inspiration a lofty inter
course with the heavens without falling into the same
errors for which the New-Platonists are remarkable. To
put an end to this, it was absolutely necessary that some
thing altogether different, and much more steadfast, should
appear something which might elevate wavering and un
certain forebodings of the truth to the rank of consistent
rules of thinking ; and elicit from a world of unsatisfying
dreams, a sane and rational belief, worthy of forming a rule
and standard for the whole life of man.
When the later followers of Plato made a systematic at
tempt to enlarge his imperfect philosophy by a more liberal
adoption of oriental opinions, the mode in which they con
ducted their endeavour was, indeed, often little in unison
with the Attic taste and Socratic spirit of Plato himself.
But they did nothing which was really at variance with the
essence of his philosophy, and the recognised principle of a
higher source of knowledge. Upon that principle, indeed,
all the doctrines and relics of oriental wisdom were more or
less dependant.
The great principle of Aristotle is by no means so easy
to be discovered as that of Plato ; and the reason of this
must be sought for in his obscurity, a thing which has been
114 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
complained of from the oldest times, and by his most fer
vent admirers. Yet the result of every man s study of the
spirit of his philosophy must, I apprehend, be very nearly
the same, and must be sufficiently consistent with this uni
versally acknowledged and lamented obscurity. How then
happens it, that this mighty spirit, this perfect master, both
of thought and of language this most acute judge and per
spicuous reasoner in regard to all which lies within the
limit of experience this great and inventive genius, who
may be said to have discovered the proper application of
the instrument, thought who first reduced reasoning to
principles, and reflection to a system ; how comes it that he
should answer these most essential and important questions,
which man never ceases to propose : concerning the destiny
and origin of the human race concerning God and the
universe, in a manner so dark, unintelligible, and unsatis
factory ? The cause of this was his rejection of all other
sources of knowledge excepting only reason and experience.
The higher source of knowledge by Plato appeared to him
unsatisfying and unscientific. To reconcile reason and ex
perience he had recourse to many intermediate contrivances.
So fond, indeed, was he of the intermediate, that he defines
virtue itself the middle point between two extremes, and
explains every moral evil as being either too much or too
little. In his scientific discourses concerning the external
world, that he may avoid that ancient difficulty which arises
out of the unchangeableness of eternal nature, and the per
petual variation in the visible creation, he betakes himself
to a similar solution. He admits that the first cause the
godlike principle of motion is, indeed, in itself immoveable ;
and that in our sublunary world every thing is subject to
the laws of perpetual variety and mutation ; but he thinks
he has found an explanation of all our difficulties when
he has discovered that between those two states of things
there exists yet another world the world of stars wherein
there is to be seen, neither the perfect unmovedness of di
vinity, nor the perpetual changeableness of earthly things,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 115
but something intermediate a motion which is immutable,
and eternal revolutions regulated by the most unvarying
laws. In like manner, to fill up the great void between the
source of reason, he introduces the idea of a passive and
suffering understanding, an objective common sense between
them both. All this may be deserving of much admiration,
so far as the invention and acuteness alone of the philo
sopher are to be taken into consideration, even although we
should find them, upon the whole, productive of little satis
faction. Nay, this method of philosophising might be pro
ductive of the best consequences, when applied to any
separate object which it is wished thoroughly to examine
and scrutinise exactly as it stands. But with regard to
those high questions to which I have above alluded ques
tions which it is impossible for human beings at any time to
pass over as uninteresting whose object is to clear up those
mysteries which hang over the destination of man, the
nature of God, and the government of the world, with re
gard to all these, it is not in the power either of experience
or of reason to afford any satisfactory reply. The experi
ence of the senses leads only to denial and unbelief; the
reason is soon bewildered in itself, and can yield no better
answer than a set of unintelligible formulas, to questions
which are at once simple, unavoidable, and impressive.
The philosophy of Aristotle partakes of both these defects,
and is ever hesitating in the midst between baseless ideal
ism and the system of experience ; if we consider the greater
part of his works and enquiries, particularly those in which
he treats of the natural sciences and of morals, it appears as
if the latter were preponderant ; and Aristotle takes his sta
tion at the head of all the empirical philosophers of antiquity,
not only on account of the extent of his knowledge, but also
on account of the skilfulness of his inquiries, and admirable
principles of investigation which he has laid down. But, on
the other hand, the fundamental idea of all his higher philo
sophy and metaphysics is, without doubt, that of a self-
116 HISTOEY OF LITERATURE.
directing activity or entekcliia. If, however, we cannot find
in his works any true and consistent exposition of the sys
tem of the universe, but only separate inquiries concerning
its individual parts if, when we expect a definition of the
universe or the first cause, we are always sure to be put off
with some empty formula or bare abstraction ; we must not
forget that these are the faults, not of Aristotle s intellect,
but of the system which he adopted. These are errors into
which all philosophers, both ancient and modern, have fallen,
who pretended to explain every thing by human reason or
experience, and would admit of no higher fountain of know
ledge, no divine revelation or tradition of the truth.
Those who have, in philosophy, followed the path of
Aristotle, or one very similar to his, are indeed innumer
able. It is true that he had in the times of antiquity com
paratively few professed followers ; it is also true that there
was a time in which, although a whole legion of disciples in
all the schools, both of the east and the west, acknowledged
his authority, his true spirit remained a secret to all his
admirers. Since that period it has become the fashion to
lay to the blame of this great philosopher not a few of the
errors of his blundering disciples, and to vilify and under
rate the Stagyrite with the same sort of prejudiced ignorance
which formerly led men to deify and adore him. But in
every age, and even down to our own times, there have
been many who, without being themselves conscious of it,
have been steadfast adherents of Aristotle many of these
altogether, or very nearly so, unacquainted with his writings,
and not a few who have the appearance of being his most
deadly enemies and opponents. I allude to those, on the
one hand, who, pursuing the course of deep self-considera
tion, have been betrayed into the same error of unintelli
gible idealism ; and, on the other, to all those who, from
Locke downwards, acknowledge, even in philosophy, no
source of knowledge but experience. These last, whenever
they attempt scientific experiment, find themselves incap-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 117
able of making any progress without some abstract ideas,
and so fall into the same errors of formality which are the
chief defects of Aristotle.
These two great spirits, then, Plato and Aristotle, may
be said to have given, in some measure, a shape and form
to the whole range of human thought. They were, indeed,
but ill- appreciated by their contemporaries, but perhaps
even for that reason their influence has been greater in the
after world, of whose spirit they had for many ages the
almost exclusive direction, not only in all matters of ab
stract science, but also in every thing that relates to the
philosophy of human life. Even now, after the human in
tellect has become two thousand years older, and been
extended and enriched by so many discoveries while the
number of books which Plato could have read appears to us
as nothing, surrounded as we are by immense libraries of
ancient erudition and modern acuteness while we look
down upon the opinions of Aristotle concerning the system
of the world as altogether nugatory and childish while we
are in the possession of a religion which has taught us more
lofty conceptions of God, and more profound knowledge of
ourselves it is strange enough that, even in the present
day, these two master-spirits still maintain their ground of
pre-eminence, and stand out as the great landmarks of in
tellect. All philosophy is either Peripateticism or Platon-
ism, or an attempt, more or less successful, to reconcile
them. He that confesses any higher tradition of truth, or
fountain of knowledge, is, without all question, pursuing the
footsteps of Plato ; and this he may do without any sort of
servility, for the system of Plato is by no means one of con
finement and narrowness, but a liberal and Socratic guide
to all manner of investigations and researches. For those,
on the other hand, who adopt the course of reason and ex
perience, it will always be impossible to go much further
than Aristotle has gone. In his own way and his own
department he is great and unrivalled. The world can
exhibit few spirits which so comprehended the whole expe-
118 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
rience of their age, and required such an intellectual supre
macy over it, as his. He handles reason as an instrument,
with a dexterity of which I know no other example.
Out of these two elements was the later philosophy of
the Greeks compounded : it was excellent in art and com
prehensive in science, but for the truth it was at the best
unsatisfactory. In it the spirit of Plato was predominant ;
and the utmost which was aimed at was to supply his want
of scientific form from Aristotle, and his more serious defect
of conception from the different opinions and traditions of
the orientals.
The Greek philosophy was at all times very different
from the oriental : it was more directed to the external
appearances of life, to the beautiful, and to the forms of
art. Yet, in the midst of a self-satisfaction and national
vanity, which we easily pardon to this remarkable people,
we find that their more profound enquirers, both in the
earlier and later periods of their history, were not without
a high reverence for the depth and sublimity of the eastern
wisdom. The chief object of their consideration in these
matters was Egypt, from which they, at all times, confessed
that then* own peculiar theology and traditions were derived.
In the remoter background of their intellectual world lay
India. The belief of the Hebrews remained always infinitely
more foreign to them, and their mode of thinking was
equally remote from having any connexion with the reli
gion of the Persians. With the Egyptians, the Phoenicians,
and the inhabitants of Asia Minor, on the contrary, they
were connected by the tie of one common religion, which,
with many points of difference in the detail, was in fact, in
all matters of serious principle and import, radically and
essentially the same. The whole of the other known
nations of antiquity were, indeed, separated from the
Hebrews, and in part also from the Persians, by the diffe
rence of their religions. As the Mosaic writings were ren
dered into Greek in the time of the great Ptolemy Phila-
delphus, it is possible, indeed, that many critics before
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 119
Longinus felt and admired their sublimity endeavoured,
as has been often done since, to give to Moses a Platonic
interpretation, or even, as has also been a favourite notion
with many moderns, attempted to trace the doctrines of
Plato to an acquaintance with the Hebrew Scriptures.
But, upon the whole, the belief and the morality of tho
Hebrews, as also in later times the doctrines of Christianity,
remained altogether foreign to the notions of the Greeks
and Romans. They knew not what to make of these re
markable novelties; and even after a more intimate ac
quaintance in the sequel, they never wrote as if they were
at home in them. Nor could it well be otherwise, where
even the first and most simple views concerning the origin
of man and his being, as well as concerning the sources of
all knowledge, and the purpose of all wisdom, were so
diametrically opposite and inconsistent. According to the
ruling belief of the Greeks and Romans, the first of the
human race sprung up every where like vegetables or rather
in the same manner that the heat of the sun calls out living
things from mud and refuse : mere manifestations of that
activity and, fermentation which is inherent in nature, and
leads her to produce crude and imperfect creatures, rather
than to produce nothing at all. In this mode of treating
the subject, one element of the human being earth
received too great a degree of consideration ; the other, and
more dignified element the godlike spark in the human
frame was viewed as the result of a theft from heaven, and
the reward of a successful knavery. Moses, on the other
hand, taught that man grew not up every where and by
chance, but was framed and fashioned by the hand of God
himself out of the earth, in one particular spot ; and that
the spark of divinity with which he is animated was not the
fruit of robbery or audacity, but freely communicated to
him by the love of his Maker. This doctrine affords the
best clue to the history of man and that of his mind, and
also the best point to which we may refer all the other tra
ditions, and all the other doctrines of the East. According
120 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
to it, the oldest dwelling of the human race, and the scene
of their earliest development, lies in the Middle Asia be
tween the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Gihon, the Ganges,
and the South Sea ; the present race of men are entirely
separated from that early people by an universal catas
trophe of natural desolation. The nations which have
become again cultivated since this catastrophe, may all be
referred to three great families, remarkably distinguished
from each other by their spirit and character. The first is
one spread abroad, for the most part, in that same Middle
Asia, and from the earliest date more enlightened than the
others. The second is a race diffused principally over the
north, of peoples more rude, indeed, but at the same time
less corrupted and debauched in their manners, and on that
account destined to derive, in after times, the chief benefit
from the more early civilisation of their eastern neighbours.
The last, a race of men which had, indeed, a very early part
iivall higher knowledge and refinement, but sunk, even in
the oldest times, into unworthiness and neglect, from their
fearful moral corruptions, and that mental bewildering and
apathy to which these gave birth. This account of Moses
is so confirmed to us by all the monuments and testimonies
of antiquity to which we have access, is so extended and
strengthened by every inquiry which we pursue, that it is
well entitled to be viewed as the foundation of all historical
truth. The two component parts of our revelation the
Mosaic and the Christian form, in different ways, the two
centre points of the history of the human race, Christianity
gave to the whole civilized world of the Romans a new
creed, new manners, and new laws, an altogether new
morality and thereby, in the sequel, (for all art and science
must ever proceed from the mode of thinking and the mode
of life, and ever keep in harmony with these,) a new and a
peculiar system, both of science and of art. The Mosaic
remains, on the other hand, can alone enable us to occupy
the right position from which all the other wisdom of the
eastern nations should be surveyed. Not that the civilisa-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 121
tion of some other nations was not, in time, precedent to
that of the Hebrews. That such was the case among the
Egyptians we have irrefragable proof in those giant works
of architecture, those monuments which are still surveyed
by modern travellers with the same feelings of awe and
astonishment which they excited, more than two thousand
years ago, in the breasts of Herodotus and Plato. Even
before Moses there were hieroglyphics ; and he says of him
self, that " he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp
tians." With right were science and art (which are vessels
chosen to contain heavenly wisdom, and to be subservient
to it alone) soon taken away from the Egyptians, who con
fined them both within the narrowest limits, and converted
them to the most unworthy of purposes. The Mosaic
writings possess this advantage over all other oriental
works, that they alone present to our view the well-head of
truth in its original purity and clearness. But our modern
philosophers have been very unwilling to confess this, and
attempted every possible method by which they might
avoid the result. Some have ascribed all wisdom to the
Egyptians, in the same manner which was practised by
many of the ancient Greeks. Others have magnified be
yond all bounds the merits of the Chinese, extolled their
government and mode of life as the most perfect, and the
morality of their Confucius as the most pure. Others,
again, have pleased themselves with the fiction of an At
lantic antiquity in the North ; and some have allowed
themselves to be so much carried away by their admiration
of the profoundness and beauty of the old Indian books, as
to embrace the palpably fabulous chronology of the Brah
mins, and thereby to set all criticism for ever at defiance.
In short, there is no absurdity which some men will not
swallow, rather than repose their belief on the simple truth
which is before them.
Among all those peoples which had any share in that
intellectual cultivation of the east whose high antiquity is
attested by Egyptian, Persian, and Indian monuments the
122 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Persians were, in their religions belief, and the character of
their traditions, most akin to the Hebrews, and, of conse
quence, most unlike to the Greeks. Under the mild and
friendly protection of the Persian monarch, the scattered
people of the Hebrews were again gathered together, and
their temple rose out of its ruins. The Persians, on the
contrary, bore as great an aversion as the Hebrews ever did
to the worship of the Egyptians ; and it was their desire
utterly to extirpate it, which alone occasioned their govern
ment to have an appearance of oppression in Egypt, to
which it was altogether a stranger in every other district of
their dominions. Long before the Greek, Gelon, with that
humanity which was natural to his nation, made it a neces
sary preliminary to a treaty with the Carthaginians, that
they should " abstain in future from all sacrifices of men,"
the Persian king, Darius, had forbidden that abomination
from motives of religion. The Persians honoured and re
cognised the same God of light and truth whom the Hebrews
worshipped, although, indeed, much fiction, much mytho
logy, and not a little of essential error, was mingled with
their knowledge of the truth. In the sacred Scriptures
themselves Cyrus is styled the servant of the Lord, a phrase
which no gratitude could ever have induced any Hebrew to
apply to an Egyptian Pharaoh. The whole system of life
of the Persians, and all the institutions of their monarchy,
were founded upon this belief. The monarch was supposed
to be as a sun of righteousness, a visible emblem of deity
and eternal light ; the seven first princes of the empire were
meant to shadow out the Amlmspand, or those seven unseen
powers which, as the first in the spiritual world, have sway
over the different powers and regions of external nature.
Such conceptions as these were altogether foreign to the
Greeks. The same Syrian king who persecuted with such
severity the Hebrews, and endeavoured to compel them to
embrace the Grecian superstitions, was also the persecutor
of the Persian faith. Even Alexander was desirous of
rooting out the order of the magi, not surely because they
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 123
as individuals were obnoxious to his government, but
because the doctrines of their faith stood directly in the way
of his great design. His purpose was to blend Greeks and
Persians into one people, and, indeed, it is evident enough,
that by no half measures could this end be accomplished.
It was absolutely necessary either that the Greeks should
adopt the worship of fire, and desert those temples of which
the army of Xerxes destroyed so many, and which all Per
sians abhorred as the instruments of superstition and idol
atry ; or that the doctrine of Zoroaster should be extirpated,
and the Greek or Egyptian worship be received by the
Persian people.
The essential error of the Persian creed consisted in this,
that acknowledging, as was fit, the existence of a power
hostile to light and goodness, they did not extend their
views so far as to perceive the insignificance of this power,
however great its influence may appear to be both on men
and on nature, when compared with that of the Deity,
against which it contends : in short, that this creed acknow
ledges two original principles a good Godhead and an evil.
Several speculators of our modern times have been so
much impressed with this resemblance between the faith of
the Persians and that of the Hebrews, that they have found
it incapable of being denied, and confined all their exertions
to explaining it. They have said that the Hebrews, during
their seventy years captivity in the dominions of the great
king, borrowed much, or rather perhaps learned all for the
first time, from the Persians among whom they lived.
This wilful perversion must appear in its proper colours to
the mere historical inquirer ; he will at once perceive the
absurdity of representing the connexion between Persians
and Hebrews as something so young and modern, which
he can learn both from the evidence of the two nations
and from the nature of the thing itself that in truth that
connexion was a matter of much higher antiquity, and is
one deserving of much more serious consideration than the
authors of this superficial hypothesis were aware. Besides,
124 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the conception of it has arisen from a most mistaken view
of the whole question at issue. The superiority of the
Hebrews over all the other Asiatic peoples consists solely
and simply in this, that they alone preserved that original
truth and higher knowledge which was intrusted to them,
pure and unfalsified, with the strongest faith, in blind confi
dence and submission like a precious pledge, or a possession
often locked up against their OAVH use and so transmitted
it to posterity unbroken and unimpaired ; Avhile among all
other nations these things were either altogether forgotten or
abandoned, or mixed up with the wildest fictions and the
most odious errors and abominations. This, it may be
thought, is a merely negative sort of pre-eminence : what
ever it is, it belongs entirely to the sacred writings of the
Hebrews, and in particular to those of Moses. In these
writings, whatever is meant to be a practical law to the
nation, is expressed witti the greatest accuracy and pre
cision. That part of the commencement of the narrative
which regards the internal man is also universally intelli
gible, in so much that it can be easily comprehended by the
most ignorant by a savage, or by a child almost as soon as
he has the power of speech. All that regards universal
history, the ramifications of our race, and the early fate of
men, (so far as these have any connexion with our religious
belief,) is most clear and perspicuous. Whatever, on the
other side, can serve only as an amusement of our curiosity,
is wrapped by Moses in obscurity and mystery. What he
tells us with hieroglyphical brevity concerning the ten first
fathers of the primitive world, has been spun out by the
Persians, the Indians, and the Chinese, into whole volumes
of mythology, and been invested with a crowd of half
poetical, half metaphysical traditions. The praise of a
more ardent and poetical fancy, and of more inventive
metaphysics, as well as of a deeper acquaintance with
nature and her powers, we may easily grant to the Per
sians. In all those ends, also, to which these are subser
vient, as also in astronomy, the imitative arts, or in general
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. ] 25
in whatever became an object of great study among any of
the other oriental nations, the inferiority of the Hebrews
may also be admitted. But if we are peqolexed with any
of those dark questions which make man tremble to look
into futurity, where, among any other nation, shall we find
such answers as the Hebrews can point to us in their
narrative of the sorrows of Job ? a piece of writing, which,
considered merely as such, is without doubt one of the most
characteristic and sublime which has come down to us from
the ancient world. That peculiar faith and confidence in
God, which were the inheritance of the Jews, are expressed
with less of the Mosaic mystery as we advance in the sacred
volume, and appear in their full light in the psalms of
David, the allegories of Solomon, and the prophecies of
Isaiah. These works, indeed, set them forth with a splen
dour and a sublimity which, considered merely as poetry,
excite our wonder, and disdain all comparison with any-
other compositions : they form a fountain of fiery and god
like inspiration of which the greatest of modern poets have
never been weary of drinking which has suggested to them
their noblest images, and animated them to their most
most magnificent flights. Nevertheless the clearness of the
Scriptures is ever a prophetical clearness, veiled in some
portion of mystery, and pointing to futurity for its perfect
explication. Upon the whole, the flourishing period of the
Hebrews was of short duration ; the Mosaic laws and rules
of life were never entirely reduced to practice, for the people
were at all times incapable of comprehending the purposes
of their divine Lawgiver. The sanctuary, after being for
many years tossed about with the changeful destinies of a
chastened people, appeared, under Solomon, in the shape of
a temple. But this was soon destroyed through the guilt
of the people ; and although, under the protection of the
Persian monarch, its walls were rebuilt and its vessels
collected, the flourishing period of the Hebrew spirit was
for ever gone. Like the Romans, the Jews also were
incapable of resisting the overwhelming torrent of the
126 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
opinions, education, and language of the Greeks. If we
look merely to the poetical part of the Persian religion,
its resemblance is much greater, in that respect, to the
northern than to the Grecian theology. The same spiri
tual veneration of nature, of light, of fire, and of the other
pure elements which are set forth in the laws and liturgies
of the Zendavesta, breathe in a form more entirely poetical
out of the Edda of our ancestors. The same sort of opinions
concerning those spirits which rule and fill nature, have
given rise to the same sort of fictions concerning giants,
dwarfs, and other extraordinary beings, both in the old
northern sagas, and in the still more ancient poetry of the
Persians.
The high antiquity of the Indian mythology is in the main
sufficiently manifest from the ancient monuments of Indian
architecture which are still in existence. These monuments
are, in their gigantic size and in their general formation,
extremely similar to those of the Egyptians ; and it is diffi
cult to suppose that their antiquity is not equally remote.
All these monuments, both the gigantic works of Egypt
covered over with hieroglyphics, the fragments of the city
of Persepolis with their various shapes and unintelligible
inscriptions, and lastly, those Indian rocks, which we may
still see hewn into the symbols of an obscure mythology,
have an equal tendency to carry us back to a state of things
from which we feel ourselves to be prodigiously removed
both in time and in manners. We may almost say, that as
the traditions of every people go back to an age of heroes,
and as nature, too, has had her time of ancient greatness a
time of mighty revolutions whereof we can still perceive the
traces, and gigantic animals of which we are every day dig
ging up the remains, even so both civilisation and poetry
have had their time also of the wonderful and the gigantic.
And we may add that, in that time, all those conceptions,
fictions, and presentiments which were afterwards unfolded
into poetry, and fashioned into philosophy and literature ; all
the knowledge and all the errors of our species astronomy,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 127
chronology, biography, history, theology, and legislation
were embodied, not in writing, as among us puny men, but
in those enormous works of sculpture of which some frag
ments still remain for our inspection. Of the two great he
roic poems of the Indians which are still in existence, the
one treats of the achievements of Ramo the conqueror of
that southern and more savage part of the Peninsula which
lies nearest to the island of Ceylon. Ramo is the favourite
hero of the nation ; he is represented in all the majesty and
fulness of youthful strength, beauty, nobility, and love, but
for the most part unfortunate, and in exile, exposed to un-
looked for dangers, and oppressed with sorrows and afflic
tions. This is the same character which, however diversi
fied by local colouring, is to be found in all beautiful and
remarkable traditions, of whatever nation and under what
ever climate. In the bloom of youth and beauty on the
very summit of victory, power, and joy there often seizes
irresistibly on the soul of man a deep sense of the fleeting
ness and the nothingness of that existence which he calls
his life. This heroic poem of Ramo appears to me in the
state in which it is still to be found, and from the specimens
of it which I have myself examined, to be a work of great
beauty, holding somewhat of a middle place between the sim
plicity and clearness of Homer, and that profusion of fancy
by which the writings of the Persian poets are distinguished.
The other great Indian heroic poem which embraces the
whole circle of their mythology, the Mohabharot, celebrates
an universal struggle, in which gods, giants, and heroes,
were all armed against each other. In some similar fictions
respecting a war between gods and heroes, almost ever} r
people which possesses any ancient traditions has em
bodied its mysterious recollections of a wilder and more
active state of nature, and the tragical suppression of an
earlier world of greatness and heroism. However, lately,
both of these Indian epics, the Ramayon and the Mohab
harot, may have been elaborated into their present form,
the essence of their poetry is unquestionably old, for it cor-
1 28 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
responds in all respects with those sculptured rocks and
monuments which are still the objects of the hereditary
veneration of the Hindoos.
When we begin to examine in what respects the doctrines
of India first acquired any influence in Europe, we shall na
turally have our attention directed, in the first place, to the
remarkable dogma of Metempsychosis, which was said to
have been introduced into Greece by Pythagoras. Among
the Greeks, this doctrine remained at all times foreign and
unpopular. Among the Indians, on the contrary, it seems
to have been believed from the earliest periods wherein we
can perceive any trace of the existence of their nation. We
might even say, that not only all the opinions, but also all
the manners, of the Indians, are at this hour built upon this
doctrine. In India, it is the first article of faith, which it
was not in Egypt, where, although Pythagoras may very
probably have heard of it, it could never have acquired any
regular belief or authority, unless I am extremely mistaken
in what I imagine must be collected from the very peculiar
treatment of the dead which was prevalent among the Egyp
tians. A certain almost painful aversion, and religious hor
ror, for the bodies of the dead, is so deeply implanted in all
men, that nothing is more difficult than to dimmish in us the
influence of this feeling. The prevailing modes of treating
the dead among different nations, are not only worthy of
great consideration as testimonies of their modes of think
ing and degrees of civilization ; they are, in general, over
and above all this, very intimately connected with their
secret impressions and feelings of religion. It may be worth
our while to pause over them for a moment. The mode of
incremation which was most followed by the Greeks, is one
of very high antiquity. It is one which is very expressive
of feeling, and one which has something very pleasing in it,
at least for the imagination. The spirit of life ascends to
heaven freely and purely among the flames ; the earthy part
remains behind in the ashes, and furnishes to the survivors
a memorial of the departed. The most singular, and per-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 129
haps the most elevating of all usages, was adopted by the
followers of Zoroaster, and is still preserved in Thibet. From
a mistaken idea that the pure elements of earth or fire would
be contaminated by being made the instruments of dissolu
tion, the corpse is laid upon a platform erected for the pur
pose, and enclosed with massy walls, and there abandoned
as a prey to the wolves and the vultures. Interment, the
mode adopted by those who profess our religion, if it be
attended with proper care and attention, is, after all, per
haps the most agreeable to nature. We restore to the earth
what was originally derived from it, and intrust to her
motherly bosom, the earthly body, as a seed sown for fu
turity. When we know that the body itself is actually
lying there, we have a more easy, as well as a more im
pressive, conviction of the repose of the soul, than when
we are obliged to entomb our feelings in a cenotaph, or see
the body of our friend reduced at once to the simple nature
of the elements. The remarkable embalming of the Egyp
tian mummies is, in my apprehension, irreconcilable with
a belief in the Indian doctrine of transmigration. That
usage seems rather to set forth an indistinct feeling, that
this apparently dead matter is still important to the man
some mistaken and imperfect presentiment, that the bond
between the soul and matter is not altogether dissolved, and
shall yet one day be restored that even this matter shall
have its portion in immortality, and be again animated and
awaked. Others have explained this Egyptian usage as if
it proceeded from a material way of thinking ; as if those
who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul would be the
most anxious to guard against the total dissolution of the
body.
The following appears to me to be a very natural suppo
sition. In the numerous secret associations which were
spread abroad over Egypt, there prevailed, without doubt,
many opinions altogether irreconcilable with the popular
belief, which was nowhere, indeed, more superstitious than
among the Egyptians ; here and there, it is probable, these
130 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
opinions contained light and truth carefully kept secret
from the uninitiated ; at all events, they were numerous
and discordant. Pythagoras might easily have been taught
in Egypt a doctrine which was originally Indian, and which,
in the country to which it had been transplanted, was nei
ther powerful nor universal.
The Indian doctrine of the transmigration of souls de
pended, nevertheless, on the radical notion, that all beings
derive their origin from God, and are placed in this world
in an altogether degraded and unfortunate state of imper
fection, from which state all beings, and in particular men,
must either decline gradually into conditions of yet lower
degradation, or rise gradually to conditions of purity more
accordant with their divine original, according as they give
ear to the vicious or to the virtuous suggestions of their
nature. This conception was, at all events, compatible
enough with the leading doctrines of that Platonic philoso
phy whose general accordance with the oriental opinions,
and the influence which these had on the intellectual cha
racter of the Europeans, shall be the subject of my next dis
course.
LECTUEE V.
LITERATURE, OPINIONS, AND INTELLECTUAL HABITS OF THE INDIANS
RETROSPECT TO EUROPE.
THE most remote country, towards the east, of which the
Greeks had any defined knowledge, (and their acquaintance
with it was at the best extremely imperfect,) was India.
They more than once overrun it as conquerors, and at one
time possessed, for a very short period, something like a
fixed dominion over a part of its territory. The coasts, and
those other parts of the country which were most accessible,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 131
were explored and examined by them in a regular voyage
of discovery. The commercial intercourse with Alexandria
and Grecian-Egypt was one of long duration, and, without
doubt, attended with a very considerable flux and reflux of
intellectual communication. With China, however, and the
more distant countries of the east, neither the Greeks, nor,
in general, any of the ancient nations of the west, had any
direct intercourse ; their knowledge of these regions was, of
consequence, altogether vague and unsatisfactory.
I have already given what I conceive to be the most pro
bable explanation of the manner in which the originally
Indian doctrine of the transmigration of souls was intro
duced into Greece, through the medium of Egypt, by Pytha
goras. The Indian trade is of such antiquity, that it ascends
beyond the historical records of any civilised nation. Alex
ander, and after him the Ptolemies, above all Philadelphus,
gave to that trade a regular direction, which created the
prosperity and wealth of Egypt under the rule of the Gre
cian dynasty. Even under the Romans, this trade still
continued to follow the same channel, which is, indeed, by
far the nearest and the most natural, and which, with many
variations and many interruptions, was still in the main
adhered to, down to the time when the circumnavigation of
Africa opened up a new path to the adventurers of the west.
But it is difficult to suppose that Alexander and the Ptole
mies should have so easily regulated and confined this trade
to the Red Sea and Alexandria, unless private enterprise
had before ascertained the practicability, and even demon
strated the superior advantages of that channel. The old
connexion which subsisted between India and Egypt is also
sufficiently manifest from the remarkable and elsewhere
unknown system of castes being equally adopted in both
countries, and the strong general coincidence which may be
observed between the mythologies of the two nations. In
our own days, this ancient relation between these two
peoples and their theological belief, received a very striking
and sensible exemplification. When, in the course of the
132 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
last war, an Indian army was brought by the English govern
ment into Egypt, those old monuments, whose gigantic pro
portions are ever regarded with undiminished curiosity and
wonder by Europeans, made on the minds of the Hindoo
soldiers an impression no less powerful, though proceeding
from a very different cause. They fell on their faces in sup
plication, and believed that they had again found the deities
of their native land.
The very people of the Hindoos, with their manners and
ideas all belonging to a remoter world, with their ancient
usages, to which they cling with so much bigotry, and with
their arrangement of life so widely different from that of
any other nation, may be themselves regarded as a living
monument, the one surviving ruin of another state of man. -
Their present degradation is an object not of contempt, but
of sympathy and compassion.
When Alexander made his incursion from Persia into the
north of India, (a path which, before and since his time, has
been the high-road of so many conquerors,) the remarkable
spectacle of such a people must have made no small impres
sion on the minds of the Greeks. Their wonder must have
been no less than that of the first modern Europeans who
found their way to that long-sought land. The Greeks
found in India, as they had before done in Egypt, not a
little that was new to them, and foreign to their manners,
but they were not repelled by an altogether irreconcilable
superstition, as among the Persians and the Jews. Here,
as in Egypt, they found themselves still surrounded with the
well-known symbols of a poetical polytheism, which, in all
radical matters, manifested its kindred with their own.
They even recognised, or thought they could recognise, the
same deities which they had been wont to worship, although
concealed under some considerable variations of form and
colouring ; and they showed, in the most striking manner,
their faith in this coincidence, by the names of the Indian
Hercules, and the Indian Bacchus, which were afterwards
so common among them. They seized upon the apparent
I
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 133
resemblances with the enthusiasm which was natural to
them, and traced them with that keenness of penetration
which was no less peculiarly their own. It was, indeed, a
ruling passion of the Greeks to magnify the wonders of all
that they had seen : and of their talents for poetical exag
geration, we have many specimens in their accounts of those
countries which were first laid open to their inspection by the
conquests of Alexander. But we must not forget that many
things which were looked upon as entirely fabulous by those
ancient readers who perused the historians of Alexander,
have, in the course of modern discoveries, received the most
perfect confirmation ; exactly as has been the case with some
of those yet more early accounts of Ctesias, which were
regarded as the most improbable of fictions by his ignorant
contemporaries at home. If we make allowance for many
natural enough mistakes, and apparent contradictions with
regard to particular points, the description which the Greeks
have left of India, agrees, in the main, very strikingly, both
with the present aspect of that country, and with the best
sources of ancient information to which we have otherwise
access ; insomuch, that each may reciprocally serve as a
commentary on the other. The same Indian recluses, whose
peculiarities are every day described to us with the utmost
accuracy by missionaries and Englishmen, with whose doc
trines and singular mode of life all the books and poems of
the Hindoos are filled, these gymnosophists were found by
the soldiers of Alexander exactly as they are to be seen at
present, and excited in them so much astonishment that
they invented a new word to describe them. The Greeks
found two ruling sects of philosophers in India, the Erach-
mans and the Samaneans, and it is still easy to trace with
clearness, in the old works and fountain-heads of ancient
Indian learning, two separate systems, both originating
among the Hindoos. The one of these, indeed, which was
more recently introduced into India itself, although it endea
voured to keep as near as possible to the ancient doctrines,
yet, as it was essentially hostile to the distinction of castes
134 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and the exclusive authority of the Brahmins, it was never
received into general favour, and has left only traces which
it requires the skill of an antiquarian to discover. Its un
popularity in India, perhaps, contributed not a little to its
extensive reception in Thibet, China, and the whole middle
and northern districts of Asia. Even the word Samanean,
by which the Greeks designated the one of the two sects
which they found in India, is pure Indian, and is expressive
of that internal equability and stillness of mind which is
still talked of as the first step to perfection in all the ethical
systems of the Indian devotees. The name of Schaman,
which is so widely diffused over the whole middle and north
of Asia, and universally applied to denote the priests and
sorcerers of these regions, is evidently derived from the same
origin with that Indian word which was first brought into
Europe by the followers of Alexander.
The older doctrine of India is that which prescribes the
worship of Brahma, and his prophet and spirit, creative
thought and lawgiver, Menu. The fabulous chronology of
the Brahmins is earned by them even into their literature ;
they ascribe all their oldest works to persons entirely fabu
lous, and carry them back to an antiquity which is alto
gether poetical. Since some European scholars, in the en
thusiasm of their first admiration, have not scrupled to admit
of this fabulous antiquity, it is the less wonderful that others
have gone into the opposite extreme, and treated the anti
quity of all Indian works as a fable. It is difficult to say
which extreme is the most absurd. The code of Menu,
translated into English by Sir William Jones, is, of all those
Indian works which have been faithfully rendered into the
European languages, the most ancient, the most authentic,
and the most entire. This book of laws is one of those
which, after the fashion of remote antiquity, embraces the
whole of human life, and contains not only a system of
morals, and a representation of manners, but also a poetical
account of God and spirits, and a history of the creation of
the world and man. In the same way that the Greeks of the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 135
most ancient period, before the invention of prose writing,
were accustomed to compose all their histories and narra
tives, all their books of instruction, their laws, and, in short,
whatever they wrote, in plain verses at times, indeed,
entirely destitute of all poetical ornament ; so this ancient
Indian law-book is composed in a measure and distich of th?,
most primitive simplicity. Many of its maxims are full of
meaning, and several passages are extremely poetical and
sublime. That strange system of life is every where de
picted and prescribed, which, as I have already said, is
throughout dependent on the idea of the transmigration of
souls. Perhaps among no other ancient people did the doc
trine of the immortality of the soul, and the belief in a future
state of existence, ever acquire such a mastery over all prin
ciples and all feelings, and exert such influence over all the
judgments and all the actions of men, as among the Indians.
While, in the poetical creed of the Greeks, the world of
shades occupies only a dark and remote place in the back
ground, and leaves all the hopes and enjoyments of life to
be concentrated upon the present, among the Indians the
place of true prominence and reality is assigned to the future,
and the earthly life is represented as at best an obscure
introduction to that of heaven ; every thing is viewed as
preparatory to another state of things, and the present is
every where depicted as dark and unsatisfying. What
ever is good in the present life is, according to the Indian
opinions, only a foretaste of futurity ; whatever evils we
encounter are the consequences and the punishment of
sins committed in some former state of being. The nearest
bonds of love and nature derive from these doctrines a
new force. Father and son are in their innermost being
so intimately connected, that even death has no power to
dissolve the union of their destinies. Marriage becomes a
more sacred tie when we suppose that its endurance is not
limited to a single life. It is this spirit which breathes
over all the fables, and poetry, and institutions of the
Indians, and which constitutes the true characteristic of
136 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
their opinions. From the descriptive poems of the Indians
we must seek to gather what influence those opinions had
on human life, and all its relations and feelings ; what sort
of poetry, and what sort of feeling of the lovely and the
beautiful, were produced among the Indians by the adoption
of ideas to us so foreign and unaccountable. The first
things which strike us in the Indian poetry are, that tender
feeling of solitude, and the all-animated world of plants,
which is so engagingly represented in the dramatic poem of
the Sokuntola ; and those charming pictures of female truth
and constancy, as well as of the beauty and loveliness of
infantine nature, which are still more conspicuous in the
older epic version of the same Indian legend.* Xeither can
we observe, without wonder and admiration, that depth of
moral feeling with which the poet styles conscience " the
solitary seer in the heart, from whose eye nothing is hid ; "
and which leads him to represent sin as something so inca
pable of concealment, that every transgression is not only
known to conscience and all the gods, but felt with a sym
pathetic shudder by those elements themselves which we
call inanimate by the sun, the moon, the fire, the air, the
heaven, the earth, the flood, and the deep as a crying out
rage against nature and derangement of the universe. We
cannot so easily come to enjoy the descriptions of the fearful
deaths of the Indian penitents, even although these are
throughout diversified with many touches of tenderness and
feeling, or the still more common narratives of the immola
tion of widows. I may perhaps be pardoned for saying a
few words concerning that most singular usage of the Hin
doos one which, when the death is altogether voluntary,
constitutes suicide ; when it is the consequence of half-com-
pulsatory exhortations, constitutes human sacrifice; and
which is doubly terrible when it breaks the ties which con
nect the mother with her children. Europeans have not as
yet been able to put a stop to this practice within the limits
* Translated by the author, in his book " Uber die sprache und weisheit
der Indier." 308324
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 137
of their government ; at least only a very few years have
elapsed since instances of it occurred even in the immediate
neighbourhood of Calcutta. The chief principle of the Eng
lish administration in India is, indeed, nothing else than to
rule the Hindoos in a manner entirely conformed to their
own customs, usages, and native laws ; and by doing so
whatever instances of individual oppression may have oc
curred they have, in fact, been the benefactors of the
Hindoos, in delivering them from the persecutions of Ma
hometan intolerance. The more the English territory is
extended in India, the more necessary does this systematic
forbearance for all Indian usages become ; especially since a
trifling violation of some prejudices of the military excited
the alarming disturbance of Vellore. It is easy to see why
this forbearance has been extended even to the blameable
extremity of sanctioning human sacrifices and incremations.
These are, indeed, but too likely to become more and more
frequent, as the natives (attached as they are to their cus
toms with the most slavish bigotry, and watching over their
preservation with the most jealous solicitude) come to be
more sensible of the weight which they derive from their
numbers. The Brahmins, too, are, without doubt, fond of
nourishing the fanaticism of the people by these tragic
spectacles.
It has been often said that the practice originated in the
operation of jealousy, and a regular plan for the degrada
tion of the female sex. But I am much at a loss to con
ceive how this can agree with that high reverence for
females which is every where inculcated in the laws, and
exemplified in the poems of the Hindoos. Besides, the
idea of depressing and despising the female sex is one en
tirely at variance even with the present opinions which
prevail among them ; although, indeed, it is not improbable
that the example of their Mahometan masters may have in
some degree corrupted the purity of their ancient manners.
Others have, and I think more happily, considered this
custom of voluntary burning as akin to those death-sacrifices,
138 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
by no means uncommon among savage, and particularly
among warlike peoples ; in these the object was to furnish
the departed ruler or hero with whatever he might be sup
posed to need in another life, such as his horse, his armour,
and his slaves. Sometimes, also, in the agony of sorrow,
the friends or the beloved of the hero plunged into the same
grave, or ascended the same funeral pile with his remains,
that so all that was dear to him in life might be swallowed
up in one common ruin with the illustrious dead. Even in
India these apparently voluntary, but often reluctant sacri
fices of women, took place originally only among those of
the warlike caste. They were never universal ; in the an
cient times they must have been exceedingly rare, other
wise they could scarcely have been celebrated as they are,
as specimens of heroic and admirable devotion. The un-
doubting expectation of an immediate and personal reunion
in another life, must have greatly contributed to render this
sacrifice possible ; but it must always be difficult to imagine
how such as were mothers could venture upon it, especially
when we remember, that in all representations of Hindoo
life, the devoted affection of mothers for their children is
described as being, if possible, earned even further than is
usual among ourselves.
Of all Indian poems, so far as we are as yet acquainted
with them, that of Sokuntola (which has been translated
with the most scrupulous exactness by Jones) is the work
which gives the best idea of Indian poetry : it is a speaking
example of that sort of beauty which is peculiar to the
spirit of their fictions. Here we see not indeed either the
high and dignified arrangement, or the earnestness and
strength of style, which distinguish the tragedies of the
Greeks. But all is animated with a deep and lovely ten
derness of feeling ; an air of sweetness and beauty is diffused
over the whole. If the enjoyment of solitude and musing,
the delight which is excited by the beauty of nature, above
all, the world of plants, are here and there enlarged upon
with a gorgeous profusion of images, this is but the clothing
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 139
of innocence. The composition is throughout clear and un
laboured, and the language is full of a graceful and dignified
simplicity.
The account which is given in the Indian mythology of
the invention of poetry and the Indian rhythm, is entirely
in harmony with the spirit of poetry such as this. The
sage Balmiki, to whom one of the great heroic poems (the
Ramayon) is ascribed, saw, as it is said, two lovers living
happily together in a beautiful wood, when of a sudden the
youth was murdered by a treacherous assault. In the
midst of his sorrow at this spectacle, and his compassion
for the lamentations of the deserted maiden, he broke out
into words which were rhythmical : and so were elegy and
the laws of versification discovered. The whole poetry of
the Indians is full of inward love, tenderness, and elegy.
Such, indeed, was the fit mode of telling the story of Bal
miki how Ramo, the favourite hero of India, wandered in
the wilderness how he was dragged from his beloved Sita
how she sought for him long and in vain and how they
were at last reunited. But the Indian poetry is rich also in
heroic and lofty representations, and the joyful and brilliant
side of life has its full share in the pictures of that compre
hensive poem, which is compared in the introductory hymn
to a mighty lake. " The hills of Balmiki arise out of the
lake of Ramo, which is altogether free from impurities ; it
abounds in clear streams, and there are bright flowers upon
its waters." But in none of the Indian poems is there so
much of joy and the ardent inspiration of love as in the
great pastoral of Gita Govindo. The hero of this poem is
Krishnoo, when he (like the Apollo of the Greeks) wandered
on the earth as a shepherd, attended by nine shepherdesses.
The composition, however, is not so much an idyll, as a
series of dithyrambic love songs, whose high lyrical beauties
(whether the fault may be in Sir William Jones or in the
English language) are by no means preserved in the trans
lation. The import was perhaps too bold to be susceptible
of any literal rendering. As it is, Jones has given us only a
140 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
faint shadow of the power of the original. Even this, however,
is of great value to the lover of poetry, for he may easily draw
from it some idea of the beauty of the Indian imagination. The
well-known book of fables, Hipotadesa, on the contrary, is
rendered with the utmost accuracy. It is the first fountain
from which all books of fables are derived. Its narrative is
distinguished by the most artless simplicity and clearness,
but interspersed here and there with profound maxims, and
many beautiful fragments of the more ancient poems. The
narrative is, indeed, meant only to serve as a vehicle for
this anthology of poetical images and moral observations.
The whole is admirably calculated to rouse and exercise the
reflection of youth ; but it contains so much of what is re
pugnant to our ideas, that we cannot, in fact, be fair judges
of the effect which it must produce.
The translations of Wilkins, Jones, and those who have
adopted their method, are, upon the whole, extremely
faithful. Of the few versions which have appeared in the
French language, the most are only slight extracts ; and
those which do set before us the substance of entire old
Indian works, are never executed from the original language,
but from translations into some of the modern Hindoo dia
lects, so that in the course of the double process many
blunders and omissions, and not a few barbarous interpola
tions and additions, are to be complained of. This is par
ticularly the case with the work called Bagavadam, the
only one of the eighteen Puranas which has as yet been
translated. Other works, the compositions of men who
were either altogether unacquainted with the ancient lan
guage, or who were incapable of selection, contain only the
substance of oral communications of the Brahmins, and
extracts from older or later writings, mingled together
without taste or discernment. Roger belongs to this class,
and many works of the older travellers, as also the collec
tion which has more lately been published from the papers
of Polier. All the works of Mahometan authors which
relate to Indian affairs must be used with great caution.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 141
It is true that they are extremely valuable when they con
tain historical representations of the actual state of India,
and the remarks of eyewitnesses, as, for instance, the de
scription of India, which was executed at the command of
the Emperor Akbar, in the Ayeen Akbery. But wherever
the Mussulman authors treat of the Hindoo philosophy,
whether in the way of analysis or of translation, we must
be very much upon our guard. Their mode of criticism is
childish ; their mode of translating is coarse, blundering,
and not unfrequently unintelligible ; but, above all, they
. are utterly incapable of feeling or comprehending the true
nature and import of opinions so different from their own.
For these reasons one of the very worst sources of informa
tion with respect to Indian antiquity is the Ouknekhat ; it
is, indeed, almost entirely useless, and so much the more
worthless because we possess many better and authentic
monuments of the same sort. The quantity of materials is
immense ; an d the Brahmins have a passion for ascribing a
fabulous antiquity to all works which in any way relate to
their mythology and their system ; so that in truth no study
requires more caution and discrimination than that of the
literature of Hindostan.
In many Indian works there occur copious notices both
of Alexander the Great and of Sandrocottus, who succeeded
Porus as his Indian lieutenant. Of these the age is ascer
tained from internal evidence. In others we can perceive
allusions which show them to have been written about the
time of the first Mahometan conquests. But here one
should be very careful not to come to a hasty decision con
cerning the authenticity or age of whole works, merely from
meeting with particular phrases or sentences which may
have been interpolated by some later hand.
The Indian works are destitute both of the advantages
and the disadvantages which they might have derived from
being handed down by oral tradition in the manner which
has rendered us so very dubious as to the original formation
of the great old works of Grecian genius. It is scarcely
142 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
possible to doubt that the oldest of these were committed to
writing as soon as they were composed, for there exist in
India specimens of sculptured writing whose antiquity is at
least as great as that of any Indian poems now extant.
It is very remarkable that among the many Indian monu
ments which are decorated with sculpture (and almost their
whole mythology is to be seen hewn out in rocks) there
should be found no hieroglyphics. In the Phoenician alpha
bet, and those derived from it, (including the alphabets of
the west of Asia and of Europe, which have all one common
origin,) the shapes and even the names of the letters prove
beyond all doubt that they were formed out of the hiero
glyphics which preceded them. The Indian alphabet exhi
bits no such traces ; nay, its construction renders it extremely
improbable that it was derived from any similar origin.
This is a circumstance on many accounts worthy of much
attention, in particular when we reflect that by the concur
rence of all historical testimonies the use of decimal ciphers
had its commencement in Hindostan. That was, without
all doubt, next to alphabet writing, the greatest discovery
of human genius, and the honour of it remains undisputed
with the Indians. If, however, the Indian works have been
more fortunate than the Greek in escaping the dangers
inseparable from compositions handed down for ages by
recitation, they have on the other hand been so much the
more exposed to the dangers of wilful falsification and addi
tions. The more apparent these are in some works, the
more are those to be prized in which we cannot detect any
traces of them. The Puranas (a sort of mythological
legends) contain the greatest number of suspicious circum
stances. The works which are apparently most free from
all defects of this kind, are those heroic poems of which I
have spoken above. Perhaps of all known books there is
none which carries with it more convincing proofs both of
high antiquity and perfect integrity than the law-book of
Menu. Whoever has any acquaintance with researches and
doubts of this sort, will feel, even in reading the transla-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 143
tion, that he has before him a genuine monument of anti
quity. Sir William Jones (the greatest orientalist of the-
eighteenth century, and one of the most accomplished scho
lars to which England has ever given birth) gives it as his
opinion that this book is of an age somewhere between
Homer and the Twelve Tables of the Romans. I think he
has supported this opinion with very convincing arguments,
and I have indeed no doubt that both the book of Menu
and some others might have been seen by Alexander the
Great in a state not materially different from that in which
we possess them.
After the code of Menu, among books valuable as guides
to the knowledge of the Indian opinions, the first place
belongs to that didactic poem, which has been translated by
Wilkms, under the name of the Bhogovotgita. This con
tains an account of the modern system of Indian philosophy,
a system originally of the same nature with the doctrine of
that other religious sect or party which the Greeks found in
India, and called, by way of distinguishing them from the
Brachmans, by the name of 2^/ /. It is, in truth
only an episode of one of the great heroic poems, the
Mokabharot, but it is throughout philosophical, and its
contents are such that it may be considered as a complete
epitome of Indian mystics. It is still in great repute, and
is, in fact, an abstract of the prevalent opinions of the pre
sent day. It is worthy of remark that the deities chiefly
praised and exalted in this book are ones in a great measure
unknown to the ancient law-book, or, at least, occupy in it
a much more humble situation; there prevails, indeed, in
the Bhogovotgita a very evident tendency to combat on all
occasions the more ancient system, the vedas, and the whole
doctrine of polytheism. Its doctrine is one of an absolute
divine unity, in which all differences disappear, and into
whose abyss all things are gathered. Yet whenever men
tion is made of mythology, the belief inculcated is that of
a poetical pantheism ot unlike the New Platonic philo
sophy, which, although breathing the same spirit of unity
144 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
lent itself to the cause of external polytheism, in the hope
of infusing a new life into the superannuated superstitions
of the Greeks. The worship of Vishnoo and Krishnoo,
which is now the prevailing one in Hindostan, differs very
little, so far at least as it is here described, from the religion
of Budha and Fo, which was, as we know, established in
Thibet and China during the first century of the Christian
era, and which has been so diffused over the middle and
northern countries of Asia by the preaching of the Scha-
mans. The principal difference consists in this, that the
worshippers of Vishnoo have found themselves obliged to
retain the system of castes, while it has been long since
entirely abolished by those of Budha, The recluses or
Gymnosophists, which appeared so remarkable to the
Greeks, belong to both of the two sects of Indian philoso
phers, and act upon principles equally acknowledged by
them both. Their retirement from the world, their mode of
life, altogether devoted to contemplation, even their violent
penitences, cannot fail to recall our recollection very forcibly
to the first Christian recluses of Egypt. But there is one
great point of difference between them. That man must in
a certain sense abstract himself from the world and its con
cerns, in order to be able to live only for himself, is a
thought so natural, that upon it were founded all the sys
tems of Grecian ethics. More enquirers than one have been
very fond of observing the coincidence between the life of
entire abstraction and uncitizenship recommended by some
of the Greek sects, and that adopted by the Christian
recluses. Not only Plato, but even Aristotle himself (the
most practical of philosophers) is inclined to give to the
life of retirement, and meditation devoted to internal ener
gies, a decided preference over that of external exertion.
But even if we should be disposed to admit that the indivi
dual recluse may thus be furnished with a good opportunity
for cultivating his own intellect, there is no question but the
whole society must be a loser by the most cultivated intel
lects being withdrawn from its service. The principle, that
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 145
man, in order to reach his highest perfection, must learn to
give up himself and his bodily enjoyments, is one which
cannot, I think, be much controverted ; but that sort of
living death, and that series of penances and martyrdoms
which are in credit among the Indian devotees, have an
evident tendency to stupify and blunt the mind, to lead us
into a world of sleepy superstitions, and, above all, to nur
ture within us a sort of spiritual pride and vanity, which it
should above all things be the object of a philosopher to
avoid. According to the true spirit of Christianity, the
external abstraction from the duties of citizenship ought to
be connected with the highest internal activity, not only of
the spirit, but of the heart, and thereby re-operate in the
most beneficial manner on all the constitutions of the society
which is abandoned. The whole activity of citizenship, all
its duties and labours, are, after all, directed only to a few
leading purposes, and confined within certain limits. There
remains ever a yet wider sphere for the exercise of that
restless activity by which man is tempted to struggle for
every thing that is within his reach. This is afforded, for
example, in the first ages of national development, by the
sciences and the arts of peace. When the state is so far
advanced that these are taken into the circle of active em
ployment, there still remain the needful to be assisted, and
the sorrowful to be comforted : or, if these be all removed,
there remain yet higher duties, such as to prepare men for
ends more exalted than any duties of citizenship, or to
watch over the truth in the midst of times of moral relaxa
tion, to guard it from the slow poison of forgetfulness, and
transmit it to posterity in all its original soundness and
integrity. These are the things which draw a line of essen
tial distinction between those Christian recluses who re
nounce the world that they may live entirely for their
higher calling, and the sluggish degradation of the indolent
and self-torturing Hindoos.
But this propensity to a life of retirement and contempla
tion is by no means the only point of resemblance between
K
146 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the Hindoos and the Christians. The Indian idea of a three
fold Godhead is one, I confess, upon which I am inclined to
lay very little stress. Some such division, some allusion to
a threefold principle, is to be found in the religion of most
peoples as well as in the systems of most philosophers. It
is the universal form of being given by the first cause to
all his works the seal of the Deity, if we may so speak,
stamped on all the thoughts of the mind and all the forms
of nature. The Indian doctrine of a threefold principle is
extremely different from ours, and, at least in the manner in
which they themselves explain it, is extremely absurd ; for
the cause of destruction is by it supposed to form part of the
highest being. That principle of evil, which, in the Persian
theology, is represented as in perpetual opposition to the
Godhead, is by the Indian divines united with the creating
and preserving power, to make up the being of the Deity
himself. God is, according to their first maxim, " all in
all ;" and they think that it is as much a part of his pre
rogative to be the cause of all the evil in the world as of all
the good.
The idea of incarnation, so prevalent among the Indians,
bears little resemblance to any thing in our religion, and is
indeed every where overburdened with the most absurd
fables. We may trace a much more solid resemblance in
those ruling feelings, both of life and of poetry, to which I
have already directed your attention. In all the poems and
works of our ancients (the Greeks) we cannot but be sen
sible of an excessive repose : they who are best able to
appreciate the beauty of their writings will agree with me
in thinking that, even in those cases where the most open
expression of deep feeling, morality, or conscience might
have been expected, the Greek authors are apt to view the
subject of which they treat as a mere external appearance
of life with a certain perfect, undisturbed, and elaborate
equability. The feelings whose expression would in many
cases be the mcst appropriate, are to them uncustomary or
unknown. We may well say that repentance and hope (I
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 147
mean that higher hope which has eternity for its object) are
Christian feelings. Akin to these are all feelings and senti
ments which are connected with the present abject condition
:of our being, and a sense of the perfection from which we are
fallen. But among the Indians the feeling and sympathy of
guilt are above all others predominant. I have already
mentioned, that according to their descriptions of a moral
transgression, it is something of which all nature is consci
ous an outrage against the universe. The solitary voice
in the heart, for such is the name by which conscience is
called, opens to us a new sense, an ear, as it were, by which
we gain acquaintance with the affairs of a world which
would otherwise be entirely imperceptible to us. But this
voice is but too often drowned in the noise and tumult of
the world, and in order to have its suggestions brought with
more power before our minds, we require to observe the
effects which the same offences that call down its reproaches
produce on the feelings of those around us. On such ideas
and such feelings as these, not only has the Indian imagina
tion explained all the outward appearances of life, the
whole of nature assumes a similar form. In every thing
that surrounds him the Indian sees beings endowed with a
nature and feelings like his own, suffering like himself under
the burden of former transgressions, enclosed like him in
some temporary form of unworthiness, but still capable like
him of all the tenderness of recollection and all the discon-
solateness of foresight. He is united with all nature by the
ties of brotherhood, and has his ears open on every side to
the voice of compassion. The general system under which
he believes the world to be governed, is one of so much
harshness, that, to make it tolerable, he stands in much need
of all the alleviations which can be afforded him by the bal
sam of love, and his faith in the presence of this all-animat
ing sympathy.
But the most remarkable point of resemblance between
the Indian and the Christian doctrines lies in the absolute
identity of conception with which both describe the process
148 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of regeneration. In the Indian creed, exactly as in our own,
so soon as the soul becomes touched with the love of divine
things, it is supposed to drop at once its life contaminated by
sin, and, as the phoenix rises from its ashes, to spring at once
into the possession of a new and purified existence. So uni
versal is the prevalence of this idea among the Indians, that
the soul so purified is said by the Brahmins (with the same
words and the same meaning familiar to ourselves,) to
be New-born. But even here there is ample room to per
ceive the superiority of our Christian religion. That religion
has, indeed, no more than either reason or nature, opposed
at any time the hereditary advantages of earthly posses
sion ; the idea of any such social equality has been confined
to a few doting and ignorant enthusiasts. But, on the other
hand, Christianity acknowledges, distinctly and broadly, the
principle that all men are equal before God ; a principle
much better calculated than the other to nourish within us
the noble spirit of freedom. In the Christian system, all
heavenly possessions are the free gift of heaven, and they
are often conferred on those whom we should be apt to con
sider as the most mean and the most unworthy. In the re
ligion of the Hindoos, those blessings which ought to form
the common hope of all men, are represented as the peculiar
privilege of certain castes. What encouragement for pride
on the one hand ! what sources of self-despising thoughts
and voluntary degradations on the other !
In spite of all these errors, and all this palpable inferio
rity in the Hindoo system, the resemblance between it and
the Christian is nevertheless sufficiently distinct to have
given rise among certain critics to the idea that the Brah
mins have borrowed many of their opinions from our gospels.
I think, however, that the prevalence of such notions in In
dia, at a period much more early than this, is proved beyond
a doubt by historical evidence. Besides, I am not of the
opinion that we ought to be so much startled by the dis
covery of any such imperfect anticipation of the truth. We
might, with equal reason, take it for granted, whenever we
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 149
meet in the writings of the other Asiatic nations any thing
which bears a strong resemblance to the traditions of Moses,
or the allegories of Solomon, that the authors of these writ
ings must, of necessity, have had in their hands copies of our
Old Testament exactly like ourselves. Although the stream
may be both distant and impure, it may still retain something
of the nature of its original fountain. The seeds of all truth
and all virtue are implanted by nature in man the image of
God. He has often indistinct surmises of things which are not
till long afterwards to be perfectly revealed. The first fa
thers of Christianity found in the life of Socrates and the doc
trines of Plato so much that harmonized with their own sys
tem, that they scrupled not to say these philosophers were
both, in some measure, Christians. As all the manifesta
tions of nature are connected with each other by the com
mon principle of being, and as all exercise of reason must
give birth to somewhat similar results, so also, in a higher
region, all those truths which relate to divine things are
mysteriously kindred to each other. When one step is
given, man easily goes further. It is only necessary that
the first spark of light should be given from above ; tliat
man can no more strike out for himself than he can create
for himself a new body or a new soul. It is true that there
are many thoughts, many trains and worlds of thought?
which are originated by man himself; but these thoughts
are mere emanations of selfishness, narrow and unprofitable,
and tending to no issue. We can no more say that truth
and light are in these, than that pure morality consists in
pride and vanity.
The great picture of the development of the human mind,
and the history of truth and errors, is becoming more per
fect in proportion as we are becoming acquainted with a
greater number of nations possessing systems and mytho
logies of their own. Things which in the western world
appear always at a great distance from each other, are
often found in the most intimate union among the remote
nations of Asia. While the Persians bear, in every thing
150 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
which respects religious belief, a nearer resemblance to the
Hebrews than to any other people, the poetical part of
their mythology is extremely similar to the northern theo
logy, and their manners have many points of coincidence with
those of the Germans. Among the Indians, again, we find
a mythology resembling partly that of the Egyptians, partly
that of the Greeks, and yet comprehending in it many ideas,
both moral and philosophical, which, in spite of all differ
ences in detail, are evidently akin to the doctrines of our
Christian religion. There is, indeed, no reason to doubt
that there existed a reciprocal communication of ideas
between India and those countries which had the nearest
access to the ancient revelation. The Persians had, without
doubt, obtained the mastery over Northern India before the
days of Alexander ; or, at least, they had from time to time
overrun and conquered it. And Persian ideas and doctrines
might very easily be circulated in India ; for although they
differed greatly in institutions and opinions, the two nations
were originally connected, both by language and descent.
Even the expedition of Alexander, although the authority
it established was of no long duration, may have left a very
considerable impression on the minds of the Indians. As
in the Grecian opinions and mythology much more is of
foreign origin than one would at first be inclined to believe,
in consequence of the art with which the Greeks rendered
every thing which they borrowed from other nations Greek ;
even so there may be much in the sacred books of the Brah
mins originally derived from the opinions of foreign nations.
The very uniformity and bigotry of Indian thought must-
have soon lent an Indian air to whatever was ingrafted on
it, and may thus have been productive of the same effects
as the restlessness and variety of Grecian intellect. Al-
though India received, perhaps, in the more early periods,
no return from Egypt for the knowledge which she commu
nicated, the case may have been very different afterwards,
and the Indians may have derived some notions of the
doctrines of Judaism and Christianity through their in-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 151
tercourse with the Egyptians. I have, indeed, little doubt
that the later writers of Hindostan have had the benefit of
some such communication. The first diffusion of Chris
tianity on the coast of Malabar is supposed to have taken
place so early as the age of the apostles. We have, besides,
historical evidence of a Christian mission having been sent
from Egypt into India about the end of the fourth, or be
ginning of the fifth century. At that period India was
also connected in the way of trade with Ethiopia. While
Armenia, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, remained entirely
Christian, and either in subjection to the Byzantine em
pire, or on terms of friendly alliance with it, the intercourse
between the remoter east and the west, by way of Con
stantinople, must have been extremely easy. The last
writer who describes the Indians of the sixteenth century
as an eyewitness, says expressly that he found their seas
and havens filled with Persian vessels. The power of the
Persians was very predominant by land also previous to
the appearance of Mahomet : they had already considerably
reduced the extent of the eastern empire. In consequence
of Egypt and Syria being taken away from the Byzantine
empire by the successors of Mahomet, the old intercourse
between the east and the west was for a time interrupted ;
but it was restored with great success by the operations of
the Crusades.
The epoch in which the different opinions of the Asiatics
began to be introduced and opposed to each other among
the Europeans, was that which takes in the period between
Hadrian and Justinian. But even in the earliest times of
Christianity, the influence of these oriental systems was
sufficiently apparent. The mystical sects of the first cen
tury consisted, in a great measure, of persons who had
embraced different dogmas of the oriental philosophers, and
who endeavoured to blend these, as well as the fictions of
altogether inconsistent mythologies, with the doctrines of
the new faith. Even the greatest of the first Christian
philosophers, Origen, was a believer in the transmigration
152 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of souls, and many other oriental opinions altogether
irreconcilable with Christianity. In the New Platonic phi
losophy, which undertook the defence of the old Polytheism,
and was professedly hostile to Christianity, the Egyptian
taste made daily steps to predominance. This philosophy
was a strange, chaotic, and fermenting mixture of astrology,
metaphysics, and mythology. The propensity to secret and
magical arts whose mysteries were frequently sinful as well
as foolish grew daily more and more into a passion. Such
was the philosophy, and such the opinions which it was the
ambition of the Emperor Julian to establish on the ruins of
Christianity. The more Christianity increased, the more
universal and comprehensive must the struggle between it
and the old religion have become. The antipathy natural to
contending parties yields an easy explanation of the early
persecutions of Christianity. It is not possible to doubt
that Diocletian had a regular plan in view, and was re
solved, at all hazards, to extirpate our religion. But the
cause of truth was strong, and its strength became suffi
ciently manifested in the time of Constantine. The victory
which the new religion then gained was, however, not so
much due to the exertions of that prince, as to the same
internal strength which had been the protector of Christianity
during all the assaults of Diocletian. The establishment of
Christianity has, however, been numbered among the merits
of Constantine ; and it is no wonder that the fame of such a
service has induced posterity to throw a merciful veil over
all his faults. But the genius of the old religion was not
yet entirely overthrown, and the contest was once more
renewed, and that with redoubled spirit, under Julian.
This was a prince, whatever his other qualities might be,
of very splendid talents ; he attacked Christianity, not by
open force, like Diocletian, (which was, indeed, by this
time, out of the question,) but with ridicule, and all manner
of traitorous arts and reproaches. His most insidious attempt
was to render Christianity contemptible, by representing it
as a system incompatible with all higher intellectual accom-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 153
plishment and education. The modern panegyrists of Julian
have many points of resemblance to the subject of their
eulogies ; but if they would condescend to examine a little
more closely into the true nature of that scientific superstition
to which Julian was attached, perhaps they might see less
reason to identify their own cause with his.
Even after Christianity had outstood this last regular
attack upon her existence, she had still to contend with a
strong opposition from the philosophers, down to the time
of Justinian. That prince banished the philosophers, who
were her principal enemies, from his dominions. They
took refuge in Persia, where they soon became dispersed
and forgotten ; and so terminated the remarkable contest
between the heathen philosophy and the Christian religion.
LECTURE VI.
INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON THE ROMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE TRAN
SITION TO THE NORTHERN NATIONS GOTHIC HEROIC POEMS ODIN, RUNIC
WRITINGS AND THE EDDA OLD GERMAN POETRY THE NIBELUNGEN-LIED.
I HAVE now attempted to give you a view of three periods
of literature. In setting before you the two first of these,
the flourishing era of Greek intellect, from Solon to the Pto
lemies, and the best and properly classical time of Roman
literature, from Cicero to Trajan, I had an easy task to
perform. For by merely passing in review, and pointing
out the characteristic qualities of the individual writers, I
did all that was necessary in order to give you a distinct
idea of the spirit and progressive character of the whole sub
ject of the various and intermingled revolutions of progress
and decline by which the literary history of some remarkable
centimes was distinguished.
154 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
The case was very different with regard to the third
period between Hadrian and Justinian. The object here
was not to describe the forms of particular compositions,
and the merits of individual authors, but to set before you a
view of progressive changes in general thought. My pur
pose was to display the great struggle between the world of
antiquity and the new Christian faith ; the influence which
was produced by the introduction of a new religion from
Asia into Europe ; the fermentation which was produced,
both among Greeks and Komans, by the influx of oriental
dogmas and oriental mysticism. My task was here a much
more difficult one. In order to describe this conflict of
Asiatic opinions, and the whole picture of Asiatic traditions,
I was compelled to speak of nations whose literature has
altogether perished, such as the Egyptians ; of others, whose
ancient literature is known to us only by the imperfect pro
ductions of after ages, such as the Persians ; of the Hebrews,
whose sacred writings contain, indeed, all the old literature
and poetry of the nation, but are viewed by us in a manner
little adapted for exact criticism, impressed as we are with
habitual reverence for what we conceive to be the reposi
tories of divine communication ; last of all, of the Indians,
whose literature is rich and various, but known to us imper
fectly, and from sources often of very dubious authority.
Even in the greater proportion of authors (both heathens
and Christians) which were produced by Greece and Kome
in the time between Hadrian and Justinian, the principal
object of attention is not the form of composition, but the
spirit, and import, and development of opinion. Should
any one attempt to depict this period by going regularly
through the catalogue of its writers, and assigning to the
compositions of each their due share of critical blame or
approbation ; the consequence would only be, that our ideas
would be bewildered, and we should entirely lose sight of
the main object of importance. It is true that all manner
of literary information and literary facilities were extensively
diffused during this period ; perhaps the spirit of inquiry and
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 155
the love of investigation were never so common or so lively
as at this very time, which was, above all others, the most
fruitful in the production of all sorts of errors and supersti
tions. If we look to the universal activity of intellect, the
wide diffusion of knowledge, errors, traditions, and erudition
of all kinds, we cannot hesitate to consider this age as, in <*,
mere literary point of view, one of the most accomplished
and remarkable that the world has ever seen. But our con
clusion would be very different if we should direct our
attention only to the character and original genius of its
individual great authors, and their skill and taste in lan
guage, style, and composition. In poetry, to which, among
all the departments of literature, the first place is ever due,
during the whole of this period nothing really new or great
was produced. It produced, indeed, great masters of elo
quence, for that was a talent of which the Greeks were never
destitute ; but what is there either in the form or art of their
rhetoric that is either new or remarkable ? The highest
praise to which the best orators of this time can lay claim
is, that their style and language are still such as to recall to
our recollection, or even to sustain a comparison with, the
better ages of antiquity. The Greek language was, indeed,
still preserved in great purity and perfection. To some of
the great Christian orators, such as Basil and Chrysostom,
we must, however, allow the further praise of having directed
that rhetoric, which was natural to them as Greeks, not to
sophistical topics, which was the chief error of their prede
cessors, but to the development of the most sacred truth and
the purest morality. But, in truth, the ambition of writing
well was no characteristic of this age. The Christian fathers
had other things in view than to shine as authors, and the
same thing may be said of their heathen opponents. How
can any one talk of Plotinus or Porphyry, or even of Lon-
ginus, as writers, after having read Plato ? and yet these
are the very men whose writings merit our chief attention,
since their opinions exerted the greatest influence both on
their contemporaries and on posterity. In general, individual
156 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
distinctions were lost sight of in the overpowering bustle and
conflict of the age. There are in the history of literature^-
epochs wherein all the praise, both of style and intellect,
belong to the genius of individuals who had outstripped
their generation ; there are others in which individuals go-"
for nothing, and all our attention is riveted on the great
motions of the common mind. The historian of literature
must be impartial, and represent with equal fidelity all the
modes of intellectual manifestations ; he must give due space
both to the repose of artificial development on the one hand,
and the creativeness of chaotic ferment on the other.
If we regard only the intellectual strength which was
ranged on either side in this great contest, we shall find
that the powers of the two parties, both in talents and in
erudition, were pretty fairly matched. With perhaps some
few exceptions, every incident of the conflict was produced
by the merits of the two causes, not the excellencies or
defects of the individual combatants. Among the Greeks,
at the beginning of this period, the heathenish party had
certainly the advantage ; the Greek literature had its last
fine season at a time when the Christians under Antoninus
scarcely ventured to bring forward a single writing in de
fence either of their persecuted faith or their calumniated
lives. Even among the Christian party, the Greeks still
maintained their reputation of superior intellectual attain
ments ; the first philosophical and learned apologists, the
first great orators and historians of Christianity, were all
Greeks. The superiority both in talents and learning began
every day to be more and more on the side of the Chris
tians. But even after the new religion had acquired a
complete victory and become the established faith of the
empire, among the Greeks at least, the heathen party
were still distinguished by the most commanding talents.
Even those last philosophers who opposed Christianity, and
attempted to restore heathenism after it had fairly been
abolished, were men who are, when considered in relation
to the time which produced them, worthy of very high admi-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 157
ration, whether we regard the profoundness of their views,
the extent of their learning, or even the elegance of their
compositions.
In the west the case was very different. There we have
only a very few heathen writers, and these ones of no great
importance, opposed to a whole body of Christian literature
in Latin. It is true that this western literature is not
worthy of being compared, either in respect of talents or
erudition, with the Christian literature of the Greeks. The
Romans had, indeed, at no time, any great talents for philo
sophy and metaphysics ; even their language was against
them, and its defects are no less visible in Augustine than
in Cicero. It was not till long after the Latin had become
a dead language that it was moulded, by the violence of
foreigners, into a state capable of expressing, in some de
gree, (however imperfectly,) the subtleties of those born
dialecticians and metaphysicians, the Greeks. The greatest
and most original work which the later Latin literature
produced, is unquestionably that in which St Augustine has
attempted to give a Christian interpretation to the greatest
work of ancient philosophy the Republic of Plato, and the
ideal system of man and society which it contains. But
even this work, although it professes to be chiefly occupied
with matters of the most abstract nature, such as the des
tiny of man and the ideas of social arrangement, is in truth
not so much a metaphysical as a moral work. It is, how
ever, a moral work in the most extensive sense of that
word; for it contains many admirable criticisms on the
work of Plato, a theory of human life, and an abstract of
the philosophy of history, Even in the Christian age, tho
national distinctions of Greeks and Romans were still kept
alive ; and if the former were remarkable for skill and sub-
tilty, the latter were no less so for practical intellect and
soundness of understanding. These qualities of the Roman
mind, embodied as they were in that admirable system of
laws which was preserved all over the Roman west, among
the learned and the clergy, are entitled, more than any
158 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
others to our gratitude. It is to the influence of the Roman
jurisprudence, united with the spirit of freedom and natural-"
feeling introduced by those German tribes which conquered
and restored the Roman empire, that we must ascribe the
successful development and dignified attitude of modern
intellect.
Christianity (as given to the Teutonic nations by the
Romans) on the one hand, and the free spirit of the nortb^
on the other, are the two elements from which the new
world proceeded, and the literature of the middle ages re
mained, accordingly, at all times, a double literature. One
literature, Christian and Latin, was common to the whole
of Europe, and had for its sole object the preservation and
extension of knowledge : but there was another and a more
peculiar literature for each particular nation in its vernacu
lar tongue. The first great patrons of modern literature
Theodorick the Goth, Charlemagne, and Alfred had, ac
cordingly, in all their labours a twofold object ; the one. to
preserve undiminished, and to render more generally useful,
that inheritance of knowledge which had been transmitted
down in the Latin language ; the other, to improve the ver
nacular tongue, and thereby the national spirit to preserve
the poetical monuments ; but above all, to give a regular
form to the dialects of the north, and render them capable
of being used in subjects of science. The poetical, creative,
and national part of the literature of the middle age, is,
indeed, for us both the most useful and the most pleasing ;
but the Latin part must by no means be passed over in
silence, for it is the only bond by which modern Europe is
connected with the whole of classical as well as Christian
antiquity.
The last, incidents in the history of the yet living Latin
language, which had so great an influence on the develop
ment and peculiar character of the Romanic dialects, its
offspring, and in general on the poetical spirit of the middle
ages, were the following : With the translation of the
Bible into the Roman language, there commenced an
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 159
altogether new period a late, and in many respects a
rich, after-harvest of Latin literature. From the close of
the old classical period under Trajan, till the age of
Christian writers in the fourth and fifth centuries, we find
an almost total pause; scarcely here and there a single
work in the Koman language, and even these ones of very
little importance. That better and more important works
of that period have perished, we have no reason to suspect.
The Greeks had at this time a visible superiority. If, in
the centuries which I have mentioned, there arose, not
only among the Christian party, but also among their
opponents, several better writers, both in poetry and in
history, perhaps we must ascribe the honour of these to
the great stirring of intellect which then took place, and the
revolution introduced into both language and literature by
the new religion, and the zealous warmth of its defenders.
Thus once more did the Roman intellect owe a period of
intellectual and literary exertion, not to its own unassisted
efforts, but the influence of causes altogether foreign and
external. The imitation of oriental models became now the
moving principle of Roman writers, as the imitation of
Greek models had been the moving principle of their prede
cessors. In one point of view, perhaps, this was by no
means an unfortunate change ; at all events the copying of
Greek poetry and eloquence was, in the classical age itself,
a work of labour and imperfection, and could not have been
restored with any prospect of success. That elegant and
periodic mode of composing prose, which seems to have
been quite natural to the Greeks, remained at all times
foreign to the structure of the Roman language. A few,
indeed, of the most eminent Roman authors mastered this
difficulty, and attained to a noble and simple mode of com
position ; but all the rest, even those who are entitled to be
called excellent writers, struggled unsuccessfully with the
foreign form, iind, vainly attempting a too close imitation of
the Greeks, lost and bewildered themselves in an inextri
cable labyrinth of overloaded periods. The Roman poets in
160 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
like manner, when they venture to assume the rich and
ornamental clothing of the Grecian muse, can very seldom
get rid of an air of pedantic constraint and obscurity. Even
the Greek versification which they adopted (with the excep
tion of the hexameter alone, and perhaps the elegiac
measure) never became thoroughly familiar to Italian ears.
The elaborate system of quantities seems to have been
quite beyond the reach of the common people, and this may
perhaps be one reason why Horace, a writer of whom the
moderns are so fond, was far from being equally felt and
admired by his countrymen, even of the times immediately
succeeding his own. A great part of his harmony was alto
gether unintelligible to the Roman people.
The Roman language, although in the end it became ex
tremely polished, and attained, in subjects connected with
law, with warlike affairs, and with the useful arts, a rich
ness, and at the same time a precision to which no other
can lay claim, had nevertheless at all times two great wants
the want of ease in prose, and the want of boldness in
poetry. In both of these respects it might have received
great improvement, and probably, but for some unfortunate
obstacles, it would have done so, from the revolution which
was now taking place. Any great improvement was indeed
impossible without the operation of some such violent cause,
for such a cause alone could bring about a complete deser
tion of the old manner of writing ; and so long as that was
adhered to, to get rid of the old defects was evidently quite
impossible. The knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures was,
above all things, calculated to answer these purposes, for in
them the greatest sublimity of poetical thought is ever-
united with the most unaffected simplicity of expression.
To show what might have been produced by the study of
those matchless writings, I shall only direct your attention
for a single moment to the common version of the Psalms,*
which is, in fact, part of the first translation, commonly
* In the Vulgate.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 161
called the Italick. I appeal to the feelings of every man who
can feel and appreciate the high dignity and noble strength
of the Roman language, whether these do not appear to be
completely revived in this incomparable version. I am
almost tempted to doubt whether the whole circle of Roman
literature can show a single imitation of Greek poetry so
eminently happy as this translation of the sacred songs of
the Hebrews ; wherein the utmost elevation of sentiment is
throughout accompanied with the most chastened simplicity
of style. Even in regard to musical sound, the superiority
of the Roman language is here so conspicuous, that in our
own days the great composers of the higher music still give
the preference to the old language, over its harmonious
daughter the Italian. The true reason why the Roman
language derived no lasting improvement from any of these
things, was this that even before the conquests of the Ger
man tribes it had begun to be radically corrupted by the
influence of the provincials. In proportion to the decline
of her political power, Rome, already the centre of all eccle
siastical influence, began to make every day more and more
rapid approaches towards a complete supremacy in all mat
ters of intellect and taste. But the effect of this upon her
own literature was far from being good. Even so early as
the days of the first Ca3sars, it was the opinion of many,
that there were some defects in the Latinity of those Roman
writers who were natives of Spain that they wrote with
the air of men speaking a foreign language ; and, indeed,
many modern critics have thought they could trace no incon
siderable resemblance between the antithesis of Seneca and
the bombast of Lucan, and some prevailing errors in taste
among the modern Spanish writers. But how much more
common must these provincialisms have become in the age
of which we are now treating ; an age wherein the greater
part of the Latin writers, and, indeed, almost all the first
Latin fathers, were natives either of Africa or of Gaul. It
is scarcely to be doubted, that in the many far dispersed
provinces of the empire, several distinct Roman dialects
162 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
were long before this time formed. Even in Italy there is
every reason to believe that the language of the common
people differed materially from that of which the Roman
writers made use, and which was spoken in the metropolis.
It is to this Eomanic dialect of the common people the
Lingua Rustica, as it was called that the modem Italian
grammarians are fond of ascribing the origin of their own
language, rather than to the change wrought on the proper
Latin tongue by the invasion of the northern tribes. In the
mean time, as Rome had been originally not only the foun
tain, but, perhaps, the only seat of pure speaking, so the
language remained much longer pure in her than in any
other part of the empire. The most eloquent and powerful
writer among the Latin fathers St Jerome was not, in
deed, a native of Rome, but he had at least received all
his education there. And however inferior the language of
the fifth century must of necessity be to that of Cicero, yet
in Jerome we see much both of the true strength of old
Latinity, and the unequivocal elegance of classical cultiva
tion. The change upon the Latin language must have been
great indeed, when, in consequence of the prodigious influx
of Goths into Italy, and of many of these settling in Rome
itself, the language began to be spoken and written by a
great population to which it was altogether foreign. Al
though no absolute mixture of the languages as yet took
place, yet it is certain that the Latin underwent at least
such an alteration as rendered it a matter of labour and
exertion for the Romans themselves to preserve in their
speech any share of that purity which was formerly natural
to them.
This, indeed, begins to form a characteristic feature in all
the Roman writers of the age of the Gothic king Theodorick.
With him antiquity ends, and all the writers after his time
may be said to belong to the middle age.
However favourable its consequences may have afterwards
been, there is no doubt that the first introduction of Chris
tianity must, like every other great revolution, have pro-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 163
duced a temporary interruption in all art and all literature.
Perhaps of all the fine arts, that which suffered the least
was architecture, for the new religion not only adopted the
finest old buildings for its own purposes, but suggested the
idea of new buildings which could have had no existence
under the former system, or among any people ignorant of
the peculiar character and sublimity of the Christian wor
ship. In the same manner that the Greeks had of old
formed a truly Grecian architecture out of the elements fur
nished to them by the Egyptians and other nations, the
Christians now made use of the beautiful forms of the
Grecian architecture, and formed out of them a new style,
which was purely and originally a Christian architecture.
How soon this took place may be learned from the admirable
church of St Sophia in Constantinople, which was built in
the time of Justinian by Anthemius, himself not only a great
practical architect, but also a great and scientific writer upon
the theory of his art. The absurdity of calling all the Teu
tonic architecture of the middle ages by the name Gothic,
has been often remarked ; but there is no doubt, that during
the period of their empire in Italy, the Goths erected many
buildings, which still survive as specimens of their architec
tural skill. The fate of the ancient music was in like
manner fortunate ; its most simple and noble species were
at once adopted into the service of the Christian church, and
we still listen to many ancient Roman airs, adapted to the
service of hymns and psalms, and invested with a more
solemn and etherial harmony by the majestic accompani
ments of the organ. The interruption in sculpture was much
greater. The images of the ancient gods, so long as they
were considered as such, and not viewed merely as speci
mens of art, were objects of unmingled aversion to the early
Christians. The representations of our Saviour and the
Virgin, which soon became common among them, were not
intended to serve any other purpose than the excitement of
pious reflections. They afforded very little scope either for
sculpture or painting when treated in this way, and to make
164 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
use of them as vehicles for the expression of beauty, whether
in form or sentiment, was the thought of a period as yet far
distant. But yet greater than this, and, indeed, far greater
than any other, must have been the interruption which took
place in poetry. Some few, indeed, still persisted in making
a poetical use of the old pagan mythology ; but as all the
particulars of that system had already been completely
exhausted, and the belief itself was utterly gone, nothing
more was attainable than a faint and elaborate imitation of
the matchless works of the true pagans. The attempt to
form a new and properly Christian poetry was, indeed, ex
tremely successful in the department of hymns and songs,
for in these the warm expression of feeling was alone suffi
cient to constitute excellence ; and, besides, the Christian
writers had this advantage, that they were almost compelled
to follow the example of the very best models they could
have had the Psalms of the Hebrews. But the more am
bitious attempts to describe in poetry the whole system of
Christianity, were in general, as has very frequently been
the case in modern times, altogether unsuccessful ; the form
of composition borrowed from the ancient poets was little
adapted for such subjects, and the result was only a collec
tion of uninteresting centos, possessing, indeed, the attributes
of metrical arrangement and elevated language, but utterly
destitute of all that life and spirit in which the essence of "*
poetry consists. For these Europe had to look to her other
fountain of inspiration, the north.
In the very earliest Koman accounts of the German na
tions we find many notices of their extraordinary love for
poetry. The songs in which the actions of Hermann * were
celebrated have perished; so also have those inspiring
strains with which the prophetess Veleda was wont to ani
mate the courage of the Teutonic Batavi, when they, after
long following the Roman banners against their brethren of
Germany, undertook at last to maintain a war in defence of
* Arrainius.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 165
their own freedom ; and found too late, by sad experience,
that the time for resistance had gone by. The mythological
poems of these northern nations must naturally have been
forgotten after the adoption of a new religion. But the
most essential part, the spirit and strength of their poetry,
was kept alive in the historical heroic poems. These, in
process of time, came to be composed with greater elegance
of language and versification, to be softened by the refine
ment of manners, and to be beautified and ennobled by the
spirit of love and thoughtfulness. And such was the origin
of that chivalrous poetry which is (in this shape at least)
altogether peculiar to Christian Europe, and has produced
effects so powerful on the national spirit of its noblest in
habitants.
Of the Teutonic nations converted to Christianity, the
Goths were the first who possessed historical heroic poems
of the kind to which I have alluded. Gothic heroic poems
were already sung in the time of Attila, and they continued
to form the amusement of the court of King Theodorick.
Even the Latin writers of that age make mention of them ;
and some of them have transmitted to us, as true history in
prose, particulars relating to the antiquities of the northern
tribes, which were in fact only the poetical ornaments of
these heroic legends. The fame of the royal line of the
Amali, and all the heroes of that race, seems to have been
the favourite subject of these poems. In the sequel, both
Attila and Theodorick, and after them Charlemagne him
self, were honoured with a similar celebration.
Of Gothic literature we still possess one monument, the
Bible of Ulphilas ; and it is evident from it that the Gothic
language had at least made very close approximations to a
regular construction. This version of the sacred writings
was originally executed for the use of those Gothic tribes
which occupied the countries on the Danube ; but we have
the clearest evidence, that the very same dialect was spoken
by the Goths in Italy. It is expressly stated that Theodo-
c k favoured impartially the progress of both literatures, the
166 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Latin and the Gothic. We know, indeed, that he encou
raged the translating of Latin books into Gothic, exactly as
the great Alfred, somewhat later, did that of the same books
into Anglo-Saxon. From the manner in which the Latin
historian Jornandes acknowledges his obligations to the
heroic poems of the Goths, there is great reason to believe
that he, or rather the authors whom he transcribed, had not
barely heard these poems recited, but seen them committed
to writing at the court of Theodorick. And this is rendered
the more probable by the circumstance of these poems having
been, so far as we can judge, principally occupied with the
achievements of the royal race of the Amali. A prince like
Theodorick would neglect no means to secure the preserva
tion of such interesting records. But with the disappearance
of the Gothic nation, its language also, and all the monu
ments of its greatness, passed away. These were, indeed,
preserved in some measure among the Spaniards after they
had elsewhere been forgotten, for it was the ambition of the
Spanish monarchs to trace their lineage to the old Gothic
kings. But in Italy, on the contrary, every Gothic monu
ment seems to have been studiously destroyed ; for there
the vanity of the great families took a different turn, and
they were willing to sacrifice all the proofs of a true Gothic
or Longobardic pedigree, for the sake of fabricating a descent
from some of the patricians of ancient Rome.
If we reflect on the nature of the prevalent tastes of that
age, we shall, I think, have no difficulty in concluding that
those songs of the German bards, which Charlemagne caused
to be collected and committed to writing, could scarcely have
been any thing else than similar heroic poems relating to
the first Christian period, and the great expeditions of the
northern tribes. He was to the German bards what Solon
was to Homer or the Homeridae. Now we have still extant
heroic poems in the German language, wherein Attila,
Odoacer, Theodorick, and the race of the Amali, are cele
brated, in conjunction with many heroes, bothFrankish and
Purgundian, all mingled together without scruple by the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 167
bold anachronisms of a most uncritical age. The present
shape in which these poems appear, bears indeed the clearest
marks of an age long posterior to that of Charlemagne. But
perhaps it is not too much to say, that we have still in our
possession, if not the language or form, at least the substance
of many of those ancient poems which were collected by the
orders of that prince ; I refer to the Nibelungen-lied* and
the collection which goes by the name of the Heldenbuch.}
The opinion that the poems collected together by Charle
magne referred to Hermann or Odin, or in general to the
Pagan antiquities and mythology of the old Germans, can,
I apprehend, be entertained only by those who have not
looked with sufficient accuracy into the spirit of that age. I
shall bring forward a single historical evidence, which may,
I think, greatly contribute to put an end to the dispute.
This is the still extant formula of that oath by Avhich the
Saxons renounced heathenism on their conversion to Chris
tianity. Its words are as follows : " I renounce all the
works and words of the Devil, Thunaer, (that is, the god
of thunder, or Thor,) and Wodan, and Saxon Odin, and all
the unholy that are their kindred." This formula is, indeed,
commonly ascribed to the eighth century, rather before the
time of Charlemagne ; but that is of no importance, it is
quite sufficient evidence of the spirit of those days. Odin
was still worshipped in Saxony in the age of Charlemagne,
and sacrifices were offered to him on the Hartz that he might
assist the Saxon armies in their wars with Charlemagne
himself. How, then, can we believe that, in such a state of
things, Charlemagne would make collections of heathenish
poetry in praise of Hermann or Odin ? From the same oath
another historical truth of great importance may also be
gathered, and that is that Odin was a person altogether
distinct from Wodan, having Saxony expressly mentioned
as his native land. Even the legends and histories of Scan
dinavia, although they might very easily have appropriated
Odin entirely to themselves, are yet uniform and consistent
* Lay of the Nibelungen. f Book of Heroes.
168 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
in relating that he was at first king in Saxony, and came
from thence to Sweden, where he built Sigtuna and esta
blished his great empire. The testimony of the Anglo-
Saxons is strongly in favour of the same account, and their
testimony is of very considerable weight, for their kings (and
among the rest Alfred) traced their genealogy in the right
line to Odin. This Anglo-Saxon genealogy is supported by
so many historical proofs, and the effect of the coinciding
testimonies of these two distant nations is on my mind so
strong, that I have little hesitation in adopting the opinion-""
of those who consider Odin as a historical personage. I
agree with them in thinking it extremely probable that he
lived about the third century of our era a time in which
the Romans, too weak to make attacks, and yet too formi
dable to be invaded, had perhaps fewer means of knowing
what passed in the north of Germany than at any other
period, either before or afterwards. It is, I think, in these
facts that we must seek for the reason why the name of
Odin, so pre-eminently illustrious among the Saxons and
the Scandinavians, remained comparatively unknown, not
only to the Eomans, but to all the nations of the west. I
imagine that we must consider Odin as belonging to the
same class with many deities of the classical mythology.
He was, I doubt not, a prince, a conqueror, a hero, and at
the same time a poet ; he was the author of prophetic songs,
by means of which he, in conjunction with priests, seers, and
other poets, his coadjutors, introduced great changes into
the theology of his countrymen ; if he did not create a new
system, he at least formed a new epoch in the old ; and, as
he had made pretensions during his life to supernatural
powers and attainments, it was quite in the common course
of things that he should be deified after his death. That
Odin had originally come into Saxony out of Asia, is a
Scandinavian legend, or rather fancy, altogether irreconcile-
able with this account of the historical Odin. The Scandi
navian collectors themselves were satisfied that they could
not possibly reconcile their legend with historical truth, and
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 169
they accordingly had recourse to the story of another Odin,
although they, indeed, very often confounded the two to
gether. If I am not deceived, however, I think we may
find some traces of this elder Odin in an ancient writer who
is in all instances worthy of the greatest attention. Tacitus
mentions, in the beginning of his treatise on the manners of
the Germans, the existence of a legend according to which
Ulysses came in the course of his wanderings into Germany,
and there founded the city of Asciburgum. Now, the an
cients were accustomed to consider legends such as this in a
point of view of which we have no notion. They considered
nothing in such traditions but the universal idea of a deity
or a hero. They called the god of war of every nation by
the name of Mars, and every deity presiding over science or
art by that of Mercury, and if they did not altogether over
look local differences, they at least attached to them very
little importance. Ulysses was the common idea of a wan
dering hero, and to him and to his son, even in the remotest
regions of the west, cities, and colonies, and all manner of
adventures were ascribed. Wherever they met with any
legend concerning a wandering hero, whether of the western
or of the northern nations, their Hercules or Ulysses was
always at hand, and in the history of one or other of them
the foreign tradition was forthwith accommodated with a
niche. The recollection of their origin, and first egress from
Asia, had not entirely perished among the tribes of the
north. Some legend of this kind, of a hero wandering out
of distant lands into Germany, must have been repeated to
Tacitus ; and if the name was that of the elder Odin, it
could scarcely fail to recall to the ears of the Roman that
of the Greek Odysseus, and so to impress on his mind a yet
stronger belief in the coincidence which he had remarked.
These historical songs and heroic poems were not, cer
tainly, in the older times, (unless by the positive command
of some prince) ever committed to writing : that was totally
contrary, both to the spirit of such compositions, and the
customs of those who recited them. I suppose they were
170 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
still left entirely to oral tradition, even after the Germans
had been long connected with the Romans, and lived in
society with them in many different countries, and been put
in complete possession, both of alphabets and all the ma
terials of writing. This, however, was probably by no
means the case in respect of those prophetic songs of which
the theology of Odin had such need and such abundance.
In these I have little doubt that letters were employed. In
another work I have already taken occasion to express my
opinions that the German nation were not altogether unac
quainted with the use of letters, even in times preceding their
knowledge of the Greek and Roman alphabets. The Runic
alphabet, at least as we now have it, is indeed of a much
more recent date ; several of its letters are exactly copied
from the Roman; but, then, others of them are entirely
different, and cannot be accounted for by any corruption of
formation. The peculiar arrangement of the letters, and
even the defectiveness of this alphabet, (for, originally, it
contained only sixteen letters,) seem to me sufficient proofs
that it was an original alphabet, not one borrowed from the
Romans. Even in the infinitely more perfect alphabets
afterwards used by the Goths and the Anglo-Saxons, al
though these are in general evidently borrowed from the
Greeks or the Romans, there still are to be found traces of the
old Runic alphabet. For that this was an alphabet common
to many at least of the German nations, is evident from the
abundance of Runic inscriptions which have been discovered
in all the countries formerly occupied either by Goths or Ger
mans. Where, then, it may asked, was the Runic alphabet
learned, if not from the Greeks and Romans ? If it is ab
solutely necessary to find a foreign origin for it, I think
there can be no great difficulty in discovering one which
has at least probability on its side. The Phoanicians, from
whom so many other nations derived their alphabets, were
for many ages in the undisputed possession of the traffic
of the Baltic. We have historical evidence in our hands
that several of those German nations which inhabited the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 171
countries on the Baltic, were infinitely more advanced in
cultivation than the more warlike tribes which occupied
the Roman frontier, and the borders of the Rhine. Here
also, by the Baltic Sea, was the original seat of that
worship of Hertha, which is represented by Tacitus to
have consisted in a species of mysteries. Perhaps the
Runic characters were connected with this worship, and
entirely appropriated to the superstitious purposes of its
priests. That they were at least employed in magical
ceremonies, is so certain, that I need not occupy your
time in proving it. The wooden characters were probably
arranged in some mysterious order, so as to answer the
purpose of a rubric to the prophetic or devoting song which
was muttered over them. The greater characters seem to
have been again and again repeated in some method which
we cannot explain, but which, certainly, was not without
its meaning. The form in which we find the Runic letters
inscribed on stones, affords, in my opinion, indubitable
proof that they were at least sometimes applied to such
purposes as these. It is not easy, indeed, for those who
are at home only in the world of civilisation and refine
ment to enter into the spirit of those barbarous observances.
For my part, I have little difficulty in conceiving that the
methods adopted by these northern priests were the very
best they could have chosen in order to magnify the impor
tance of their own attainments, and impress the minds of
their pupils, or of the multitude, with a due sense of mystery
and awe. But it is in our times by no means uncommon to
see the same men mistaking fiction for history, and history
for fiction.
In Saxony itself, after its submission to the yoke of
Charlemagne, the theology of Odin became very soon rooted
out. But even in much later times there remained many
traces of its superstitions. The country people would not
part with their festival of Spring, and that most innocent,
most natural, and most universal of all holidays, was still
hallowed with due observance at the opening of the May.
172 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Many usages of the same kind were preserved among the
Christian services of the Pentecost. Even at the present
day, in many of the northern districts of Germany, at that
season of the year when the day is longest, great fires are
kindled by night upon the mountains : a custom whose
meaning has long since been forgotten, but which is beyond
all doubt another relic of that ancient system so long para
mount in all the regions of the north. It was natural that
those traces should linger the longest among woods and
hills, which were of old the favourite scenes of this Pagan
worship. Even after the lapse of many Christian centuries,
a superstitious reverence it still attached to some antique
and spreading oaks among the forests of the Hartz and
the Riesengebirgen ; * in our popular poetry the odori
ferous linden is still invested with its character of magic ;
and the branches of the willow are in the hands of every
fortune-telling gipsy. Many relics of the deserted faith
were, indeed, preserved, but they soon assumed the cha
racter of mere vulgar delusions, and sunk far below the
loftiness of then- old religious destination. To the inspired
prophetesses and mandrakes of northern antiquity, suc
ceeded the tricks, the execrations, and the midnight dance
of witches ; and in place of Odin s Valhalla the majestic
congregation of gods and heroes came the hauntings of
the Rheingau, and the ghostly tumults of the Night of
Moonwort.
In the mean time, the theology of Odin, after being ba
nished from its native land, found a secure asylum in the
Scandinavian north, where it yielded, not till after a long
struggle, late and reluctantly, to the Christian faith, and from
whence the knowledge of it, preserved in many glorious
songs and legends, has in later days been communicated to
ourselves. It is by means of these Scandinavian remains
that we are now enabled to trace the poetry of the middle
ages, and, in particular, the whole system of Teutonic
opinions, to their true sources. Above all, we are indebted
* The HiOs of the Giants, on the borders of Bohemia.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 173
for these advantages to the Icelandic Edda. This work
seems to have received the shape in which it now appears
somewhere between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries
between the age of Harald Harfagr, when the Normans
first established themselves in Iceland, and the death of
SnoiTO Sturleson and the suppression of the Icelandic free
dom. In its later parts we find many allusions both to
the Greek mythology, and to Christianity, partly introduced
with a view of tracing similarities between these systems
and the northern legends, partly for the purpose of con
necting the history of the Scandinavian tribes with that of
the ancient nations. But in the most admirable passages,
and, above all, in the poetry of the elder Edda, there breathes,
in its utmost purity, the true spirit of the northern theology.
The perfect unity of this system is that which distinguishes
it most remarkably from that of the Greeks. The Greek
theology was perhaps too rich to permit of its being well
and consistently represented in one picture. Besides, if we
compare it with the northern, we cannot fail to observe a
want of proper end or purpose in the whole of its arrange
ment. The divine and heroic world of the Greeks is per
petually losing itself in the world of men ; their poetry in
the world of prose and reality. But the theology of the-
north is consistent and entire ; every thing is foretold by
prophecies, and the last long-expected catastrophe is a
perfect close. The whole resembles one progressive poem
one tragedy. From the commencement, which teaches
how the earth and the world arose out of the carcass of a
benumbed giant and the description of those happier days
when the holy ash Ysdragill began to grow green over
the old abyss, (" that tree of life which extendeth its roots
through all oceans, and spreads its branches over the uni
verse") and the narrations how bold heroes and the friendly
spirits of light overcame, in many combats, the might of
the giants and the old powers of darkness, down to the last
great mystery, the ruin of gods and Asae of Odin and his
comrades, the whole is one great and connected poem of
174 HISTORY OP LITERATURE.
nature and heroism. The real object upon which its in
terest depends is, as in almost all other poetical legends,
the termination of a glorious and heroic world. The destiny
of war is ever most hostile to the noblest, the most valiant,
and the most graceful of heroes ; and Odin assembles all
that are slain in his Valhalla, that he may have the more
Mends and fellow-combatants in that last war against the
power of his enemies a war in which he is of old destined
to be not the victor but the vanquished. The first incident
in which this great object of the whole is set forth, is the
death of Balder. As in the Trojan legends, by the death of
the two noblest heroes, Hector and Achilles, so here also,
by the death of Balder, " the favourite of all the gods, the
most beautiful of warriors," there is shadowed out the uni- -
versal decay of the heroic world. His fate is fixed by
destiny ; in vain does the foot of Odin tread the path to
Hades. Hela, like the Theban Sphinx, gives no answer
but an enigma an enigma which is to be explained by
fearful tragedies, and secure to destruction the fated prey.
Perhaps the Ossianic poetry at least so much of it as is of
genuine antiquity had its origin about the same period
with these; but as the knowledge of it was at all times
confined to the small circle of the Scottish Gaels, and never
exerted the smallest influence on the common literature of
Europe, I shall reserve the consideration of it till another
opportunity.
Among the Teutonic nations scattered over the different
regions of Europe, their original love of poetry was mani
fested in a great number of attempts to set forth Christianity
in verse, and to give a poetical clothing to the histories of
the sacred writings. Many such attempts were made
among the Saxons in England, and one in Southern Ger
many by Ottfried. These attempts, so far as the mere art
of poetical composition is concerned, were, indeed, like some
more modern attempts of much greater poets, not veiy suc
cessful. But they have been of great advantage to us, for
they have supplied the most perfect means of information
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 175
with respect to the poetical language and versification of
that time. Above all, they are valuable because these
Christian poets did not invent a form of writing for them
selves, but were contented with copying and adopting that
of the heroic poems of the preceding ages. We are at least
certain that this was the case with regard to Ottfried, for
we have still in our hands a heroic and warlike poem of the
same period, which agrees in all circumstances with the form
of his writings. This is a war song used by Lewis, king of
the East Franks, in his contest with the Normans. A song
of such antiquity (for it is now more than nine hundred
years old) is indeed, on account of that circumstance alone,
an invaluable monument. But it contains one passage
which is of some historical importance. The poet describes
the solemn stillness and calm bravery of the marshalled
army, before the moment of attack :
" There were red cheeks in the ranks
Of the war- delighting Franks." *
And a little afterwards he says
" Now the song was sung,
And the battle begun." f
We can see from this that the same old German custom,
which is described by Tacitus, of inspiriting the soldiers for
action by a heroic song, was still preserved, after the lapse
of many centuries, among the armies of the Teutonic peoples.
That great attention was still bestowed by the Christian
Germans on heroic poetry, may be inferred from the opening
of one of these old poems one which certainly could not at
first sight be supposed likely to contain any warlike allusions,
since it is professedly a panegyric on St Annus, the Bishop
of Cologne.
* Blut schien en wangen
Kampf-lustiger Franken.
f Lied war gesungen,
Schlacht ward begunnen.
176 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
" Often have we heard bards tell,
How in the old time towers and cities fell,
How haughty kingdoms met their destined day,
And peerless champions bled their souls away ! " *
The proper subjects of all heroic poems the fall of nations,
and the contest of heroes are here pointed out in a manner
at once short and impressive.
Although the Mbelungen-lied was not in all probability
reduced to its present form before the beginning of the thir
teenth century, yet I think the present may be the fittest
opportunity for directing your attention to a composition
so nearly of the same class with those we have been con
sidering.
That skilful unfolding of incidents, and almost dramatic
vividness of representation which form the chief character
istic of the Homeric poems, are qualities which were peculiar
to the Greeks, and have never been imitated with much
success by the poets of any other people. But among the
heroic poems of those of other nations which have remained
satisfied with a more simple mode of poetry, this German
poem claims a very high place perhaps among all the
heroic chivalrous poems of modern Europe it is entitled to
the first. It is peculiarly distinguished by its unity of plan :
it is a picture, or rather it is a series of successive pictures,
each naturally following the other, and all delineated with
great boldness and simplicity, and a total disregard of all
superfluities. The German language appears in this work
in a state of perfection to which, in the subsequent periods
of its early history, it had no pretensions. Along with all
its natural liveliness and strength, it seems at that time to
have possessed a flexibility which soon afterwards gave
place to a style of affectation, hardness, and perplexity.
The heroic legends of all nations have, as I have already
* " Wir horten von helden oft mals singen
Und wie sie feste Burgen brachen,
Wie bohe kb nigreicke all vorgingen
Und wie sich liebe kampfgenossen schieden."
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 177
several times mentioned, a great deal in common, so far as
their essence and purpose are concerned; their variety is
only produced by their being imbued with the peculiar feel
ings, and composed in the peculiar measures, of different
nations. In the Nibelungen-lied, in the same manner as in
the legends of Troy and of Iceland, the interest turns on the
fate of a youthful hero, who is represented as invested with
all the attributes of beauty, magnanimity, and victory but
dearly purchasing all these perishable glories by the cer
tainty of an early and a predicted death. In his person, as
is usual, we have a living type both of the splendour and
the decline of the heroic world. The poem closes with the
description of a great catastrophe, borrowed from a half
historical incident in the early traditions of the north. In
this respect also, as in many others, we cannot fail to per
ceive a resemblance to the Iliad ; if the last catastrophe of
the German poem be one more tragical, bloody, and Titanic
than any thing in Homer, the death of the German hero,
on the other hand, has in it more solemnity and stillness,
and is withal depicted with more exquisite touches of ten
derness, than any similar scene in any heroic poem with
which I am acquainted.
The Nibelungen-lied is, moreover, a poem abounding in
variety : in it both sides of human life, the joyful as well as
the sorrowful, are depicted in all their strength. The pro
mise of the opening stanza is fulfilled
" I sing of loves and wassellings, if ye will lend your ears,
Of bold men s bloody combatings, and gentle ladies tears." *
* " Von freuden und festes zeiten, von weinen, und von klagen,
Von kiihner helden streiten, mogt ihr nun wunder horen sagen."
M
178 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE Vn.
OP THE MIDDLE AGE OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
POETRY OF THE MIDDLE AGE LOVE POETRY CHARACTER OF THE NORMANS,
AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE CHIVALROUS POEMS PARTICULARLY THOSE
WHICH TREAT OF CHARLEMAGNE.
WE often think of and represent to ourselves the middle
age as a blank in the history of the human mind, an empty
space between the refinement of antiquity and the illumina
tion of modern times. We are willing to believe that art
and science had entirely perished, that their resurrection
after a thousand years sleep may appear something more
wonderful and sublime. Here, as in many others of our
customary opinions, we are at once false, narrow-sighted,
and unjust ; we give up substance for gaudiness, and sacri
fice truth to effect. The fact is, that the substantial part of
the knowledge and civilisation of antiquity never was for
gotten, and that for very many of the best and noblest pro
ductions of modern genius we are entirely obliged to the
inventive spirit of the middle age. It is upon the whole
extremely doubtful whether those periods which are the
most rich in literature, possess the greatest share either of
moral excellence or of political happiness. We are well
aware that the true and happy age of Roman greatness long
preceded that of Roman refinement and Roman authors ;
and I fear there is but too much reason to suppose that, in
the history of the modem nations, we may find many ex
amples of the same kind. But even if we should not at all
take into our consideration these higher and more universal
standards of the worth and excellence of ages and nations,
and although we should entirely confine our attention to
literature and intellectual cultivation alone, we ought still,
I imagine, to be very far from viewing the period of the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 179
middle ages with the fashionable degree of self-satisfaction
and contempt.
If we consider literature in its widest sense, as the voice
which gives expression to human intellect as the aggre-j"
gate mass of symbols in which the spirit of an age or the I
character of a nation is shadowed forth ; then, indeed, a
great and accomplished literature is, without all doubt, the
most valuable possession of which any nation can boast.
But if we allow ourselves to narrow the meaning of the
word literature so as to make it suit the limits of our own
prejudices, and expect to find in all literatures the same
sort of excellencies, and the same sort of forms, we are
sinning against the spirit of all philosophy, and manifesting
our utter ignorance of all nature. Every where, in indi
viduals as in species, in small things as in great, the fulness
of invention must precede the refinements of art, legend
must go before history, and poetry before criticism. If the
literature of any nation has had no such poetical antiquity
before arriving at its period of regular and artificial de
velopment, we may be sure that this literature can never
attain to a national shape and character, or come to breathe
the spirit of originality and independence. The Greeks
possessed such a period of poetical wealth in those ages
(ages certainly not very remarkable for their refinement
either in literature, properly so called, or in science) which
elapsed between the Trojan adventures and the times of
Solon and Pericles, and it is to this period that the litera
ture of Greece was mainly indebted for the variety, origin
ality, and beauty of its unrivalled productions. What that
period was to Greece, the middle age was to modern *
Europe ; the fulness of creative fancy was the distinguish
ing characteristic of them both. The long and silent pro
cess of vegetation must precede the spring, and the spring
must precede the maturity of the fruit. The youth of indi
viduals has been often called their spring-time of life ; I
imagine we may speak so of whole nations with the same--
propriety as of individuals. They also have their seasons
180 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of unfolding intellect and mental blossoming. The age of
crusades, chivalry, romance, and minstrelsy, was an intel
lectual spring among all the nations of the west.
Literature, however, may be considered in another point
of view, besides this poetical one, in which our chief atten
tion is bestowed on invention, feeling, and imagination. It
may also be regarded as it is the great organ of tradition,,
by means of which the knowledge of the ancient world is
transmitted to the modern, and not only preserved in its
original integrity, but also daily augmented and improved
by the natural progress of ages. The poetical department
of literature is that which has been developed in the diffe
rent vernacular dialects of modern Europe ; the other, which
has for its object the preservation of inherited knowledge,
must be sought for in that Latin literature of the middle
age which was the common property of all the nations of
the west. Even with regard to this we shall find, if we
consider the case with due attention, and enter into the true
.history and spirit of the middle age, that the progress of
literature was something very different from what we are in
general accustomed to suppose.
If we should take nothing more into consideration than
poetry and the development of national intellect in the ver
nacular tongues, we might very naturally wish that no such
Latin literature had ever existed, and that the dead lan
guage had gone altogether out of use. There is no doubt
that its use contributed in no small degree to take away all
life from history and philosophy, more particularly from the
last. There was, indeed, something beyond measure bar
barous and ruinous in the custom of treating all matters
connected with science, learning, legislation, and state-
policy, in a dead and foreign language. Its consequences
were disadvantageous in many respects, but, above all, in
regard to poetry. A great many poetical monuments of the
Germans, and indeed of all the western nations, have perished,
in consequence of the pains taken by well-meaning trans
lators and would-be expounders, who were indefatigable in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 181
rendering every thing into Latin, and clothing what was
originally true poetry and heroic legend, in the disguises of
dull prose and incredible history. Many poetical works
have, in another point of view, been deprived of all their
living influence on ages and peoples, by the folly of their
authors, who consumed great natural powers in the vain
attempt to do justice to a living fancy in a forgotten lan
guage. Of this I might quote a thousand unhappy exam
ples ; from the good nun Roswitha the author of a neglected
poem in Latin upon the achievements of the great Saxon
emperor, which, had she written it in German, might have
furnished us with a valuable monument of language, and
history, and poetry too down to Petrarch, who despised
as juvenile and sentimental trifles those Italian love-poems
which have rendered him immortal, and expected to esta
blish his true fame on a now forgotten Latin epic in cele
bration of Scipio Africanus ; nay, I might cite before you
a whole band of true poets, the greater part Germans and
Italians, who flourished so late as the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, and wrote every thing in Latin.
But the consideration of all the very evident disadvan
tages which resulted from the employment of the Latin
language in the middle age, must not make us forget that
before the several dialects now in use had acquired some
degree of precision and refinement, a common language was
absolutely necessary in Western Europe, not only for the
purposes of religious worship, learning, and education, but
even for conducting the international affairs of the different
states. The language which was adopted forms the invalu
able bond of connexion by which the Old World, is united
with the New. Besides, in the countries whose present
languages are of Roman origin, the Latin, in those days, was
scarcely considered as a foreign or even as a dead language,
but rather as the old and genuine language of the land, pre
served in its regularity and purity by the men of learning
and education, in opposition to the corrupt and vague dia
lects of the common people the vulgar tongues, as they were
182 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
called. In those countries the Latin language ceased not
to be a living one till the ninth or tenth century ; for about
that time the language of the people, assuming in each
country a separate form, began to be no longer viewed as a
mere corruption of the old Latin, but as an altogether diffe
rent language. The progress to this state of things was
indeed so gradual, that we can seldom define the date of
the great change. But it is evident that the delusion under
which men lay in considering the Latin language as still
alive, many centuries after it was really extinct, was very
much prolonged by the perpetual use of that language in all
the observances of religion, and in all the societies of the
cloisters. It sustained daily alterations, but was never
altogether laid aside.
The great legacy and inheritance of all the knowledge and
ideas of the ancient world is, with justice, considered as a
common good of mankind, which is committed to all ages
and nations in their turn, which ought to be sacred in their
eyes, and for the preservation of which posterity is entitled
to call them to an account. The feelings of pain with which
we contemplate any violent rupture in this bond, by which
we are connected with the world of our ancestors, and those
of disgust with which we repel the attempts of such as would
injure or weaken it, are on the whole just and honourable
feelings. But it is only when we find an age or a nation
to have been capable of deliberately destroying, or treating
with utter contempt and neglect, the monuments of ancient
refinement ; in short, it is only in the case of a total ruin of
science, that we can be entitled to heap upon them the ter
rible reproach of barbarity. No such total ruin ever did take
place ; and wilful destruction, if it did sometimes occur in
regard to the imitative arts, was at the least extremely rare
so far as literature was concerned. I know of no wilful
destruction of literary monuments but one the burning of
certain of the then extant amatory Greek poets, which took
place in Constantinople pretty far down in the middle age,
and was entirely owing to sacerdotal aversion for the ex-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 183
tremely offensive indecencies of these authors. This moral
squeamishness, which induced men to forget not only the
indulgence at all times given to poetical imagination, but
also the reverence due to all monuments of language and
antiquity, may, it is true, appear very ridiculous in our eyes.
But that the collectors and transcribers of the middle age
(both in the Eastern and Western World) were, in general,
tolerably free from any such over-scrupulous niceties, is
pretty evident from the -abundant collection of indecent
poems in both the ancient languages, with which we have
it still in our power to regale ourselves. Unfortunate acci
dents, and the events of war, have indeed occasioned the loss
of many interesting monuments both of literature and anti
quity. This has been the case even in the more recent times,
and above all, since the invention of printing itself. How
much more frequently must it have occurred in the times
which preceded that invention, when instead of our enor
mous libraries of printed books, the learned had nothing but
manuscripts, and these so costly that no one man could have
access to many. Even in the most refined periods of the
ancient world, long before Goths had possessed Kome, or
Arabs Alexandria, whole libraries had fallen a prey to the ra
vages of hostile fire, and hundreds, nay, thousands of works
had perished, of which no other copies were in existence. We
are accustomed to lament over the loss of a few great works,
and to inveigh with unmitigated severity against the barbar
ity of the middle ages. But that the loss of a single work
or a single author furnishes no ground for accusing a whole
period of barbarism, may be gathered from the well-known
history of the books of Aristotle. It appears that even
among the ancients themselves, such was the neglect of
these writings, which we consider as among the most preci
ous monuments of Grecian intellect, that there remained
at one time but a single copy, and that, too, rescued
from destruction by an accident of the most extraordinary
nature. This occurred in the very middle of the period which
we are used to admire as the most brilliant era of literature
and refinement among the Greeks and Romans. And even
184 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
allowing that historical criticism may furnish us with some
reasons to doubt the literal accuracy of this account, yet that
will very little affect my present argument. If this did not
happen with regard to Aristotle, we are quite sure that the
same thing happened to many other great authors, with only
this difference, that the dangers from which his writings
escaped proved fatal to theirs. In the western countries of
Europe, after the time of Charlemagne, the multiplying of
manuscripts was a work pursued with the most zealous and
systematical application. I doubt whether the same object
was ever honoured with so much public patronage, either in
Rome, or Alexandria, or any where else, during the most
polished periods of later antiquity. That even in this respect,
Christian writings and Christian authors were more attended
to than any others, is not to be denied, and perhaps is scarcely
to be blamed. But how many of the heathen arid ancient
Roman writers were preserved exclusively in the West !
Constantinople was never plundered by the Goths, nor sub
jected to the license of any whom we are pleased to call bar
barians, till the period of the Crusades and the Turks. And
yet I have little doubt that those Greek books which have
been preserved for us by the Byzantines, bear far less pro
portion to the incalculable riches of the old Grecian litera
ture, than the Latin books preserved in the West do to the
very limited literature of ancient Rome.
Upon the whole, in the first part of the middle ages, the
scientific education was very wisely directed into the chan
nels most favourable for the maintenance of ancient learn
ing. After those studies which had an immediate reference
to Christianity, the first place was universally given to that
of the Latin tongue the only vehicle of learning which was
then in use ; the most important parts of the mathematics
were carefully taught ; and in the cloisters, to preserve the
writings of the ancient authors was not barely considered
as a matter of duty, but formed the most favourite exercise
of monastic skill. With regard to language, which, in our
present subject of inquiry, occupies the most important
place, we know that the pupils in the tenth century were
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 185
taught rhetoric according to the rules of Cicero and Quin-
tilian ; and I should doubt whether either ancient or modern
times could have supplied them with better guides. That
the authors of the eleventh century wrote more agreeably
and perspicuously in Latin than those of the latest Koman
age and the sixth century, is well known to all who are
acquainted with the literary history of the time. In all
those qualities of good writing which are attainable by men
composing in a dead language, their superiority is most evi
dent. Next to language and its monuments, nothing else
was of so great importance as the preservation of the mathe
matics, which are the foundation of all knowledge of nature,
and the sources of so many sciences, inventions, and techni
cal expedients, which have the greatest influence on life.
The rapid increase of wealth and cities, particularly in Ger
many under the Saxon emperors, and the flourishing state
of architecture and many other arts which imply knowledge
and science, are sufficient proofs of the labour and exertion
which were in these times bestowed on preserving from obli
vion the mathematical, mechanical, and technical acquire
ments of the ancients.
What we have most reason to lament is the separation
which took place between the West and the knowledge and
treasures of the Greek language. But even here there was,
in truth, no such thing as any absolute separation. The
Greek language was certainly not unknown in Germany, at
least between the time of Charlemagne, who learned Greek
himself in his old age, and established Greek professors in
his different cities of the empire, and that of the two last
Othos of the imperial house of Saxony, who were both
skilled in Greek sufficiently for the purposes of conversation.
Although, as might naturally be expected, the Bible and
the Fathers were always the chief objects of attention, we
know that Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, who was also a
descendant of the same illustrious house, invited learned
men from Greece for the express purpose of enabling him
self, and through him others, to become acquainted with the
186 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
profane writers, the historians and philosophers of antiquity*
Under the dynasty of the Saxon Caesars, who were perpe
tually connected by marriages with the court of Constanti
nople, the north of Germany was adorned with a profusion
of beautiful churches, all more or less in imitation of that
first model of all Christian architecture, the Greek church
of St Sophia. Upon the whole, during this period from
the tenth to the twelfth century inclusive Germany pos
sessed not only more political importance, but also more in
tellectual cultivation, than any other country in Europe.
The reproach, then, which is commonly thrown out
against the Teutonic nations that they introduced bar
barity and ignorance into all those provinces of the Roman
empire to which their victories reached, is, at least in the
extent which is commonly given to it, altogether false and
ungrounded. To none, however, of all these nations is it
applied with so much injustice as to the Goths, who lived
at the time of the first northern inroads. For many cen
turies before these expeditions commenced, the Goths had
been already Christians ; they were well acquainted with
the importance of regular laws, and with the relations of
the learned and religious orders of society ; and the truth
is, that far from promoting any work of destruction in the
Roman provinces, they were indefatigable, so far as their
powers and circumstances admitted of it, in forwarding and
maintaining the interests of science. The only exception
to this is to be found in those times when the Gothic tribes
entered Italy under the guide of a foreign, a savage, and a
heathen conqueror ; or when, in some particular instances,
they were exasperated by party hatred and Arian bigotry,
to take too severe revenge against the equal hatred and
bigotry of their Catholic opponents. Even the last flourish
ing era of what might still be called ancient Roman litera
ture, took place under Theodorick ; and never did the mock
patriotism of Italians take up a more ridiculous idea than in
the favourite theme of their later poets the deliverance of
Italy from the power of the Goths. In the time of Theodo-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 187
rick, and under the government of the Goths, Italy was
just beginning to enjoy the opening of a new period of hap
piness. The true misery and the true barbarism began
when the Goths were expelled, and Italy submitted her
neck once more to the deadening tyranny of Byzantine
eunuchs and satraps. Let us only compare, for a moment,
the activity and life of Western Europe, her nationalities,
her adventures, and her chivalrous poetry, with the long
and mortal sleep under which the Eastern Empire lay for a
thousand years, and we shall have no difficulty in deciding
where the charges of sloth and ignorance ought to fall. And
yet the Byzantines were in possession of much greater lite
rary riches, and of several useful inventions, with which the
West was entirely unacquainted. The matter of chief im
portance in all civilisation and all literature is not the dead
treasures we possess, but the living uses to which we apply
them.
But the effect was, beyond all comparison, more unfortu
nate in the case of those wandering and conquering Teuto
nic nations which were not yet Christians ; these were much
more rude in their manners than those we have as yet been
considering ; they had no acquaintance either with the social
or the scientific refinements of the Romans. Such were the
Franks in Gaul, and the Saxons in Britain. If we must fix
upon some period as that of complete void as a time of igno
rance, darkness, and destruction we shall find the nearest
approximation to what we wish in the age which elapsed be
tween the reigns of Theodorick and Charlemagne. But while
Italy remained bowed down under the barbarous oppression
of Byzantium, the light of knowledge had found its refuge
in the cloisters of Ireland and Scotland ; and no sooner had
the Saxons in England received the first rudiments of know
ledge along with their Christianity, than they at once carried
all branches of science to a height of perfection at that time
altogether unrivalled among the nations of the West. By
them this light was earned into France and Germany
there never more to be extinguished. For, from this time>
188 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
knowledge was not only systematically preserved, but un-
weariedly cultivated and extended, insomuch that the pro
per period of revival should, I think, be placed not in the
time of the Crusades, but in that of Charlemagne. But
even in the darkest period of all, that between the sixth
century and the eighth, the foundations were already laid
for that mighty engine of instruction which was afterwards
perfected by the wisdom of Charlemagne. The establish
ment of learned cloisters and brotherhoods had already com
menced. It is to the after extension of these spiritual cor
porations, by whose exertions lands were rendered fruitful,
and peoples civilised, and sciences useful, and states secure,
that Western Europe is indebted for the superiority which
she attained over the Byzantines on the one hand, who
were possessed of more hereditary knowledge, and the
Arabs on the other, who had every advantage that external
power and proselytising enthusiasm could afford them. That
the result should have been what we now see it, could scarcely,
I should suppose, have been believed to be within the reach
of possibility by any cotemporary spectator. While Alfred
lived almost in the poverty of a poet, and while Charle
magne practised, in his own palace, the frugality of a monk,
how must their attempts in the cause of science have been
limited by the narrowness of their means ! and what, on
the contrary, would have been too much for Haroon al
Kascheed to perform living as he did in the midst of the
untroubled splendour of Bagdad, and having it in his power
to forward the cause of science by all the aids which inge
nuity could invent or magnificence supply? The result
may give us an important lesson, and teach us not to repose
our confidence in the munificence of kings. Science is not
made to be cultivated in obedience to the command of a
monarch. He lends it indeed a temporary favour, but it is
only that it may increase his own fame, and throw additional
lustre around his throne. Caliphs and sultans attempted
in vain to effect what was slowly and calmly accomplished
in the unpretending cloisters of the West.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 189
The exertions of Charlemagne in securing the indepen
dence, and diffusing the establishment of religious houses,
have entitled him to the warmest gratitude of Europe, and
the admiration of every cultivated age. But we must not
conceal from ourselves, that great as were the merits of
Charlemagne, both in regard to the vernacular and the
Latin literature of Europe, they were still inferior to those
of Alfred. That wise and virtuous monarch was not only,
like Charlemagne, the unwearied patron of learning in all
its branches ; he was himself a scholar and a philosopher,
and he even contributed more than any other individual
towards the elegant formation of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
But the successful expeditions of the Danes threw back the
progress of England ; and the literary establishments found
ed by Charlemagne in France and southern Germany were
disturbed in their infancy, by the attacks made on the one
part of his empire by the Normans, and on the other by the
Hungarians. The literature which flourished soon after
wards under the Saxon emperors, was in every respect far
superior to that of the days of Alfred or Charlemagne. At
that time Germany was rich above all other things in good
writers of history, from Eginhard, the secretary of Charle
magne, down to Otto von Freysingen, a prince of the house
of Babenberg, who was son to St Leopold, and grandson to
the great Barbarossa of the imperial family of Hohenstaufen.
Her riches, in this respect, were indeed greater than those
of any other country in Europe ; nor is the circumstance to
be wondered at, for she was, in fact, the centre of all Euro
pean politics. It is a very common thing to hear all those
Latin histories of the middle age, which were written by
clergymen, classed together under the same contemptuous
appellation of " Monkish chronicles." They who indulge
in such ridicule, must, beyond all doubt, be either ignorant
or forgetful that these monkish writers were very often men
of princely descent ; that they were intrusted with the most
important affairs of government, and therefore could best
explain them ; that they were the ambassadors and travel-
190 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
lers of the times ; that they often penetrated into the remote
East, and the still more obscure regions of the North, and
were, indeed, the only persons capable of describing foreign
countries and manners ; that, in general, they were the most
accomplished and intelligent men whom the world could
then produce ; and that, in one word, if we were to have any
histories at all of those ages, it was absolutely necessary
they should be written by the Monks. The reproaches
which we cast out against the men and the manners of the
middle age are, indeed, not unfrequently altogether absurd
and inconsistent. When we wish to depict the corruption
of the clergy, we inveigh against them for tyrannizing over
kingdoms and conducting negotiations ; but if we talk of
their works, then they were all ignorant slothful Monks,
who knew nothing of the world, and therefore could
not possibly write histories. Perhaps the very best of air
situations for a writer of history is one not widely differing
from that of a Monk one in which he enjoys abundant
opportunities of gaining experimental knowledge of men
and their affairs, but is, at the same time, independent of
the world and its transactions, and has full liberty to mature
in retirement his reflections upon that which he has seen.
Such was the situation of many of those German historians
who flourished in the days of the Saxon emperors. The
more the study of history advances, the more universally
are their merits recognised. But if Germany had the ad
vantage in history, the superiority of France and England
was equally apparent in philosophy. These countries, in
deed, had already produced several distinguished philoso
phical writers, even before the influence of the Arabians had
introduced the monopolising despotism of Aristotle. In the
ninth century, there arose that profound inquirer who, as it
is doubtful whether he was a Scotsman or an Irishman, is
now known by the reconciling name of Scotus Erigena. No
less profound, though somewhat more limited in their appli
cation, were the views of Anselm. Abelard was both a
thinker and an orator ; his language was elegant, and his
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 191
knowledge of antiquity extensive praises which he shares
with his illustrious scholar, John of Salisbury.
For each of the nations which speak Romanic dialects,
there must have existed an interval of chaos and confusion,
before they set themselves free from the rules of the Latin
language, and began to give to their own new dialect the
shape of an independent tongue. But for the interference of
certain unfortunate accidents, the situation of the Teutonic
nations must, in this respect, have been far more favourable
than that of the others. For it is a thing infinitely more
easy to cultivate at the same time two languages radically
distinct, than to give a new form to a language which has
either been changed by some internal revolution, or mingled
in great part with the elements of some other language.
That must always be a work of great labour and patience.
But it happened very unfortunately for the development of
the Teutonic language, that those of its dialects which were
first cultivated were successively forgotten in consequence of
political events, and that so the mighty work of its forma
tion was more than once to be begun again from the com
mencement. The Gothic language, which was the first that
attained some degree of regularity, perished along with the
nation that spoke it. The Anglo-Saxon attained to an infi
nitely higher degree of perfection, and we may even say,
that, in the days of Alfred, it already possessed all the
necessaiy parts of a complete literature ; a great many works
had been composed in it, not only poems and translations,
but also prose histories, and treatises concerning many de
partments of science. But this language also, although
many of its monuments are still in existence, passed awa>
in consequence of the Norman conquest, and a considerable
interval elapsed before the present English language was
formed out of the mixture of the Anglo-Saxon and the
French. The work of polishing the Teutonic tongue was,
therefore, to begin again for the third time. This took place
in the ninth century : for it was then that our present High
Dutch began to be in some measure developed. If any
192 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
attempts had been made upon it in the preceding century,
they were irregular and unimportant in their results. In
the monuments which we possess of it during the ninth cen
tury, we can perceive the same traces of weakness and unset-
tledness which characterise every language at the time when
it is beginning to recover itself after the effects of a great
mixture or revolution in its elements. The High Dutch of
that period was exactly in the situation in which the Romanic
dialects were in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We are
accustomed to talk of our own language as having, above all
others, the advantage of being pure and original. This might
be very true in its utmost extent of the old Saxon language,
but nothing can be less so of our present German. Ours
is a modern dialect, which arose in the Carolingian age out
of the confusion of many old German dialects, and no
inconsiderable infusion of Latin vocables; and ought, in
truth, to be classed among those languages which arose out
of the political intermixture of the Eoman and Teutonic
nations. Its origin and early development are, however,
well worthy of much consideration, for it was long the
language of the most cultivated nation in Europe, and its
formation was the favourite object of some of the greatest
geniuses the world has ever seen. The true old German
language, that was originally and universally spoken by all
the Teutonic tribes, was that old Saxon which attained the
height of its perfection in England under Alfred the Great.
That the Saxons of Northern Germany spoke the same
language with those of England, admits of no doubt ; and
even the Franks originally made use of it. It was common
to all the Germans of the North. The Romans made use of
Frankish interpreters in England ; the British Saxons re
quired no interpreters at all in Sweden ; when King Alfred
entered the Danish camp in the disguise of a minstrel, he
sung songs written not in a foreign language, but in his
own; and although there might perhaps be some small
difference of pronunciation, he was perfectly intelligible to
his audience. Which, then, it will be asked, of all these
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 193
German dialects was the language of the poems collected by
Charlemagne ? Not the Gothic, for that was entirely gone,
or at best understood only by a few scattered inhabitants of
the mountains of Austria; nor the High Dutch, for that
language was only beginning to assume a regular appear
ance half a century later, and received its name of Frankish,
expressly because it had its origin in the Carolingian age :
the name of the ruling Teutonic tribe being used, according
to the fashion of that period, to denote every thing that
was Teutonic. Now, it is evident that the poems collected
by Charlemagne must have possessed some antiquity ; they
must have existed for two centuries, or at least for one. I
have little hesitation in saying, that I believe those poems
to have been composed in the old Saxon language, the same
which Alfred wrote, and which was spoken by Charlemagne
himself, whenever he did not make use of Latin ; for we
must recollect that the favourite residence of Charlemagne
was in the Rhenish Netherlands, the old patrimony of the
Franks, whose language was originally the same with that
of the Saxons. And if this be so, the remark which I have
made is not merely interesting for the lover of language and
poetry, but may be of considerable importance to the student
of history himself.
The origin of the High Dutch language seems to me to be
best explained in the following manner. The original seat
of all the Teutonic tribes was on the borders of the Baltic
Sea, and each of them introduced into its dialect greater
changes in proportion as it removed to a greater distance
from the neighbourhood of those ancient settlements. The
Goths, for example, were the first to extend their con
quests ; they founded a great empire between the Baltic
and the Black Sea, and living there in the midst of many
foreign nations, from each of which they were continually
borrowing particular words, their dialect soon came to be
intelligible only to themselves, and to assume all the ap
pearances of a new and distinct language. In the southern
regions of Germany, above all, in the Alpine districts, the
194 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
common influence of climate produced its effect ; and the-
Teutonic dialect, spoken in those regions, became hard and
guttural, like all languages of mountainous countries. The
inextricable mingling of the various Teutonic dialects in
Southern Germany, was caused by the successive empire
and colonisations of the Goths and the Franks. The in
termixture of Latin is easily accounted for by the Roman
colonies on the Danube, and the early adoption of the
Christian religion by the inhabitants of all those regions.
Of all the Romanic dialects, the first which attained any
polish, was that of Provence, probably because it had less
than any other been exposed to the danger of foreign inter
mixture. The old language of the country had been very-
early forgotten in this first of all the Roman provinces, and
the settlements of the Teutonic invaders in its territory
were very short-lived and inconsiderable. To close, in one
word, this hasty review of the modern European languages,
the two dialects which first received a regular development
were those of the countries which had been least exposed
to the mixture of foreign inhabitants, the Provincial on
the one hand, and the High Dutch on the other. When
compared with the other more blended dialects, the first of
these may be considered as a pure Romanic, the other as a
pure German language. Of three other Romanic dialects,
which had been exposed to the greatest mixture of Teutonic
the Italian, the Spanish, and the Northern French this
last is the most removed from the Latin, and was the last to
arrive at the highest point of its perfection. But the youngest
of all these languages is the English ; in it the mixture was
far stronger than in any of the others, in so much, indeed,
that it is not easy to decide which of its elements the
Germanic or the Romanic has the predominance. The
interval of chaos and confusion which necessarily precedes
any mixture of languages, was of longer duration in England
than in any other part of Europe. That even these cir
cumstances, however, are not incapable of producing very
favourable consequences, is sufficiently evident, not onlj
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 195
from the characteristic beauty, power, precision, and ele
gance of the English language, but also from the high and
peculiarly national spirit of the English literature. The
English literature stands in the midst between the German
and the Romanic, and is more original than either.
The universal awakening of a new life and a youth of
feeling in the age of the Crusades, peculiarly manifested
itself in the sudden and magical unfolding of that poesy
which received, among the Provencials, the name of La
Gaye Science, and which, diffusing its influence over all
the intellectual nations of Europe, gave birth to a rich and
various literature of chivalrous poetry and love songs.
Although it is the spirit of love breathing even from the
chivalrous poems of that period, which forms in truth the
distinction between them and all other poems of the heroic
kind, I shall begin with considering those which were more
expressly of an amatory nature. The poetry of love, there
fore, flourished first among the Provencials, who transmitted
it to the Italians. The first Italian poets wrote frequently
in the language of Provence. This language is now, indeed,
altogether extinct, but many works composed in it are still
preserved in manuscript collections. Next to France the
earliest flourishing period of the gay science was in Germany
chiefly in the twelfth and thirteenth centimes. The love
poetry of Italy attained not its perfection till it came into
the hands of Petrarch in the fourteenth, and the proper era
of it, among the Spaniards, was in the fifteenth century.
Nay, the last celebrated Spanish poet, who procured to him
self a great name by poems of this class, was yet living far
in the sixteenth century. This was Castillejo, who followed
the first Ferdinand from his native country into Austria.
The poetry of love was developed differently in the differ
ent countries of Europe, and had in each a formation in
harmony with the spirit of the nation. With the exception
of the Italians, I imagine that no one nation borrowed much
in this matter from another ; while, on the contrary, the
poetry of chivalry was transplanted from one to another,
196 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and was considered the common property of them all. Even
the form of the composition varied in each country. The
only thing that was common to them all was rhyme, and
indeed a very musical use of it, which, at first sight, might
appear to be mere playfulness and profusion. But, in all
probability, this universal coincidence is to be sought for in
the nature of the music then in vogue, for almost all the love
poems seem to have been made expressly to be sung.
That the Germans borrowed their love poetry from that
of the Provencials is very often asserted ; but I think there
is little reason for thinking so, particularly as we are quite
certain that the Germans had love poems of their own at a
much earlier period. For even so early as the reign of
Lewis the Pious, it appears that it was found necessary to ad
dress an edict to the nuns of the German cloisters, admonish
ing them to restrain their inordinate passion for singing love
songs or myndieder. It is true that in the age of chivalry,
some of the German princes, who had large possessions in
Italy, wrote poems in the Provencial, but this is a matter of
no importance in regard to the poetry of the Germans. Had
that been borrowed, there is no doubt but the minstrels of
Germany would have been as willing to confess their obli
gations as Petrarch afterwards was ; and the more so, that
the German authors of narrative chivalrous poems are fond
of owning, even more frequently than we could have wished,
how much they were indebted to the invention of their Pro
vencial or French predecessors. However this might have
been, there is no doubt that the whole form, and character,
and spirit of the German love poems are essentially differ
ent from those of the French or the Provencial. The German
collection of this kind is, moreover, by far the richest in ex
istence.
The circumstance which affords us most delight in these
productions is the spirit of gentleness and tenderness with
which they are imbued ; and our delight is mingled with not
a little of wonder, when we learn that their authors were
not unfrequently princes and knights, with whose charac-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 197
ters we are familiar in history, as among the boldest and
the most heroic of their time. But this apparent contra
diction is nevertheless very consistent with nature ; and true
tenderness is never so engaging as when it is united with
manly valour. In the midst of the most warlike life nature
still leaves room for the affections, and tempers the rage of
arms with the soothing influence of love and compassion.
That old melody which is commonly ascribed to the English
Richard, breathes the very spirit of calm dejectedness, and
is, indeed, among the most precious of monuments, if it be
really the production of the lion-hearted king.
The softness of feeling, and the musical elegance of lan
guage by which these German poems are distinguished,
have induced certain critics to throw out against them the
reproaches of uniformity and triflingness. The reproach of
uniformity strikes me as being a very singular one ; it is
as if we should condemn the spring, or a garden, for the
multitude of its flowers. It is perhaps true enough that
ornaments of many kinds are more delightful when they
occur singly, than when we see them gathered together in
masses. Laura herself could scarcely have read her own
praises without weariness, had she been presented at any
one time with all the verses which Petrarch composed upon
her even during the period of her life. The impression of
uniformity arises from our seeing these poems bound to
gether into large collections a fate which was probably
neither the design nor the hope of those who composed
them. But, in truth, not only love songs, but all lyrical
poems, if they are really true to nature, and aim at nothing
more than the expression of individual feelings, must neces
sarily be confined within a very narrow range both of
thought and of sentiment. Of this we find many examples
in the high species of lyrical poetry among all nations.
Feeling must occupy the first place wherever it is to be
powerfully and poetically represented ; and where feeling is
predominant, variety and richness of thought are always
things of very secondary importance. The truth is, that
198 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
great variety in lyrical poetry is never to be found, except
in those ages of imitation when men are fond of treating of
all manner of subjects, in all manner of forms. Then, in
deed, we often find the tone and taste of twenty different
ages and nations brought together within the same col
lection, and observe that the popularity of the poet is
increased exactly in proportion as he descends from his
proper dignity when simplicity is sacrificed to conceits
and epigrams, and the ode sinks into an occasional copy of
verses.
The second criticism which stigmatises these poems as trif
ling, is indeed founded on truth ; but I am extremely doubt
ful whether that prove any thing against the merits of the
poems. Even the ancients, although the full violence of pas
sion is often enough depicted in their Erotic poems, have
nevertheless recognised, that in its nature the feeling of love
is a playful and sportive one, by the mode in which they have
represented Cupid in their mythology, and the many beau
tiful allegories and fictions which arose out of their idea of
the childishness of love. That love itself was in the age of
chivalry one of the most violent of passions, and often gave
rise to the most daring adventures, and the most tragical
catastrophes, might be easily gathered from the general cha
racter of that time. The histories of these ages are full of
such examples. But this serious and passionate side of love
was very seldom brought forward in the poems of the age.
These are not indeed so destitute of all illusions to the senses
as the Platonic allegories and sonnets of Petrarch. But even
in this respect they are not in general remarkable for any
violent expressions of feeling. The favourite, almost the
exclusive theme of these poets, was that view of the passion
which opens the freest space for the exercise of the fancy.
From that high estimation of the female sex which was ori
ginally peculiar to the Teutonic nations, after it had been
refined and exalted by the milder manner and loftier mo
rality of the Christian religion, there arose a systematic
tenderness of feeling which has indeed long since degene-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 199
rated into the empty forms of gallantry, but which, so long
as it remained in possession of its power, was the fountain
of every thing noble and graceful both in manners and in
poetry. It was at least in some degree on account of the
prevalence of such feelings as these, that the German poets
have restrained themselves from filling their verses with 01 -
naments which were certainly very much within their reach.
The Provencial court and laws of love, and the metaphysical
casuistry which was elsewhere so unweariedly employed in
the solution of amatory questions and problems, were never
introduced among the Germans. Their compositions are
indeed rude and unskilful when compared with those of the
accomplished and meditative Petrarch, or some of the early
poets of Castille ; but in return they possess more strength
of feeling, and manifest greater capacity of love for nature
and the beautiful.
Epic poetry belongs altogether to the world which had
gone before us. That poet of any refined and polished age
who dares to be a poet after the manner of the minstrels of
antiquity to be truly epic will always be looked upon as
a remarkable exception ; he will be honoured and reve
renced by all posterity, as a high gift of nature to the age
and country in which he appears. But in dramatic poetry
art maintains her pre-eminence ; it is only in an age of
knowledge and elegance that tragedies and comedies can be
written. As youth in individuals is the period most abound
ing in feeling, so does lyrical poetry flourish most in the
youth of nations. The age of Crusades was the youth of
modern Europe. It was the time of unsophisticated feel
ings and ungovernable passions the era of love, war, en
thusiasm, and adventure.
After the Crusades, perhaps, nothing had so much influ
ence in giving a new direction to the imagination of the
European nations as the expeditions of the Normans. The
foundations of chivalry were indeed every where laid in the
original modes of thinking of all the Germanic nations : the
poetical belief in the wonderful in gigantic heroes, in moun-
200 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
tain spirits, mermaids, elves, and dwarfish sorcerers had
every where kept its hold in the imagination, from the days
of the old mythology of the North. But into all these super
stitions, and all these opinions, a new life was infused by the
arrival of the Normans. They were fresh from the North,
and had breathed in its original purity the atmosphere of
poetry and chivalry. Neither did they lose all this when
they became converted to Christianity, and learned to speak
French ; their character had strength enough not only to
preserve itself unbroken, but to diffuse a portion of its influ
ence wherever they came ; in so much that a visible change
was introduced by them not only into France, but into the
whole of Europe. They were living models of adventure
and enthusiasm ; they conquered England and Sicily, and
led the way in the Crusades. Their whole opinions and lives
were poetic, and the wonderful was the perpetual object of
all their worship and all their ambition. It was by no means
strange that the history of Charlemagne should have peculiar
charms for the Normans. The whole of it was immediately
reduced by them to the shape of chivalrous poetry. The
battle of Roncesvalles, in which the army of the Franks was
overcome by that of the Arabs and Spaniards, and in which
Roland died, was indeed, as it stands in history, an event
rather unfortunate than glorious for the Franks and Charle
magne. But that, in spite of all this, the celebration of this
battle had become very early a favourite theme of popular
poetry, may perhaps be accounted for in this way that,
though unfortunate at Roncesvalles, Charlemagne was in
the end successful in setting limits to the progress of the
Saracen arms, and erecting the Pyrenees into an impreg
nable bulwark before the liberties of Europe. The religious
view of the matter also might not be without its influence.
Roland fell in battle with the enemies of our faith ; and al
though vanquished on earth, there was the sure crown of
victory laid up for him in heaven. He had died like a hero
in the cause of God, and was classed by the multitude
among the glorious army of martyrs. It must have been
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 201
on some such principles as these, that the famous song of
Roland used in battle even by the Normans themselves
had been composed. For otherwise the death of an unsuc
cessful hero could scarcely have been selected as the subject
of an animating war-song. In the age of the Crusades the
whole history of Charlemagne, the battle of Roncesvalleo,
and the death of Roland, were represented by the poets as
scenes of a religious warfare. An example for the knights
and adventurers of the Crusades was shadowed out in the
glorious names and achievements of Charles and his Pala
dins ; nay, so far were things carried, that a fabulous Cru
sade in the ninth century was invented for the express pur
pose of ascribing it to Charlemagne. The authentic history
of the great Frankish Emperor soon became scarcely recog
nisable under the disguise which it assumed in the midst
of sultans, magicians, genii, and all the fables of the East.
By and by comical characters and adventures began to be
mingled with the rest. In process of time, the oral narra
tives of the Crusades supplied the West with a copious as
sortment of oriental fictions ; and above all, men read the
travels of Marco Polo, (a production whose impudent exag
gerations procured for its author the name of Messer Mil-
lione ;) the consequence was, that there was nothing of the
marvellous to be seen or imagined between China and Mo
rocco which did not somehow or other find its niche in the
poetry which treated of Charlemagne and Roland. That
poetry lost all trace of the true achievements and wars of
Charlemagne, (which in their original shape might have
furnished excellent materials for a serious heroic poem,) and
came to be considered merely as a form or vehicle wherein
all possible fictions might be fairly introduced ; and where
the fancy might practise her boldest gambols in the world
of wonders and impossibilities. Such is the shape in which
it appears in the writings of Ariosto. This great genius, con
fiding solely in the magic of his language and narrative, has
ventured to make his poem as irregular as his materials were
heterogeneous ; he is continually breaking off one story and
202 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
commencing another ; he scatters over every thing a spark
ling of wit, comedy, and satire. He is the most inimitable
of all poets.
LECTUKE VHI.
THIRD SET OF CHIVALROUS POEMS ARTHUR AND THE ROUND TABLE INFLUENCE
OF THE CRUSADES AND THE EAST ON THE POETRY OF THE WEST ARABIC AND
PERSIAN POEMS FERDUSI LAST REMODELLING OF THE NIBELUNGEN-LIED
WOLKRAM VON ESCHENBACH, TRUE PURPOSE OF THE GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE
LATER POESY OF THE CHIVALROUS PERIOD POEM OF THE CID.
THERE are three different sets of fables and histories from
which the subjects of the chivalrous poems of the middle
age are principally taken. The first of these consists in the
legends of Gothic, Frankish, and Burgundian heroes, during
the times of the great northern emigrations ; these form the
subjects of the Nibelungen-lied, and of those fragments
which are collected together under the name of the Helden-
buch. For this set of heroic legends there is in general some
foundation in history; they all breathe the pure northern
spirit, are closely connected with the traditions of the old
heathenish antiquity and mythology of the Gothic nations,
and have, for the most part, been celebrated in the Scandi
navian as well as in the German dialects. The second great
subject of chivalrous poetry is Charlemagne more parti
cularly his war against the Saracens, his defeat at Ronces-
valles, and the achievements of his Paladins. The narratives
which treat of these are in general very far removed from all
historical truth ; the active Frankish hero is transformed in
them into a mere indolent monarch, after the fashion of the
eastern sultans a mistake which is probably to be ac
counted for by the circumstance of the chief poems concern
ing Charlemagne having been composed by Normans, who
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 203
pretty naturally imagined that great and warlike prince to
have been, with all the glory which surrounded him, some
thing not very unlike the monarchs whom they themselves
found in possession of his throne. However this might have
been, it is certain that the poetical histories of Charlemagne
became very soon intermingled with a large proportion cf
incidents purely comic, and altogether covered over with a
veil of absurd and fantastic machinery, through which the
original facts cannot, without great difficulty, be recognised.
The fate of the third set of chivalrous topics King Arthur
and the Bound Table was not very different from that of
the second. The original groundwork of history became
soon very nearly undiscernible from the clothing of oriental
marvels Crusades, and Indian achievements which were
heaped upon it. The historical Arthur, a Christian king
of Britain, of the Celtic race, and his wars with the first
heathenish Saxon invaders of England, could have furnish
ed, indeed, a very limited range for poetical embellish
ment. But the very narrowness of the field was the cause
of its unparalleled richness of cultivation ; and the poets
made ample amends for the original insignificance of Arthur,
by investing him, in their fictions, Avith all the attributes of
perfect chivalry. He is the ideal of a knight, and all the
poems which treat of him and his period, have more real
object and purpose than those concerning Charlemagne and
his Paladins. With the history of Arthur there are besides
interwoven many engaging poems, in which love is depicted
in the most beautiful incidents of the chivalrous life. Of
these the most remarkable is throughout of an elegiac cha
racter, as might be gathered from the name itself of Tris
tram. The tenderness of this elegiac colouring is well
adapted to the nature of such a narrative ; it harmonises
well with those feelings of darkness, depression, and per
plexity which rush into every mind, where we are drawn
to survey the spectacle of a heroic life when we reflect on
the fleetingness of youth, beauty, valour, and the at best
perishable and unsatisfactory nature of all earthly glories
204 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and enjoyments. The poetical clothing of the marvellous
and the chivalrous, under which the fate of love is repre
sented, has the effect of at once beautifying the fiction, and
ennobling the feeling. It is in vain that modern poets,
imprisoned as they are within a world of present and prosaic
realities, endeavour to atone for the want of poetry by a
display of natural and moral knowledge, and the wiredrawn
minuteness of psychology. Not many learn to know either
the world or man out of books. The true end of poetry is
to awaken or restore aspirations and feelings which are the
poetry of nature ; and by setting all things in the most
beautiful light, and investing all things with loveliness and
magic, not so much to ennoble or exalt our feelings, as to
preserve and sustain them in their natural element of beauty.
Among all the great and epic poems of love and chivalry in
the middle age, the first place is given by all nations to
Tristram ; but that we may not be fatigued by uniformity
of fiction, the airy and lively legend of Launcelot is placed
by the side of its more grave and elegiac representations.
But besides all this, the poetical historians of Arthur and
his Round Table had an altogether different object in their
view. They endeavoured, under the form of Arthur and his
knights, (in whom was supposed to be represented the per
fection of all chivalrous virtue,) to shadow forth the idea of
a spiritual knighthood, true, like that other chivalry, to the
obligations of a solemn vow, proving itself like it by achieve
ment and by suffering, and rising like it, by slow and gra
dual advances, to the summit of its perfection. This idea,
however, is not allowed to interfere with the external rules
of their fiction, or to make them sacrifice any of those ad
ventures and wonders of love and war in the east and the
west, from which the poetry of those days derived its most
favourite embellishments. Under the name of St Graal,
there is brought together a whole train of such allegorical
deeds of chivalry ; the knight is represented as labouring,
by incessant exertions, to make himself worthy of gaining
access to the holy places, and the deliverance of these is
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 205
supposed to be the highest end of his calling. And yet
there is every reason to believe that in all these poems the
object was not merely to shadow out a spiritual and allego
rical chivalry, but also to embody the peculiar ideas of a
spiritual and yet a real chivalry, which was then in all its
glory the chivalry of the religious orders of knighthood,
such as the Templars and the Knights of St John. In a
historical point of view, this may be of no inconsiderable
importance. Lessing, the first, so far as I know, who
started the idea, was one well qualified, both by his erudi
tion and his judgment, to form a proper opinion on such a
subject ; and they who are familiar with such topics will, I
imagine, have no difficulty in agreeing with him, provided
they read again these old poems with a view to this parti
cular consideration. The purpose is indeed sufficiently
manifest even in the French romances of St Graal, but in
finitely more so in the more elaborate productions of the
Germans.
This third set of fables, then that relating to King Arthur
and the Kound Table had a peculiar, sometimes a doubly,
allegorical character of their own. But when I said that
this set of fables, along with those of the Mbelungen and of
Charlemagne, formed the only subjects of the poetry of the
middle age, I perhaps expressed myself rather too strongly.
A crowd of other fictions diverge in all points from these :
they formed only the centre point and kernel of the imagi
nation. I must now, however, go on to consider under
what varieties of shape this chivalrous poetry appeared
among all the different European nations, how long it lasted,
by what gradations it gradually lost, in each country, its ori
ginal character and destination, and in particular by what
circumstances it so happened that in almost no instance did
it ever reach that degree of skilful beauty and development
of which it might every where have been susceptible. But
before I proceed to this, I must pause to say a single word
concerning the influence of the Crusades on the poetry of
the West ; and, above all, to direct your attention to the
206 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
share of that influence which originally belonged to the
poetry of the East.
The chief elements of all this influence were, without
doubt, no other than the incidents of the Crusades them
selves, and the power which the spirit in which their expe
ditions were undertaken must at all times have had of
arousing the imagination. The achievements of Godfrey
of Bouillon were sung in the very time in which they took
place, and had no need of the mystery of ages in order to
make them poetical. But the poets were, no doubt, more
partial to the fabulous histories of Charlemagne and Arthur,
because they were well aware that the more distant their
scene was laid, the more room had they for the exercise of
their fancy.
The influence exerted on Europe by the poetry of the
East, made known through the Crusades, was very incon
siderable in comparison with what we generally suppose
it to have been ; and that which really did exist belonged
in the greatest part almost exclusively to the Persians,
not the Arabians. Among all the works of oriental fiction
there are two in particular which contain within themselves
the best specimens of oriental fancy, and enable us at once
to perceive in what this influence consisted, and what sort
of spirit that was which was either first introduced into
Europe, or which, at least, augmented the originally kin
dred spirit of northern poetry, by means of the Crusades.
The " Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," an Arabian
collection of fantastic narratives, and the Persian heroic
poetry of Ferdusi, who has been called at one time the
Homer, at another the Ariosto of the East.
The elder poetry of the Arabs before Mahomet, consisted,
so far as we know, of lyrical heroic songs, which, without
making use of any peculiar mythology, simply celebrated
warlike deeds, or the feelings of love generally the fame
of some individual hero and his ancestry. The spirit of
pedigree formed almost the soul of the inspiration, and all
the enthusiasm and zeal of the poet s imagination were
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 207
exerted for the purposes of extolling the achievements of
some one race, and undervaluing those of its rivals. And
this is done with the same profusion of moral maxims and
fanciful conceits which was so much in fashion all over the
East. But in this old Arabian poetry there is to be found
no peculiar mythology, no such world of fiction concerning
gods, and heroes, and spirits, and the mighty struggles of
the wonderful powers of nature, as is to be found either
among the Greeks or the Persians, or in the poetical theo
logy of the northern Scalds. Their poetry, moreover, is
so very local, that, so far from being capable of being trans
planted into other regions, in order to understand it per
fectly, we ought to become profoundly versant in all the
genealogies of the Arabs. In its want of any peculiar
mythology, and in the circumstance of its being entirely
dedicated to the fame, traditions, relations, and opinions
of a few particular families of Arabian nobility, this Arabic
poetry bears a great resemblance to the Ossianic. There
is, however, this great difference, that in the Ossianic poems
there prevails that tone of lamentation which might be sup
posed to be most in harmony with the feelings of a van
quished, depressed, and almost expiring people or, if we
prefer another explanation, of a people inhabiting the deso
late borders of the Northern Ocean, and saddened by the
cold mists and vapours of that dreary region. In the
Arabian songs, on the other hand, there breathes such a
spirit of joy, pride, and valour, as might suit a victorious
nation and a burning climate. The hostile tribes are here
spoken of not with sorrows and lamentations, but scorn and
hatred. The great disadvantage of such poetry consists in
its locality; it is an heirloom, and cannot pass from its
seat, while, on the contrary, the fictions of a more mytho
logical system of legends are easily transmitted from one
people to another, and find many points of resemblance and
coincidence among every nation which is so fortunate as to
have any similar possessions.
To show how far a poetical mythology was removed from
208 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the spirit of the ancient Arabs, I need only refer you to a
well-known incident in the life of Mahomet. It seems that
an Arab brought to Mecca the Persian heroic histories of
Iskendar* and some other of the heroes of ancient days.
These were received with much interest, being something
altogether new and unknown. But Mahomet put a stop to
the progress they were making, in the fear that his own
poetry and his own purposes might be injured by their
popularity.
That the Arabs, however, contracted during the subsis
tence of their Asiatic empire, a strong passion for the
magical personages of the Persian poetry, is evident from
the work to which I have already alluded The Arabian
Tales. That many of these very tales, indeed, and in
particular such of them as are most filled with wonders and
fancies, are not genuine old fictions of Arabian growth, but
rather belong to the poetry of Persia, and in part probably
to that of India this has been long since acknowledged by
all great orientalists. But if the Arabs, previous to their
intercourse with Persia, really possessed any original and
cultivated chivalrous poetry of their own, besides those old
lyrical " Tribe songs " of which I have spoken, that is a cir
cumstance of which the world has as yet seen no proof.
Elves and mandrakes, mountain spirits, mermaids, giants,
dwarfs, and dragons, were all known in the northern mytho
logy long before the period of the Crusades. These were
not things borrowed, but only traces of the old original
identity of the northern and the Persian superstitions. All
that the western poetry owed to that of the east, with regard
to these particulars, consisted in a certain southern magic,
and oriental brilliancy of fancy, with which these familiar
forms came about this time to be invested. But the kindred
spirit of the two mythologies was manifested by another and
a still more important circumstance. The Persian Book of
Heroes, in which the poet Ferdusi, about the beginning of
the eleventh century of our era, collected together all the
* Alexander the Great.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 209
legends and histories of the Persian kings and warriors,
and celebrated them in the purest and most beautiful lan
guage of his country, and threw around them a blaze of
fancy which has procured for him his name of The Paradisaic
this book is deserving of great attention, even when con
sidered merely as a repository of mythological learning.
The reign of Dschemschid is represented at the beginning of
the poem as having been the golden age of the kingdom of
Persia, and of the whole Asiatic world. Dschemschid him
self is clothed with all the attributes of wisdom and victory,
and appears like a bright image of the Eternal upon the
earth. But after many happy centuries, when the Sun of
Righteousness becomes darkened, and this best of monarchy
falls in the fulness of his glory, the Land of Light be
comes exposed to the ravages of its enemies. The con
test betwixt Iran and Turan the Holy Land of Light, and
the Wild Region of Darkness is from this time the centre
point of all subsequent fictions. In the victory of the
great Feridun over the wicked Zobak, and his later more
unfortunate contest with the fiend-like Afrasiab ; in the
government which this evil spirit establishes, and the dark
ness with which the whole empire is now invested, till at
length, after a long series of adventures, Afrasiab is con
quered by King Chosru, the proper historical founder of the
Persian kingdom in all these fictions, however strange and
diversified, we can still perceive, under the guise of heroic
legends, a perpetual adherence to the old Persian ideas
concerning the contest between light and darkness. The
same spirit breathes in all their other poems, and the same
adherence is every where perceptible. Now there is no
question that a very similar set of ideas, respecting the
contest of light and darkness, (ideas to which, let it be
remembered, the Greeks had nothing parallel,) were ex
tremely prevalent in Europe during the middle ages ; I
might almost say that they were the ruling ideas there,
from the moment when the influence of the poetry and alle
gories of the Scriptures began to be felt. The only difler-
o
210 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
ence between the Christian and the Persian systems, with
regard to the perpetual contest between light and darkness,
consists in this, that in the former, the good Deity is lifted
high above all competition with his enemy ; while in the
latter, the good and the evil principles are represented as
being originally distinct and independent powers. But all
this lies in a higher region ; the distinction is just and great,
but it is, after all, merely metaphysical. Christianity re
cognises in the world of the senses and in the world of
spirits, in nature and in man, the perpetual opposition of
the good and the evil, the unceasing struggle between light
and darkness and this forms the true essence of all the
maxims, emblems, and allegories of our religion. We may
adopt what opinion we will concerning the origin of all these,
resemblances we may view them either as produced by
the general identity of human reason, or as the result of
simple and unquestioning imitation ; it is evident, that from
whatever source the coincidence arose, it must have natur
ally given rise to a kindred set of imaginations and opinions,
and to a kindred spirit of poetry in the two peoples among
whom it was found.
The later romantic poems of the Persians, such as Meinnn
and Leila, Chosru and Schirin, belong to a species of com
position altogether unknown among the ancients, and have
a strong resemblance to our European poems of love and
chivalry in the middle ages. Yet the flowery and fantastic
character of the oriental imagination has, of course, kept
them very far asunder from any European writings, to say
nothing of the still more important difference occasioned by
the mode in which love and every thing like moral feeling
are treated by men brought up in the customs of the East.
If we compare the old French tales and fabliaux with the
Arabian tales, we shall have no difficulty in perceiving that
the greater part of these fictions had been brought from the
East into Europe, in a great measure, it is probable, by the
oral narratives of the Crusaders. The small variations
which have been introduced, and the colouring of European
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 211
manners which has so carefully been thrown over them,
cannot conceal the identity of the inventions. At the same
time, it is by no means unlikely, that there was a reaction
in the case, and that in those days of unexampled inter
course between the East and the West, many European
novels may have found their way to the professional story
tellers of the orientals. But there is no evidence that we
ever borrowed any entire heroic fictions from oriental
sources ; even the fabulous history of Alexander, although
the adventures of the Macedonian form the subject of one
of the best of the Persian romances, was not derived to us
from that quarter, but from a Greek book of popular legends ;
and the clothing of chivalrous manners, with which the
fiction was afterwards invested, belonged exclusively to
ourselves. Something similar occurred in regard to our old
legends of the wars of Troy : we derived, in like manner,
our ideas concerning the events of that period, not from the
great poets of antiquity, but from another popular book of
the same class. Our own age, which is so rich in all histo
rical knowledge, and which holds the first place in every
species of elaborate imitation, may indeed look down with
great contempt on such rude and childish attempts as these
poems which represent the siege of Troy, and other matters
of antiquity, under the disguise of chivalrous manners.
That dark age, nevertheless, however great may have been
its inferiority to our own time in every other respect, was
certainly not without some advantage over us in regard to
its comprehension of the character, although not of the cos
tume, of the earlier ages of antiquity. The middle age was
the heroic age of Christendom, and in the heroic legends o 1
the Greeks, there is much that may recall, even to us, the
manners of chivalry. Tancred and Richard, surrounded
with their minstrels and troubadours, stood, in many
respects, in a much nearer relation to Hector and Achilles,
and the Trojan rhapsodists, than the field-marshals and
poets of a later and more cultivated generation. The
achievements of Alexander were made the favourite theme
212 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of the romancers, merely because they, of all historical in
cidents, even without fictitious embellishment, bear the
greatest resemblance to heroic traditions, and because the
marvellous which they contain is above all the true wonders
of other conquerors akin to that marvellous which is the
delight of poets.
But the approximation of East and West was not the
only approximation caused by the Crusades. The nations
of the West themselves were brought into closer contact
with each other than they had ever before experienced, and
the fictions of all ages and all countries became inextricably
mingled and confounded. This chaotic mixture was in the
end the chief cause why all the best, the most touching, and
the most peculiar of the European heroic legends dissolved
themselves into mere play of fancy, and lost all traces of
that historical truth upon which they had originally been
established.
With regard to the whole body of romantic fictions still
extant, whether connected or unconnected Avlth the great
subjects of the poetry of the middle age even with regard
to those which are founded in part on true events, I know
only one common standard of criticism. Their value is
always so much the higher in proportion as they are more
dependent on a historical foundation, more national in their
import and character, and more abounding in a free, natural,
and unaffected display of imagination above all, in propor
tion as they are imbued with the spirit of love. I do not
allude merely to a mild, beautifying, and, at the same time,
amiable mode of treating every thing that is represented,
but rather to that spirit which forms the essential mark of
distinction between the fictions of Christendom and all other
fictions ; which, where a tragical catastrophe is either in
separable from the nature of the subject, or introduced on
purpose by the poet, never allows us to close with the single
feeling of destruction, oppression, or an inevitable fate
which bids the victim of sorrows and death rise to a higher
life with a more glorious presence, and offers to him who is
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 213
overcome by earthly enemies or afflictions, the sure prospect
of a recompense for all his endurance a crown of victory in
the heavens.
I shall now direct your attention to the further develop
ment of the chivalrous poetry, or rather to its speedy cor
ruption and decline among the most illustrious of European
nations, down to the time of the Reformation ; and I shall
begin with Germany, because its literature of this age and
species, although not the most rich, is at least the best
known. I shall postpone to the end my consideration of
the Italian literature of this period, because the spirit of
chivalry had at no time much dominion or influence on the
other side of the Alps, where a peculiar set of tastes and
opinions, all leaning towards the antique, had, even at this
early period, begun to obtain an entire supremacy.
The proper awakening and spring of the present language
and poetry of the Germans commenced about the time of
Frederick the First, in the twelfth century. The first
flourishing period was already over at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, but a similar sort of poetry continued to
be cultivated, and the language continued to be treated after
the same manner down to the reign of Maximilian. From
that time the prose writing Avas becoming daily more polish
ed, but the art of versifying was ever on the decline, and
the language of poetry retrograding into rudeness and bar
barity, down to the commencement of the sixteenth century,
when, in consequence of the universal shaking and disturb
ance of ideas, there took place a total change in the language,
which now forms a complete wall of separation between us
and the old German taste in language and poetry. Before
the time of Barbarossa, that culture, by which Germany was
so much distinguished in the days of the Saxon and earliest
Frankish emperors, was, nevertheless, rather a Latin culture
than a Teutonic. It could scarcely, indeed, have been
otherwise in the seat of the Imperial Court itself ; for that
formed the centre point, by which not only Germany, but
the half of Italy, the half Romanic-Lotharingia, and the
214 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
almost entirely Komanic Burgundy, were governed and
united ; it formed also the scene of almost all the political
negotiations of Europe ; and, in short, the universal language
the Latin was here an instrument of the nearest and the
most indispensable necessity. The same circumstances fur
nish us with an easy explanation how it happened that
some of the emperors themselves, whose affairs must have
frequently occasioned them to be long absent from Germany,
composed poems in the Romanic dialects I allude, in par
ticular, to certain princes of the house of Hohenstaufen,
some of whom, however, were also poets in their native lan
guage. The need of a common language of business was
indeed sufficiently felt even within Germany itself ; where,
in addition to all the native dialects at that time still ex
tremely separate (such as the North Dutch and the South
Dutch, the Saxon and the Alemannic) there existed a very
considerable population whose language was Sclavonic.
With regard to the great improvement which appears in the
German language during the reign of the first Frederick, I
imagine this was produced, not so much by any immediate
exertion or patronage of that monarch himself, as by the
general circumstances of the time. Germany began about
that period to abound, more than ever, in petty princes-
sovereigns whose dominions were too insignificant to occupy
the whole of their attention, and who therefore were at full
leisure to think of procuring for their courts the ornaments
of music, poetry, and the arts. These were the real patrons
of German literature. It was thus that such assemblages
of poets and minstrels were collected around the courts of
the landgraves of Thuringia, and still more of the Austrian
Babenbergs. I have little doubt, that from some one of
these poets, resident in Austria, the Nibelungen-lied receiv
ed that form in which we now see it. Not only by the
minuteness of his local knowledge, but also by his partiality
for Austrian heroes, are the country and residence of the
poet betrayed. He goes out of his way to introduce, by a
bold anachronism, the Margrave Rudiger, the favourite hero
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 215
of the Austrians. Even the advantageous manner in which
Attila is depicted, may be accounted for somewhat in the
same way; for many traditions concerning his achievements
have been at all times preserved among the Hungarians ;
and, as these had such a close political connexion with
Austria, it may be supposed that Attila came to be consi
dered with some degree of partiality, even among the natives
of that country. When the Margrave assures Chriembild,
who is desirous of espousing a heathen maiden, that " many
Christian knights and lords have their dwelling in the court
of Attila," he says nothing but what is perfectly consistent
with historical truth. But it is impossible to avoid being a
little amused with another passage, in which it is said, that
in Attila s court men lived either according to Christian or
Pagan customs, as it pleased them; for that the prince
knew no rule of favour, but rewarded all men according to
the valour of their achievements, and the virtue of their
lives. So strange is the perversity of fiction ! The warlike
and indefatigable Charlemagne we have already seen repre
sented as an indolent and luxurious sultan ; and now we see
the conquering and cruel Attila transformed into the like
ness of a mild, magnanimous, and tolerating monarch.
The last edition of the Nibelungen-lied may, I think, be
placed, with great probability, in the reign of Leopold the
Glorious, the last but one of the princes of the house of
Babenberg ; and if we are anxious that the author of such a
poem should not be left without a name, and insist upon
connecting it with that of some well-known genius, it is, I
think, highly probable that the poet was no other than
Henry Von Ofterdingen, who was a native of Thuringia,
but had his residence in Austria.
This work is not only the most excellent of its time in
respect of language ; its internal structure is also extremely
regular and masterly. It has an almost dramatic conclu
sion ; and is divided into six books : these again are sub
divided into smaller sections, cantos, or rhapsodies, with a
view, it is probable, to oral recitation or singing. The poet
216 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
must have adhered with great fidelity to his ancient autho
rities ; for it is remarkable that he has kept perfectly free of
all allusions to the Crusades, although these were the per
petual theme and admiration of all the other poets of his age.
The influence of the Crusades, and of those eastern pil
grimages which were then so prevalent, is, on the contrary,
nowhere more conspicuous than in those very unequal com
positions which are classed together under the name of the
Helden-buch.
Of the other classes of chivalrous fictions, that of which
Charlemagne was the subject, was at first, indeed, received
with great favour among the Germans ; but in the sequel,
Arthur and the Round Table had completely the advantage.
But were I called upon to give a general opinion concerning
the merits and defects of all the old German chivalrous
poems, I should have no hesitation in saying, that I con
sider their chief fault to lie in this that they are all too
much composed in the spirit and tone of the love poems,
their predecessors. According to my judgment, that would
deserve to be considered as the best chivalrous poem, which,
being founded originally on history or tradition, should ex
press so much national feeling, and give to its marvellous so
much of the character of power and greatness as might
entitle it to be considered as a heroic poem, while, on the
other hand, it should preserve in the department of feeling,
all that beauty, and tenderness, and love, which formed the
excellence of the sentimental poetry of the Troubadours.
Whether this height of perfection was in reality ever attain
ed by any of those accomplished masters of romantic poetry,
who in subsequent times have appeared among the Italians,
the English, and the Germans, I shall not take upon me to
decide. The poet who appears to be most near it is Tor-
quato Tasso.
ThereTare still extant several German romances, particu
larly concerning Tristram, which, in their unbroken melody
of versification and softness of feeling, are entirely similar to
the old poetry of Provence. But of all the German poets of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 217
that time, by far the most accomplished master of his art
was Wolkram von Eschenbach : he has written the histories
of the Round Table in a manner superior to any other poet
of any country in Europe, and has seized in particular, with
the highest success, the idea of that doubly allegorical me
thod of treating them, to which I have above alluded. His
hero is at once the type of spiritual warfare, and the ideal of
a Templar. In his own days, the fame of Wolkram was as
great in Germany, as that of Dante was in Italy; and, in
deed, he bears no small resemblance to that illustrious poet,
both in his propensity to allegories, and in his love of dis
playing, with some little pedantry, what was in those times
a greater rarity than genius itself his extensive erudition.
In respect of his leaning towards an almost oriental fulness
of fancy in his descriptive parts, he bears perhaps more
resemblance to Ariosto than to any other poet. It is with
old poems, as with old pictures and statues ; when these are
first dug up from some dungeon of concealment, and seen
all covered over with the rust and filth of ages, it is not easy
to perceive at one view the real excellence which they pos
sess. To comprehend their true merits we must wait till
they are cleaned, and arranged, and inspected at our leisure.
Although I have mentioned that the poetry of Wolkram
Von Eschenbach is in some respect akin to Dante and
Ariosto, I am yet far from admiring the custom of those
who are perpetually tracing resemblances between the poets
of different countries and ages. These resemblances are in
general either insignificant or imaginary, for every true poet
is a being by himself. If we must compare the poems of
that age to something, let it be, not to the poems of other
times, but to the other works of art which were produced in
their own time, and in their own country. They resemble,
in the sublimity of that solitary idea, which lies at the bot
tom of them all, and also in that fulness of ornament which
characterises their execution, those monuments of the
Gothic architecture which we still survey with a mixed
feeling of melancholy, delight, and wonder. Perhaps I
218 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
might carry the parallel a little further, and say that the
Gothic architecture and the chivalrous poetry have both, in
a great measure, remained ideal, and never been brought to
perfection in execution. It may be, that the grandeur of
the original conception conies upon us with a stronger im
pulse, from this unfinished work, than it might have done
had they been adorned with the last exquisite touches of
elegance. The terrible graces are ever conversant with the
undefined. The spirit of the middle ages has nowhere so
powerfully expressed itself as in those monuments of an
architecture whose origin, after all, is unknown to us. I
speak of that style of Christian architecture which is char
acterised by its lofty vaults and arches ; its pillars, which
have the appearance of being formed out of bundles of
reeds ; its profusion of ornament ; its flowers and leaves
and which is, in all these respects, essentially distinguished
from that elder Christian architecture, whose first and best
model is to be found in the church of St Sophia in Constan
tinople. That it was not invented by the Goths, is now
admitted on all hands; for the nation of the Goths had
passed away long before any existing specimens of it were
formed ; and we know that it was not an art which took
centuries to perfect it. It leapt at once to perfection, and
its oldest monuments are the best. Neither is it in any
respect Moorish ; or if it be so, in a very inconsiderable de
gree ; for we have many true old Moorish buildings both in
Sicily and in Spain, and these are all marked by a character
quite peculiar to themselves. And with regard to the speci
mens of Gothic architecture which are to be found in the
East, these are all, beyond any doubt, of European origin,
and exist only in cities and churches which formerly be
longed to the Knights of the Temple and of St John. The
most flourishing period of this architecture was in the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centimes. Its chief seat
was originally in Germany, and German artists constructed,
to the admiration of all Italy, the great cathedral of Milan.
But it was by no means confined to Germany and the Ger-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 219
man Netherlands ; it flourished, on the contrary, with equal
success in England, and in the northern parts of France.
Who was the first inventor of it is entirely unknown ; I
doubt, indeed, very much whether it was ever brought to
its perfection by any one great architect ; for, in that case,
it is difficult to believe that his name could have betn
utterly forgotten. I am rather of their opinion, who con
ceive that this system of architecture was perfected and dif
fused over all Europe by a small society of artists, who were
very closely connected with each other. But whoever
might be the builders, this much is certain, that they were
not mere heapers together of stones, but had all thoughts
which they meant to embody in their labours. Let a build
ing be ever so beautiful, if it be destitute of meaning, it can
not belong to the fine arts. The proper display of purpose,
the immediate expression of feeling, is indeed denied to this
oldest and most sublime of all the arts ; it must excite the
feelings through the medium of thought, but perhaps the
feelings which it does excite are, on that account, only so
much the more powerful. All architecture is symbolical,
but none so much so as the Christian architecture of the
middle age. The first and the greatest of its objects is to
express the elevation of holy thoughts, the loftiness of medi
tation set free from earth, and proceeding unfettered to the
heavens. It is this which stamps itself at once on the spirit
of the beholder, however little he may himself be capable of
analysing his feelings, when he gazes on these far-stretching
columns and airy domes. But this is not all ; every part of
the structure is as symbolical as the whole, and of this we
can perceive many traces in all the writings of the times.
The altar is directed towards the rising of the sun, and tue
three great entrances are meant to express the conflux of
worshippers from all the regions of the earth. Three towers
express the Christian mystery of the triune Godhead. The
choir rises like a temple within a temple, with redoubled
loftiness. The shape of the cross is in common with the
Christian churches even of the earlier times. The round
220 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
arch was adopted in the earlier Christian architecture, but
laid aside on account of the superior gracefulness supposed
to result from the crossing of four arches. The rose is the
essential part of all the ornament of this architecture ; even
the shape of the windows, doors, and towers may be traced
to it, as well as all the accompanying decoration of flowers
and leaves. When we view the whole structure, from the
crypt to the choir, it is impossible to resist the idea of
earthly death leading only to the fulness, the freedom, the
solemn glories of eternity.
I have said this much merely to point out in passing,
how widely they err who despise indiscriminately the works
and the spirit of the middle ages. They who do so are in
general little acquainted with the works, and altogether
incapable of comprehending the spirit of a period so remote
from their own.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the tendency of
the Germans was chiefly to moral didactic poems, partly of
allegorical, partly of satirical, import. Of this the fable
book of Reineke Fucks, may be cited as an example ; and
in truth, if we would see a clear and precise picture of the
course of human aifairs in those ages, I know not any other
book from which we may learn so much of all these things
as from this. The witty author has contrived, with great
adroitness, to let us see that the fox, whose success he re
presents among the animals, is only the type of that cunning
which was, in those days, found to be the true road to pre
ferment, both among knights and burghers. The chivalrous
poetry of a former age erred in entirely departing from his
tory, and becoming a mere display of imagination; the
poets now ran into the opposite extreme, and composed
regular chronicles in rhyme. Thus the two elements of
true heroic poetry were given not in conjunction, but in
detail. The two last considerable specimens of our elder
poetry are to be found in the celebrated romances which
were both published, one of them perhaps, in a great mea
sure, composed by the Emperor Maximilian ; the one of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 221
these is in prose, the other in verse. Both of these books
are valuable on account of the spirit with which they are
animated ; but the half-allegorical, half-historical, mode of
composition then in fashion, was, it is probable, extremely
unfavourable to the noble genius of Maximilian the last of
the old Germans.
The spirit of chivalry remained nowhere so long in all its
active purity as in France and England, but the chivalrous
poetry of those countries became very soon corrupted, and
that even before it had time to reach any high degree of
perfection in its development. In France it degenerated
into long prose romances, which were quite destitute of the
spirit of the ancient minstrelsy. In England its fate was
more favourable ; for although it was reduced to composi
tions of no great extent, these undoubtedly were well quali
fied to take fast hold of the mind, and preserve alive the
feelings of chivalry in the bosoms of the people, The
French, indeed, are not without their old songs and ballads,
and many of them are distinguished by great tenderness of
feeling ; but neither in quality nor in quantity can they, for
a moment, be compared with the popular poetry of the
English more particularly of the Scots ; they are as much
inferior to them as the northern French love poems of a
former age were to those of the Provencial Troubadours.
Among the original poets of this old French time, Thibault,
Count of Champagne and King of Navarre, appears to be
entitled to a high place, perhaps to the very first. The fic
titious histories of Charlemagne and the Round Table, were
first composed in the French language, either after Latin
authorities, or from the traditions of the vulgar. But in
every department of literature which flourished in France,
England also had her share, and to understand this with
propriety, we must take into our consideration what was
the political situation of France at that period. Provence
we must consider altogether by itself; for not only had it a
language of its own, but it was also a fee of the empire,
belonging to Burgundy ; and the flourishing state of Pro-
222 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
vencial poetry commenced from the time when Frederick
Barbarossa gave its investiture to the Count Berengar.
The northern and eastern provinces of France, on the other
hand, were under the government of England; and, in
truth, the whole chivalry and chivalrous poetry, both of the
French and the English, may be said to have belonged, of
right, not to them but to the Normans.
Of the first progress of the French language, the cele
brated Roman de la Rose gives, in spite of all its fame, no
very advantageous impression. The French literature of
the fourteenth century is indeed extremely poor ; but from
the romances and what other productions of that period we
have in our hands, it appears that the language had at that
time a character very inferior in every respect to the con
temporary dialects of Spain and Italy. The French lan
guage never assumed its proper shape till long afterwards.
Nor was the case very different in England, where all the
knowledge and genius of Chaucer could not introduce either
uniformity into the language, or nature into the feelings
of his countrymen. It is probable that the long wars be
tween France and England, during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and the bloody feuds of York and Lan
caster, prevented, in a great measure, the natural progress
both of language and poetry in the two countries. That
much of the literature of that age has perished, there is
every reason to believe ; but to judge from what remains,
as the riches of the English consisted in ballads, so that of
the French consisted in fabliaux and little tales or novels :
these were, in a great measure, the fountains from which
Boccaccio drew his fictions, and, indeed, they wanted only a
style like his to procure for them that honour which is due
to the rich imagination of their inventors.
But even in this early age of French literature, it is easy
to perceive a strong tendency to the same species of writing
which is the most peculiar and original, and which has
since become the richest of all its possessions. I mean
those historical memoirs of particular men or times, in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 228
which there is displayed, with so much liveliness, the spirit
of social observation, and which in their portraiture of man
ners, and their minuteness of finishing, bear a considerable
resemblance to romance writing. The first of these compo
sitions (which form the most valuable part of French litera
ture) is the work of the faithful servant and friend of St
Louis, the Sieur de Joinville.
The literature of Spain possesses a high advantage over
that of most other nations, in its historical heroic romance
of the Cid. This is exactly that species of poetry which
exerts the nearest and the most powerful influence over the
national feelings and character of a people. A single work,
such as the Cid, is of more real value to a nation than a
whole library of books, however abounding in wit or intellect,
which are destitute of the spirit of nationality. Although,
in the shape in which it now appears, the work was pro
bably produced about the eleventh century, yet the whole
body of its inventions belongs to the older period antecedent
to the Crusades. There is here no trace of that oriental
taste for the wonderful and the fabulous which afterwards
became so predominant. It breathes the pure, true-hearted,
noble old Castilian spirit, and is, in fact, the true history of
the Cid, first arranged and extended into a poetical form,
very shortly, it is probable, after the age of that hero him
self. I have already taken notice that the heroic poetry
and mythology of almost all nations is in its essence tragical
and elegaic. But there is another less serious view of the
heroic life, which was often represented even by the an-
cierits themselves. Hercules and his bodily strength, and
his eating, are drawn in the true colours of comedy, and the
wandering adventures and lying stories of Ulysses have
been the original of all amusing romances. But, in truth,
specimens of this sort of representation are to be found in
the histories of almost all great heroes. However power
fully history may represent the hero s superiority in magna
nimity, in bravery, and in corporeal strength, it effects its
purpose by depicting him not among the poetical obscurities
224 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of a world of wonders, but surrounded by the realities of
life ; and it is then that we receive the strongest impression
of his power, when we see it exerted in opposition, not to
imaginary evils, of which we have little conception, but to
the everyday difficulties and troubles of the world, to
which we ourselves feel that ordinary men are incapable of
offering any resistance. We have many instances of this
comic sort of writing in the Spanish Cid ; for example,
there is the description of his rather unfair method of rais
ing money to support his war against the Moors, by borrow
ing from a Jewish usurer, and leaving a chest of old stones
and lumber as his pledge ; and the account of the insult
offered to his dead body by another of that race, and the
terror into which he was thrown by the Cid starting up in
his bier, and drawing his sword a span s length out of the
scabbard. These are touches of popular humour by no
means out of place in a romance founded on popular tradi
tions. But there is a spirit of more delicate irony in those
sorrowful lamentations with which Donna Ximena is made
to address the King on account of the protracted absence of
her husband, as well as in the reply of the monarch. The
romances translated into our language by Herder, are much
later in date, but still preserve in great purity the character
of the ancient fictions. They abound also in a very peculiar
simplicity of expression and feeling, which are not so per
ceptible in the somewhat careless translation of our great
critic.
The Spaniards are as rich in ballads as the English andy
Scotch ; but theirs are possessed of certain peculiar excel- j
lencies to which the others have no pretension. They are *
not only popular ballads, intelligible and clear to the vulgar,/
they are also true national and heroic poems, which may bei
read with the highest admiration by the most refined critics.l
Popular ballads are, in general, a sort of lamentations over
an antiquity of greatness more favourable for the poet.
But it is always to be regretted when that poetry, whose
business it is to keep alive the national feelings of a whole
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 225
people, assumes a form which adapts it only for the vulgar.
Such poetry has, moreover, this disadvantage, that it is its
inevitable fate to become every day more unintelligible
even to those for whose use it is formed. In general, how
ever, poems of this sort are to be found in the greatest
abundance among nations possessed of truly poetical feelings ;
whose legends, traditions, and national recollections have
been interrupted or mutilated by long protracted civil wars,
or by some universal revolution and concussion of opinions.
LECTURE IX.
ITALIAN LITERATURE ALLEGORIZING SPIRIT OF THE MIDDLE AGE RELATION OF
CHRISTIANITY TO POETRY DANTE, PETRARCHA, AND BOCCACCIO CHARACTER
OF THE ITALIAN ART OF POETRY IN GENERAL MODERN LATIN POETS, AND THE
EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR WRITINGS MACHIAVELLI GREAT INVENTIONS
AND DISCOVERIES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
IN the preceding lectures I have endeavoured to present
you with successive pictures of the different European na
tionsthe Germans, the French, the English, and the Spa
niardsmore particularly in regard to their poetry and their
intellectual cultivation, down to the sixteenth century. The
literature of the Italians has alone been omitted, and that I
have purposely left for this place, because I consider it as
forming the link of connexion between the poetry of the
middle age, and the new literature of these later times ; since
the sciences, and through them the arts, were, in the course
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so remarkably en
riched and revived.
The elder poetry of the Italians divides itself into two dis
tinct classes ; one founded entirely on the philosophy of the
middle ages, of which the greatest example is the allegori
cal Comedia of Dante ; the other more nearly approaching
to the models of antiquity, and standing in a very intimate
226 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
relation with the study of the ancient languages. The two
great poets, Petrarch and Boccaccio, were themselves men
of learning, who took no inconsiderable share in reviving
the sciences and arts of the Greeks and Romans. The spirit
of chivalry and chivalric poetry seems at no time to have
attained the same sway and influence in Italy, which it ex
erted in France, Germany, and England. Even Dante at
first intended to compose his great poem in Latin ; Petrarch
talks of the knightly poems and romances with contempt
and aversion; and although he has embalmed the very
spirit of the middle age in his rich love songs, he seems, at
the same time, to have rather followed involuntarily the
ruling feelings of his contemporaries, than to have written
from any serious apprehension of the true nature and excel
lence of the modern poetry. He founded, in his own mind,
his expectations of poetical fame, not upon those sonnets
and canzonets which have immortalised him, but upon the
Latin epic poem of Scipio,* which is now only known and
read on account of the reputation of its author. The same
wavering between the old Latin and the new Italian me
thods of thinking, speaking, and composing poetry, is equally
evident in the third great writer of the first Italian period
Boccaccio. He endeavoured to embody the hair-splitting
fancifulness of the Provencial love- queries and love-cases of
conscience, and the amusing fictions of the Norman story
tellers, in a style of composition far too serious, too elabo
rate, and too ornate for his purpose. He has written novels
upon the model of Livy and Cicero. Many of his works
consist of unsuccessful attempts to interweave the mythology
of the ancients into Christian histories, or to express Chris
tian ideas in the language and mythology of the ancients ; as,
for example, in a chivalric romance, where such affectation
appears remarkably out of place, he introduces at all times
God the Father, by the name of Jupiter; our Saviour, by that
of Apollo ; and the Devil, by that of Pluto. In some of his
chivalric poems he has chosen the subject, after the fashion
* Known also by the name of Africa.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 227
of the middle age, out of the ancient mythology, with which,
indeed, there is no question he was far better acquainted
than any of the German or French poets who had preceded
him in the same field. In this unfortunate choice he still
manifests the same passionate predilection for the antique,
and indulges in the same fruitless endeavours to reconcile it
with those poetical feelings which are peculiar to the mo
dem world.
The most rich, dignified, and inventive of all the three
great old Italian poets was unquestionably Dante ; whose
work, comprehending within itself the whole science and
knowledge of the time, the whole life of the later middle age,
the whole personages and events in which the poet person
ally had interest ; and not only all this, but also a complete
description of heaven, hell, and purgatory, such as these
were then conceived to be, is a production entirely unique,
and can be ranked under no class of compositions. It is
true, indeed, that many such allegorical poems were com
posed during the middle age, more particularly in the lan
guage of the Provencials ; but these have all perished or
been forgotten. Dante has towered so high above all his
predecessors in this sort of writing, that both they and their
works have been completely overshadowed. If we are will
ing to study the poetry of the middle age without being
biassed in favour of any particular theory, and without at
tending to the rhetorical divisions of the ancient critics,
which are mostly altogether inapplicable to it if we are
willing to consider it in a point of view entirely historical,
and to judge of it according to no standard but that of its
own spirit we shall find that it naturally divides itself into
three species the chivalric, the amatory, and the allegorical.
By this last species I mean, of course, that in which the
object and purpose of the whole composition, no less than its
external form, is allegorical, as is the case in Dante. The
spirit of allegory has here its most peculiar triumph ; but its
influence is wide-spread and predominant over all the poetry
of the middle ages. How often an allegorical spirit and
228 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sense was enclosed, even in the form of a romance of
chivalry, I have already hinted, in treating of the German
mode of handling the fables of the Kound Table and the
Graal. The difference consists in this, that in these allego
rical romances the hidden sense is wrapped up in a repre
sentation of human life and transactions, while in Dante, on
the contrary, the representations of human life are only in
serted here and there as adventitious pieces of furniture in
the artfully divided saloons and galleries of his world-em
bracing allegory. It appears that this universal tendency
to allegory, which was so predominant in all the middle age,
and which, in considering all the works of that period, we
cannot too much keep in our remembrance, had been in a
very great measure encouraged and extended by the influ
ence of the Christian religion.
Whether we consider the Bible in regard to the powerful
influence which it has in reality exerted upon the whole
literature and poetry of the middle age and of modern times,
or view merely the impression which, as a book, and in
relation to its exterior form, it was and is calculated to pro
duce upon the language, art, and spirit of composition, we
shall find two peculiarities which are, above all, worthy of
our attention. The first is simplicity of expression the
total want of all artifice. Although the sacred writings are
principally or almost exclusively occupied with God and the
internal being of man, their mode of treating these topics is
every where lively and distinct ; they contain little of what
we are accustomed to call metaphysics ; they are free from
all those distinctions and antitheses, those dead ideas, and
empty abstractions, with which the philosophy of every
nation, from the Greeks and Indians, down to the modern
Europeans, has at all times been disfigured, whenever she
has attempted to comprehend and explain, by her own
unassisted powers, those highest objects of all reflection,
God and man. The hereditary evils of endless bewildering,
and of inconsistent and artificial reasoning, have adhered to
her even when disclaiming all interference with those high
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 229
questions and topics : she has either retreated into the world
of sense, or exerted all her powers in the mere confession of
her ignorance. The same simplicity and absence of artifice
distinguish even the poetical parts of the Scriptures, much
as those abound in specimens of the beautiful, and above all
of the sublime. If we look, indeed, to the elaborate deve
lopment and forms of writing, the simplicity of the sacred
poesy prevents it from sustaining any sort of comparison
with the richness of the Grecian compositions. But on the
other hand, in those great works, the utmost perfection of
blossom is almost every where followed by the symptoms of
decay ; and to the highest polish of art there succeeds, not
unfrequently, an ambitious and luxuriant taste which de
lights in superfluous ornament and overloaded artifice.
There exist many causes in the imagination of man, in the
whole complexion of his perceptions, in the propensities and
feelings of his nature, which may abundantly explain this
universal appearance in the history of art ; many influences
which may poison and corrode the bloom of beauty, before
yet it is perfectly unfolded, or which may reduce the noble
simplicity of expression, after that has been perfectly dis
played, to the false artifices of corruption. It is for this
reason that even those Christian poets of modern times, who
have taken either their subjects or their models from the
Scriptures Dante, Tasso, Milton, and Klopstock resemble
their originals rather by individual traits of sublimity, than
by any sustained imitation of the faultless simplicity of the
Bible.
A second peculiarity in the outward form and composi
tion of the Scriptures, which has had a very powerful effect
upon our language and poetry, is that prevailing spirit of
types and symbols so conspicuous not only in the poetical
books, but in those also whose texture is entirely didactic
or historical. In one point of view the Holy Book may be
considered as a national possession of the Hebrews, common
in some measure to several other oriental peoples, such as
the Arabs and other tribes originally descended from the
230 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
same stock with the inhabitants of Judea. The prohibition
of sensible images of the Deity might contribute in no in
considerable degree to foster this propensity among the
Hebrews ; for the power of imagination being confined in
one direction, naturally seeks an outlet in some other. A
similar prohibition has produced a similar effect among the
modern Mahometans. But even in those parts of the
Scriptures, where little or no room is aiforded for the intro
duction of this old oriental species of typical poetry ; as, for
example, in the Christian books of the Bible, the prevalence
of a symbolising spirit is still abundantly apparent. This
spirit Has deeply implanted, and widely extended, its influ
ence over the whole thoughts and imagination of the Chris
tian peoples. By means of this symbolical spirit, and the
consequent propensity to allegory, the Bible has come to
exert the same influence upon the poetry and all the imita
tive arts of the middle age, and very nearly the same upon
those of our own more cultivated times, which Homer did
among the ancients : it has become the fountain, the rule,
and the model of all our images and figures. It is true that in
cases where the deeper sense of its symbolical mysteries
was mistaken, or where the purpose which the figure had
been intended to serve was of a nature less serious and
sacred, this spirit has not unfrequeutly displayed itself in
the corrupted form of idle and fantastical allegory ; for loaded
ornament is at all times of easier attainment than native
grace ; and the most brilliant display of art is a thing more
commonplace than the deep gravity of truth.
In regard to both of the last mentioned peculiarities, had
these only been every where felt and understood, the Scrip
tures might have afforded to Christians a high model of imi
tation, far more beautiful in itself, and far more universal
in its application, than any thing which they could have
borrowed from the Greeks. Had the spirit of Christianity
thoroughly penetrated us with its enlivening influence, we
could not have failed to derive from it, both in our lan
guage and in our composition, both in our science and in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 231
our art, a noble and sustained beauty, which is the same
thing with truth, and whose influence must have in all
respects been alike predominant and enduring. But in and
by itself, Christianity is, according to my opinion, no proper
subject of poetry ; I except lyrical compositions, which are
to be considered as direct emanations of feeling. Chris
tianity itself cannot be either philosophy or poetry. It is
rather what ought to be the groundwork of all philosophy ;
for they who philosophise without taking Christianity for
their guide, terminate either in doubt and inextricable per
plexities, or in the cold and despairing void of unbelief.
On the other hand, Christianity is removed far above all
poetry ; the influence of our sublime faith should indeed be
every where around us, but here its ministrations should be
felt, not seen ; and we should beware of debasing, by famili
arity, that which is most worthy of our reverence.
The relation of Christianity to poetry and all the litera
ture of imagination, is one which must be considered with
the deepest attention, whenever we would inquire into the
comparative relations of the literature of the ancients and
that of the moderns, and examine in how far the latter of
these is capable of contending with the former, and mani
festing in its productions an equal degree of perfection.
What should that poetry and that art have been, which
had been exclusively occupied, down to the present hour,
in representing the faded forms and shadows of that anti
quity whose spirit and life are fled, or which should have
pretended indeed to employ themselves upon our modern
life, but at all times confined themselves to its surface and
exterior, without daring to search into that deep point of
interest and thought, from whence our meditations and our
feelings have derived their peculiarity and their power !
It is no wonder that so many whole ages and nations,
and so many illustrious geniuses of Christendom, have
striven to honour their religion, and embody its revelations,
by consecrating to its exclusive service the poetry of which
they were possessed.
232 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
The truth of the matter is, as I have already hinted, that}
the indirect expression of Christian feelings, the indirect
influence of the spirit of Christianity upon our poetiy, if not
the only just and true influence, has, as yet at least, been
the surest and the most successful. In this sense it is that
we may call the chivalric poetry of the middle age (which,
like the Gothic architecture, never attained complete per
fection) a truly Christian heroic poetry ; for the character
istics which distinguish it from the heroic poetry of all other
nations, and of the more remote antiquity, are, in their
essence and origin, unquestionably Christian. The spirit,
indeed, is that of Gothic antiquity, the fictions and the per
sonages are derived from the pagan legends of the north ;
but all these are changed and purified by the predominant
feeling and the faith of love, which have lent new beauty
and sublimity even to the wildest play of the imagination.
But so soon as the poet attempts to reveal directly the
mysteries of our religion, we perceive that he has made
election of a subject which is above the standard of his
powers. This much is certain, that no attempt of this kind,
however masterly the talents with which it has been con
ducted, has attained a degree of perfection sufficient alto
gether to remove this impression. We remark the defect in
Dante, the first and oldest of all great Christian poets ; and
it is no less frequently to be observed in the works of his
later followers, Tasso, Milton, and Klopstock. By Dante
himself, there is no doubt that heavenly appearances, and
holy ecstasies, are described in far more vivid colours, and
with more true power of imagination, than by any other
Christian poet. But his most zealous admirers must admit,
that even in him the poetry and the Christianity are not
always perfectly in harmony with each other ; and that his
work, if it aspire to the name of a manual of doctrine and
theology, must found its pretensions not upon its general
scope, but upon some particular passages with which it is
enriched. Although his genius was thoroughly poetical, and
indulged itself with the greatest partiality in the boldest
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 233
Visions of imagination, it is evident that the prevailing
scholastics of the day had exerted a very great power over
this remarkable spirit. His singular poem is rich beyond
all other example in its representations of human life. By
his plan of describing the three great regions of darkness, of
purification, and of light, he has found an opportunity of
introducing every variety of human character, incident, and
fortune ; he has depicted, with equally strong and masterly
touches of horror, tenderness, and enthusiasm, every situa
tion in which the human spirit can be placed, beginning
with the deepest gloom of hell and despair, and then shading
away this blackness into softer sorrows, and illuminating
these again with gradually brightening tints of hope, till, on
the summit of his picture, he pours the warmest radiance of
serenity and joy. Those who are able thoroughly to com
prehend his spirit, and to enter into all his views and pur
poses, cannot fail to discover, in his apparently most miscel
laneous poem, the strongest unity and connexion of design.
It is difficult to know which are most worthy of admiration,
the daring imagination which could first venture to form
such a plan, or that phalanx of unparalleled powers which
could accompany him steadily through its execution. The
chief misfortune is, that neither this harmony of plan, nor
this vigour of execution, are very easy to be comprehended,
for he that comes properly prepared to the study of Dante,
must bring with him stores of science and knowledge of the
most various kinds, far beyond what is required from the
reader of any other poet. To his own contemporaries, and
the immediately following generation, his geography and
astronomy must have been far less foreign than they are to
us ; his perpetual allusions to the Florentine history must
also have been far less obscure, and even the philosophy of
the poet was that of the age in which he lived. Yet even
then it appears that his work stood in great need of a com
mentary ; and the truth is, that at no time has the greatest
and the most national of all Italian poets ever been much
the favourite of his countrymen. After the lapse of several
234 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
centuries, his works, like those of a second Homer, have had
the honour of being explained and illustrated by a whole
academy of literati at the public expense ; yet it is certain
that he is very far from having become the Homer of Italy.
The power which he possesses (and this is of course, in
spite of all obstacles, far from inconsiderable) is founded,
not upon any general knowledge or comprehension of his
works, but upon the exquisite force of a few single episodes
and pictures. There are among the poets of his own nation
none who can sustain the most remote comparison with him
either in boldness and sublimity of imagination, or in the
delineation of character: none have penetrated so deeply
into the Italian spirit, or depicted its mysterious workings
with so forcible a pencil. The only reproach which we can
find against him in regard to these things, is his perpetual
Ghibellinism. This term may appear unintelligible, but not
to those who are well acquainted with the age of Dante.
In those later periods of the middle age, the Ghibelline
party were animated by designs which aimed at nothing but
the establishment of merely worldly dominion, and con
ducted every enterprise in which they were engaged with a
spirit of pride, haughtiness, and harshness, of which, if we
would form an idea, we must study the histories and monu
ments of the time. Even in the most modern times we
have had no want of Ghibellines, men who expect the whole
salvation of mankind from dominion founded entirely upon
worldly principles, and who are willing altogether to deny
the power of that unseen influence, which is, however, sure
to make its existence to be felt upon every proper occasion.
But these Ghibellines of a more modem and an over refined
age, are chiefly characterised by the docility and submissive-
ness with which they render themselves up as weak masses,
ready to assume any shape which it may please that des
potism to impress, whose dignity is increased in their eyes
by every new infliction of its oppressiveness. The old
Ghibellines of Dante s day were equally ambitious, but in
their time pride and heroic strength were more common
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 235
things ; and the numbers of rival combatants, and the colli
sions of great characters, were sufficient to prevent conse
quences similar to those with which we are now acquainted.
Then there existed a terrible anarchy, an universal struggle
and ferment of mighty characters and powers, but these had
not been followed by that sleep of uniformity and lethargy,
which is not only the consequence and the curse, but the
ministering opportunity also, and the deadliest instrument
of despotism. The Ghibelline harshness appears in Dante
in a form noble and dignified ; but, although it may perhaps
do no injury to the outward beauty, it certainly mars, in a
very considerable degree, the internal charm of his poetry.
His chief defect is, in a word, a want of gentle feelings.
But these are mere spots upon the sun, and must not
diminish our admiration for this greatest of all Italian and
of all Christian poets.
I have, in one of my former lectures, indicated the proper
situation in which we should view the character of Petrarch,
when I took notice of the rich finishing which it was his
fortune to bestow upon that love poetry of several different
nations which has already passed under our review. His
elegant productions belong, in truth, altogether to that class ;
and we must compare his writings with the amatory pro
ductions of the old Spanish and German poets, before we
can judge rightly of his merits, or even discover what was
the leading characteristic of his genius. Petrarch is distin
guished from the other love poets of the middle age by
greater skill in composition, and by a more intellectual and
Platonic turn of sentiment. There have not, indeed, been
wanting some among his admirers, who have gone so far as
to maintain that his Laura was no real mistress, but merely
a fanciful personification of loveliness. Unfortunately for
this hypothesis, there still exist abundant proofs in the
church records, not only that Laura was a real woman, but
that she was a wife, and the mother of a very large family.
It is true, however, that over and above the praises of this
lady, Petrarch has introduced a great deal of matter which
236 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
cannot be any thing else than allegorical ; this is often too
evident to admit of any sort of doubt, and is, moreover, as
I have before observed, perfectly in character with the spirit
of all the poetry of the middle ages. As a versifier and as
an improver of language, Petrarch is entitled to be consider
ed as one of the very first artists who have ever made use
of any Romanic dialect.
Boccaccio was of as much use in polishing the prose as
Petrarch in polishing the poetry of his country : the only
fault in his composition is a love of long and intricate
periods ; from which, indeed, with the single exception of
Machiavelli, no great Italian writer is free.
Each of these three Florentine poets Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio, was the discoverer of a new path, the former
of a new style of composition. The first was master of
Allegorical, the second of Lyrical poetry ; the third was the
founder of the Novel and the Romance, and composed for
the most part in prose, though many of his best fictions are
occasionally adorned by poetry. Each of the three had a
host of followers in his own department. But the genius of
Dante was one of so very peculiar a cast that he was far
from being well-fitted to be a model of imitation ; and the
crowds of sonneteers and novelists w^ho followed in the
tracks of Petrarch and Boccaccio, were such, that both of
these kinds of writing, associated with the ideas of repeti
tion and satiety, soon became wearisome in the extreme.
The fifteenth centuiy was already well advanced before the
Italians, convinced that by persisting in these species of
writing, no further lam-els were to be gained, resolved to
create for themselves a proper chivalrous poetry, and to
desert for ever the Greek mythology and Trojan fable
which Boccaccio had introduced into the only productions
of this sort with which they had as yet been acquainted.
The first predecessor of Ariosto, whose name has become
celebrated, was the Florentine Pulci. Of a poet so well
acquainted with the ancient writers, and living with and
admired by the Medici and their polished courtiers, not a
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 237
little might have been expected. But I fear his work itself
is not fitted to fulfil these hopes. It is one of those in which
sportiveness and wit are introduced for the purpose of en
abling the poet to ridicule himself, and thereby induce his
readers to overlook the more lightly his want of poetical
power, or the want of probability and connexion in the inci
dents of his fable. In the narrative it is not easy to discover
what parts are serious, and what written in the spirit of
parody; besides, the wit itself is so purely local and Floren
tine, that we can make very little of it ; so that the work is
chiefly valuable as a proof how very little the genius of
Italians was imbued by nature with the true feelings of the
romantic.
A far more successful attempt was that of Boiardo, the
immediate predecessor of Ariosto, whose imperfect poem
that masterly genius at first intended only to complete, but
which he has since become the chief instrument of throwing
into utter oblivion. Ariosto does not receive, among those
acquainted with the sources from which he drew, any credit
for that invention and extravagant fulness of fancy which
we hear very commonly ascribed to him. The whole body
of his tales and fictions is to be found in his predecessors,
and that too set forth with a power of painting not at all
inferior to his. The superiority of Ariosto consists in the
inimitable polish, lightness, and grace of his language and
versification ; and he has besides derived no small advantage
from the skilful use which he has made of Homer, Ovid, and
some other poets of antiquity.
It is worthy of remark, that the chivalrous poetry of the
Italians attained its full perfection, not in Florence, but in
Lombardy, where the Gothic style of architecture had also
been introduced, and where the style of painting bore con
siderable resemblance to that of the Germans, or at least
was less remote from it than the painting of Florence or of
Rome. We need only run over the names of the chief old
states of Italy, in order to see how infinitely less prevalent
the spirit of chivalry, and its moral, intellectual, and poetical
238 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
influences were in that country, than among the other po
lished nations of the west. In Florence the spirit of the
people became, at a very early period, entirely democratic.
In Venice the ruling principle was that of commerce ; and
both manners and tastes had more in common with the
orientals and the Greeks than with the Gothic west. In
Naples the spirit of chivalry was never, after the Norman
period, altogether extinct ; but a succession of unfortunate
events, the rule of foreign dynasties, frequent changes of
government, and various other causes, combined to prevent
that state from taking such a part as it should have done in
the intellectual cultivation of the north of Italy. In Rome,
the centre of ecclesiastical affairs, more attention was be
stowed upon those splendid arts of imitation subservient to
the ornament of the church, than upon chivalrous poetry.
If any national feelings were ever excited among the Ro
mans, they commonly took quite a contrary direction, and
evaporated in empty dreams about the re-establishment of
the Republic, and the restoration of the city to her ancient
glory; a specimen of which we may find in those mad
schemes of Rienzi, of which Petrarch himself was both an
admirer and a partaker.
These seem to have been the causes which prevented the
spirit of chivalry from obtaining any power over the more
early poetry of the Italians ; a poetry which has attained
the greatest perfection of development, and which has
become, as it were, a common possession of the whole of
cultivated Europe. And such seem to have been the cir
cumstances which may account for that leaning to the
antique, and to philosophy, which can be discerned in the
national poetry of no contemporary people.
The fifteenth century was in Italy adorned by painting"
much more than by poetry. The prosperity of this art com
menced in this century, and it continued to flourish down
till the middle of the next. Next to the revival of ancient
learning, the age of the Medici, or of Leo X. has been prin
cipally indebted to art for its glory. At a period consider-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 239
ably earlier than this, it is true certain painters of Italy
began to make some use of those fragments of ancient art
which were continually before their eyes. They learned
some notions of accurate drawing, and something of human
anatomy, and they could not avoid inhaling along with these
some ideas of the beauty of form and the sublimity of ex
pression. But an intimate acquaintance with the antique
was very rare, and many of the first and greatest masters
were entirely deficient in it. And even among those who
understood it the most scientifically, no attempts were ever
made at strict imitation of the antique. When that came
once to be in fashion, it is singular but true, that painting
was already on the decline. In the early stage of its pro
gress, this art had acquired among the Italians a new and
distinct character of its own, founded upon the predominance
of Christian ideas on the one hand, and that of national
partialities on the other. Under the influence of both of
these species of inspiration, this art acquired a glory which
was at that time unrivalled by the sister art of poetry.
What poet of those times can we for a moment compare
with Raphael? The poetry was less original than the
painting. The restoration of classical learning, and the
wide circulation of so many illustrious works heretofore
little known, produced their natural effects in giving rise to
a strong spirit of imitation. The appearances of this mani
fested themselves very speedily in a manner by no means
happy, among all the European nations, but first of all in
Italy. Even the greatest geniuses could not remain entirely
free from the unfortunate influence ; Camoens and Tasso,
the two first of modern epics poets, would, I have no doubt,
have unfolded their talents in a manner much more power
ful, free, and beautiful, had they been utterly ignorant of
Virgil, and written without having before their eyes the
necessity of adhering to a precedent. The revival of ancient
letters was injurious, in yet another manner, to poetry and
to language itself. The fashion of writing, and of writing-
poetry too, in Latin, became so universal, that it gave rise to
240 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
great neglect of the vernacular dialects. Next to Italy,
Germany, in which classical studies were immediately em
braced with unrivalled ardour, was the greatest sufferer ; not
a few true and excellent poets were, in consequence of their
taste for Latin, lost to their own language and nation. For
it was not till long after this time that men became satisfied
that the only poetry which has any power over a people, is
that composed in its own tongue. Under the Emperor
Maximilian, himself a lover of German poetry, and himself
a German poet, a crown was publicly bestowed on a poet
who wrote in Latin, but no similar distinction fell to the
share of those who made use of their mother tongue. Even
the plays represented before the court w r ere commonly writ
ten in Latin. The evident decline and corruption of our
German language, so different from what its early flourish
ing condition might have led us to expect, have been in
general ascribed to the convulsions and civil tumults of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is little doubt
that these must have greatly increased the evil ; but the
corruption of our language is quite apparent in writers who
composed previous to the Reformation, and who must indeed
have received their education at a time when those alarming
events of which I have above spoken, had not even been
dreamed of. The truth is, that the primary cause of the
evil is to be sought for in that ever-increasing rage for Lati-
nity, which induced all those writers who were capable of
improving the living language, to consider it as below them
to make use of any other than the dead. In Germany,
where no great works had as yet been produced, the effects
of this fashion were of course far more injurious than in Italy,
where there existed the writings of those three great Floren
tines, and where the language had, in consequence of their
labours, acquired a form and standard from which no suc
ceeding authors could ever very widely depart.
The fault of all this lies by no means on the literature of
antiquity, but on the use, or rather on the misuse, to which
men applied its treasures. The prodigious extension of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 241
historical science, and, through it, of every other species of
knowledge an introduction to so many fountains of infor
mation, and so many glorious monuments of art and refine
mentthese things constituted in themselves a great and
an invaluable good. But we shall be greatly mistaken if w?
believe that this abundant harvest was umningled with
tares ; and our expectations must have been far too san
guine if we had hoped that such a hidden treasure could be
discovered, and those that found it be guilty of no absurdi
ties in then- first methods of applying it. The spirit of the
modern Europeans is much more the same throughout the
different centuries of our period, than might at first sight be
imagined. Every where I observe the same misdirected
passion which leads them to fasten upon every new and
great addition to their inheritance of knowledge, as if that
alone were worthy of more attention than the whole of their
previous possessions to pursue it with restless avidity, and
forget in their admiration of it every thing besides, to apply
the new ideas to subjects the most foreign from them, and,
in short, to become blind to all but one point ; till after this
ferment of extravagance has subsided, things at last find
their natural level, and the new takes its place among the
old, without attempting any longer to exclude it. Like the
revolutions of the political world, those of the world of let
ters are attended by violent convulsions, and the shattering
of venerable institutions, and folio wed by periods of lethargy,
which often go far to destroy the good to which they might
otherwise have given birth. In the age of the Crusades,
when the Western Europeans were introduced to an ac
quaintance with the science of the Arabians, and the philo
sophy of Aristotle, when the different nations of the world
were brought into contact with each other after a separa
tion of many centuries, it might have seemed no great
excess of enthusiasm to expect that a mighty regeneration
of intellect should have been the result of such an era. But
it is sufficiently evident, that the effects of all these circum
stances upon the spirit of the thirteenth century were insig-
Q
242 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
nificant, indeed, when compared with what the most rational
might have looked for. Their immediate and most general
consequence was a pervading spirit of sectarianism, which
at first confined its influence to the barbarous schools of the
day, but soon insinuated itself into the church, and through
her into the state, and into private life. Among all the
suddenly enriched and intellectually fruitful periods of Euro
pean history, the most brilliant is, perhaps, the fifteenth
century. It was then that the systematic use of the compass
was adopted ; it was then that a long series of painful voy
ages and unsuccessful attempts was at last crowned with a
full discovery of the way to India and America ; and it was
then that the at once astonished and matured mind of matt
became acquainted with the true extent and shape of the
earth, his habitation ; it was at the same period that the
hidden stores of ancient literature were laid open, and that,
in the art of printing, the most powerful of all instruments,
both for preserving and enlarging human knowledge, was
invented. Such accumulation of unexampled advantages
might well be contemplated with the profoundest feelings
of astonishment and admiration. But as I have already
hinted, and as I mean yet more fully to illustrate, the old
cause of misapplication attached itself to this sudden revela
tion of wealth, with a pertinacity no less striking than it
had on former occasions exhibited. The third universal
revolution in the history of science, and the spirit of modem
Europe, lies nearer our own times. The prodigious im
provements in the mathematics, and, through them, in all
branches of natural philosophy, which took place in the
seventeenth, and which have been carried on still further in
the eighteenth century; the extension of all mechanical
knowledge, and the improvements in technical expedients,
have been such as to give the direction of human life an
almost entirely different appearance. Who can deny that
this knowledge is in itself dignified and admirable, and that
nothing can be more elevating to the human mind than a
consciousness of superiority over the corporeal and sensible
HISTORY OF LITERATURE 243
world, so well harmonising with the original destination of
our species? Had but this dominion over the external
world been united with a correspondent dominion over our
selves had but those physical and mathematical modes of
thinking which now began to exert so powerful an influence
not only over intellect, but also over manners, been kept in
their proper sphere and station, we should have had no rea
son to complain. The consequences of these modes of
thinking, and of the philosophy to which they have given
rise, in regard to religion, morality, political and individual
life, have been such, that the common opinion is, I believe,
already very much against them, and that in a few years no
further difference of opinion respecting their tendency can
be expected to exist.
I return to the fifteenth century. I have already men
tioned the injury which the exclusive predilection for the
literature and language of antiquity did, by checking the
progress of improvement both in the vernacular languages
of modern Europe, and in the poetry therein embodied.
The errors and absurdities of this period should astonish
us the less, when we reflect that in truth the whole history
of modern intellect consists of little more than a narrative
of one continuous contest between the old and foreign
invaluable, in so far as form and knowledge are concerned
and the new, the peculiar, and the national, from which
the whole life and spirit of our active and effectual literature
and poetry must ever be derived.
I think it extremely probable, that several of the modern
Latinists of the fifteenth century, in Italy, were actuated
by a real desire of banishing the vulgar dialect, and re-esta
blishing the old language of Rome in its life and activity.
The mythology and language of antiquity were not merely
applied with great want of taste to new and Christian sub
jects ; the abuse went so far as to deserve the name of
impiety itself, for it is certain that many writers conceived
it to be vulgar to talk of the Deity in the language of the
Bible, and revived the plural " gods" of the classics. The
244 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
manners and modes of life of antiquity found most zealous
imitators among the ecclesiastics of the Christian metro
polis ; nor were there wanting some who extended their
partiality not only to the politics, but to the religion of the
old republics. But these errors never led to any serious
consequences, and therefore it is no wonder their existence
has wellnigh been forgotten. The intimate knowledge of
antiquity, and decidedly Roman prejudices of one great
writer of this age, Machiavelli, have produced effects much
more lasting than the dreams of those more idle enthusiasts.
He is the only writer, not merely of Italy, but of modern
Europe, who can sustain a comparison in style and skill
with the first historians of antiquity. Powerful, simple, and
straightforward, like Caesar, he combines the depth and
rich reflection of Tacitus, with a clearness and precision to
which that great master was a stranger. He has followed
no one writer as his model, but rather seems to be thoroughly
penetrated with the spirit of antiquity, and to write as if
under the influence of a second nature, with that strength,
propriety, and life which are the peculiar characteristics
of the ancients. The art of his compositions seems to be
quite involuntary ; his concern appears to extend no further
than the thought. But how are we to judge or to explain
the political system of this great genius, which has attained
in modern times so unfortunate a predominance ? The
portrait which he has given of an unprincipled tyrant, set
forth as the example and manual of all princes and govern
ments, is justified by some, on the ground that Machiavelli
meant only to place before the eyes of the world a repre
sentation of the coiTupted condition of the age and country
in which he lived, leaving such a picture to produce its own
natural effects upon the minds of those who might contem
plate it. Perhaps it may be better explained by consider
ing, that though Machiavelli was both a politician and a
moralist, his true and most essential character was that of a
patriot. I believe that his object was to inspire the great
princes of Italy with the ambition of giving liberty to his
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 245
country ; and that, in his opinion, this was an object which
ought to be pursued, even although it should be absolutely
necessary to make use of those doubtful, or even immoral
means, by which others had effected its degradation and
subjection. He thought that the enemies of Italy should be
fought with their own arms, and that nothing was unfair
which might be of advantage to his country. The shrewd
ness of his judgment is well exemplified in the short parallel
between the French and the Germans, which he has left
behind him. With a truly admirable acuteness, he shows
that the power of the empire was in his day vastly over
rated, and demonstrates, on the other hand, that the power
of the French King was most formidably on the increase.
However profound and striking Machiavelli s characteristic
of the two nations may be, he cannot be accused of having
expressed it with any appearance of flattery. The one
nation, on the contrary, are satirised in the most unequivo
cal terms for faithlessness, vanity, and treachery, which he
seems to consider as inseparable from them ; while he
reproaches the other with equal bitterness for that perverse
love of freedom which, manifesting itself in nothing but dis
union and distrust, had already in his time sapped the
foundations of their empire, and whose baneful effects have
been more openly displayed in the sequel.
His opinions concerning the other nations of Europe were
such as the fortunes of Italy, Florence, and himself might
well excuse. But the main principle which he has defended,
namely, that it is proper to make use of immoral means in
order to attain a good end, admits of no complete justifica
tion. In truth, the danger to Italy and to the world cor-
sisted far less in the iniquitous schemes of a few petty
tyrants, than in the wide extension of those pernicious prin
ciples upon which these indeed acted, but to which the
misdirected intellect of this refined Florentine gave a system
and consistency which they had never before possessed.
The chief fault of Machiavelli consists, however, not in
his defence of the principle that the end sanctifies the
246 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
means, but in this, that he was the first who introduced into
modern and Christian Europe the fashion of reasoning and
deciding on politics exactly as if Christianity had had no
existence, or rather as if there had been no such thing as a
Deity or moral justice in the world. Before his day the
common faith of Christianity had formed a bond of con
nexion, and been considered as the fundamental principle
of all government among the nations of Europe, and the
peoples of Christendom regarded themselves as forming, in
some sort, one family. The common opinion among man
kind was, that as they themselves ought to serve their God,
so it was their duty also to love and obey the princes
appointed by heaven to rule over them ; and that in this
sense the right of kings was divine. All the doctrines of
legislature, law, and government, still reposed upon the
invisible foundations of the church. Of all these things, of
the whole domestic and political arrangements of European
life, Machiavelli takes no notice ; he is not contented with
merely writing like an ancient ; his thoughts are all
fashioned upon the same model ; he is an ancient politician
of the most decisive and unhesitating order ; he believes that
power is the sole measure of right, with a faith that might
have been worthy of Rome herself in her most violent days
of conquest and usurpation. Justice and truth he considers
as mere superfluous ornaments, and has no real respect
excepting for intellectual strength and ability. That moral
right should make no appearance in his writings is not to be
wondered at, since it is his plan to regard men as if they
owed no submission to any thing beyond themselves, as if
had no connexion with their Maker. As there can be no
such thing as individual worth and virtue, so it is quite
evident there can be no political justice among those who
disbelieve the existence of a Deity. Without that belief,
the utmost that can be hoped for is deceitfulness, hypocrisy,
and hollo wness of heart. When we are impressed with a
sense of the existence of God, the whole of our thoughts and
principles have acquired a dignity to which we could not
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 247
otherwise aspire. The visible is every where dependent upon
the unseen ; and as the body is moved and regulated by the
soul, so are men, nations, and states, held together by the
belief and the reverence of the Godhead. The moment we
take away this soul, this internal and universal principle of
life, the whole composition is loosened and destroyed ; if TV e
obscure its light and obstruct its influence upon the whole,
the individual members of the organic, or of the political
body, may still preserve some power of life with them, but
this life will be narrow, separate, insignificant, misdirected,
and destructive, rather than beneficial : it will form a prin
ciple of disunion, not a bond of harmony. When that chain
of morality and religion, by which states and nations are con
nected together, has once fairly been broken, the destructive
poisons of darkness, anarchy, and despotism, begin imme
diately to operate, and vice is ever ready to occupy the
deserted station of virtue.
The political disunion and corruptions of Europe, whose
influence, in spite of the steady resistance of many excellent
and truly Christian princes, has ever been on the increase,
cannot indeed be accounted for by the abilities, however
great and however misapplied, of any one individual ; the
seeds of these evils lay much deeper than this. Still, how
ever, he who devotes his talents to give principle, clearness,
and form, to any existing engine of wickedness he who
renders its operations systematic, and its effects consequently
more pernicious, is an enemy to mankind ; and in so far, it
is impossible to deny that the indignation of posterity has
been, in some degree at least, the merited fate of Machiavelli.
The two great discoveries of the fifteenth century, print
ing and the compass, were attended by several others whicn
have had no inconsiderable influence : such were the use of
gunpowder and the manufacture of paper. As inventions,
both of these belong to a much earlier period ; but their in
fluence began now with their first application to purposes of
practical use. The discoveries of this period, taken collec
tively, have been sufficient to give a totally new appearance
248 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
to human society. The distance by which those nations of
antiquity which were acquainted with the use of iron, and
possessed, along with this, more or less knowledge of writ
ing and of the finer metals, were separated from those bar
barians who had no acquaintance with these means of con
nexion between man and the earth, between nation and
nation, between antiquity and posterity these first instru
ments of the refinement and development of our species ;
this immeasurable distance is scarcely greater than that
which separates the periods prior to the invention of print
ing and the compass, from those which have succeeded.
Even in the history of these inventions we find sufficient
proof that the use to which men apply their discoveries is of
far greater importance than the discoveries themselves. The
compass had long before this time been known to other na
tions, and yet neither had the old continent been circum
navigated, nor the new discovered. Printing and paper had
long before this period been used in China, for the purpose
of multiplying gazettes, notices, and visiting-cards, without
imparting any principle of activity to the benumbed spirit ofr
the Chinese.
The invention of gunpowder was regarded, even after its
use had been universally adopted, as altogether injurious and
corrupting. Not only did poets, such as Ariosto, condemn
it as an unhallowed invention the enemy of personal brav
ery, and the future extirpator of all chivalry ; the same out
cry was repeated by the gravest generals and statesmen of
the times. Yet nothing could be more silly than these com
plaints ; true valour and virtue are always sure to find suffi
cient room to display themselves. With different manners,
and in a new form of war, the modern, even the very latest
times, have witnessed examples of devoted heroism well
worthy of a place by the side of the most brilliant achieve
ments of antiquity, or of the chivalric age. Yet upon the
whole, a discovery which has increased the certainty and
rapidity of the destructive influences of war, and withal ren
dered these more systematic, cannot be reckoned among the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 249
most fortunate. In the very first age of its use, gunpowder did
more harm than has since been in its power. But for it those
robberies of the European nations which followed the first
discovery of America, could scarcely have been polluted with
so much blood and outrage. In this point of view it would
almost seem as if some envious demon had attached to the
glorious invention of the compass an engine of evil, by way
of turning even the best gifts of humanity to our destruction.
Even in regard to the use of paper, it may be doubted
whether the operations of printing, as by its means extend
ed, have really promoted the cause of science and intellect,
or conduced to effects of a very opposite description. By
means of this cheap material, the art of printing, in itself
one of the most glorious and useful, has become prostituted,
in times of anarchy and revolution, to the speedy and uni
versal circulation of poisonous tracts and libels things
more destructive to the minds of the uneducated, than ever
gunpowder was to the bodies of the undisciplined. Per-
haps in making use of a somewhat rarer and more costly
material, the press might have remained more true to its
proper and original purpose the preservation of the great
monuments of history, art, and science. Instead of this,
the cheapness of the materials of printing has introduced a
dangerous neglect of the old and genuine monuments of
human intellect, and a still more dangerous influx of paltry
and superficial compositions, alike hostile to soundness of
judgment, and purity of taste a sea of frothy conceits and
noisy dulness, upon which the spirit of the age is tossed
hither and thither, not without great and frequent danger
of entirely losing sight of the compass of meditation, and
the polar star of truth.
250 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE X.
A FEW WORDS UPON THE LITERATURE OF THE NORTH AND EAST OF EUROPE
UPON THE SCHOLASTIC LEARNING AND GERMAN MYSTICS OF THE MIDDLE AGE.
As yet we have been almost entirely occupied with the
literature of those of the modern nations which are settled
in the southern and western districts of Europe the peoples
whose dialects are either Teutonic or Romanic, or made up
of a mixture of both the Italians, the French, the Spaniards,
and the English. The literature of these nations is beyond
all doubt, both from its own nature, and from the wide
spread influence which it has exerted, by far the most re
markable and important. At the same time, it would have
greatly gratified myself, and very much tended to complete
what it was my ambition to lay before you I mean a full--*
and national view of literature had I been able to speak
at length concerning those other great nations which inhabit
the eastern and northern parts of our continent. Every""
separate and independent nation has the right, if I may so
express it, of possessing a literature peculiar to itself; and
no barbarism is, in my opinion, so hurtful as that which
would oppress the language of a people and a country, or do
any thing which tends to exclude them from reaching the
higher orders of intellectual cultivation. It is mere preju
dice, unworthy of rational and thinking men, which leads us
to consider languages that have been neglected, or that are
unknown to ourselves, as incapable of being brought to per
fection. Some languages, no doubt, there are, which are in
a certain degree unfavourable for poetry ; a few which may
perhaps be almost incompatible with any high exertions of
that art : but I believe that there is no language which does
not contain within itself the elements of perfect adaptation
to all the really useful purposes of life, and to every import-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 251
ant object of scientific writing in prose. Even although the
literature of a particular nation may have exerted little in
fluence over neighbouring peoples, the history of that na
tion s intellectual development, as this stands connected
with its public weal, its fortunes, and its history, is, never
theless, on its own account alone, a veiy interesting and a
very instructive object of contemplation. Yet all I can do in
regard to this matter amounts to little more than the ex
pression of my sincere wish that it had been within my
power to carry my researches so far, as might have enabled
me to lay before you a complete view of European literature.
For I am now too old to have any remaining doubt upon
my mind, that in the history of literature, exactly as in
most other things, very little dependence is to be placed
upon the testimonies and the opinions of others respecting
matters wherein the ignorance of languages prevents our
selves from being able to verify their statements. I must
therefore be satisfied with a few very general reflections on
these points at this time, when, in considering the epoch of
a new literature and a resurrection of science, it might have
seemed most necessary for me to complete my survey by a
full examination of every nation and language into which
Europe is divided.
The most favourable point of view from which such a
general survey could be taken, is certainly the sixteenth -
century a period which forms, as it were, an isthmus of
connexion between the middle ages and modern times. So
far as respects language itself, and the very great influence
which that exerts over other peoples, the nations speaking
Romanic dialects had at this period a peculiar and very
manifest advantage. These dialects are so closely connected
with each other, and the mother idiom from which they are
all derived, the Latin, at that time the common language of
the west, that the acquisition of any one of them is to those
acquainted with another, prodigiously more easy than that of
any language radically different. It was on this account that
even in the middle age itself, and long before the effects of
252 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
extended commerce began to be felt, the knowledge of these
dialects became far more widely diffused than that of the
other northern and eastern languages of Europe. It must,
however, be remarked, that Spain remained at all times cut
off in some measure from the other districts of Europe, not
more by geographical position, politics, constitution, and man
ners, than by her peculiarity both of language and of intellec
tual cultivation. That the peculiar language and cultivation
of the Spaniards have attained, within their own limits, a very
great degree of perfection, has been recognised of late years
with more justice than formerly. The only relic of the old
prejudice is the notion so prevalent among our critics,
that the excellence of the Spanish language and literature
has been almost entirely confined to poetry ; whereas, as
all well acquainted with the subject must know, one great
advantage of the Spanish language, and, I might add, of
the Spanish national character, consisted in this, that the
prose of that language was much more early, and had been
much more excellently developed than in any other of the
Komanic dialects. The Italian language, with the single
exception of Machiavelli, was never applied with much hap
piness of effect to the purposes of practical and political
writing. The attempts at prose composition in the other
Romanic dialects were all extremely unsuccessful. The
French and English languages first received a formation
adapted for practical utility and political eloquence in the
seventeenth century ; and perhaps the advantage of so
applying them has always been confined to the capitals
and the higher orders, more than was the case with the
Spanish. At a very early period, indeed, the vernacular
tongue of Spain was applied, and with the greatest success,
to legislation and the most important concerns of social
arrangement. Perhaps the very separation of the nation
from the rest of Europe may have very much contributed
to the early development of its language, which can boast
of a very great number of well written histories, and in
which a manly vein of eloquence has continued even down
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 253
to onr own day, full of the most fiery spirit, clear, sharp,
and intermingled on proper occasions with an abundance of
exquisite wit and irony. In philosophy alone, Spain cannot
boast of any names such as those which have appeared in
Italy, Germany, England, and some other countries. In
that department it must be admitted that she has produced
no truly great writer.
The German language has at all times been of more
difficult acquisition than any one of the Romanic dialects,
and on that account the knowledge of it has always been
much more limited. This ignorance of our language among
the other nations, has been the origin of not a little contempt
for our literature and philosophy. Yet I have no sort of
doubt that the place I have assigned to the German nation
in this history of literature, is one of which a careful exami
nation of facts will sufficiently manifest the propriety. Al
though our language is less known than most others, yet all
those who inquire with any profoundness of research, either
into the history or the language of the southern and western
nations, must at all times be compelled to cultivate an
acquaintance with the German sources of knowledge ; and
these will all confess that, along with German political
institutions, and German customs of domestic life, a very
great portion of the spirit of German thought has also
passed into all the other nations of Europe. A thorough
knowledge of the middle ages and of their history, is en
tirely unattainable without a knowledge of the language
and literature of the Germans ; for the superiority of France
and England, during the last two hundred years, has not
been more decided than was both the literary and political
pre-eminence of Italy and Germany during the whole period
of the middle ages. These were, without any doubt, at
that time the two first countries in the world. So far as
our own country is concerned, it might be sufficient to men
tion the simple fact, that the art of printing, which was the
greatest and the most important instrument of the revival
of learning in the fifteenth century, and that mighty revolu-
254 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
tion in religion which gave a new form to the whole mind
of man in the sixteenth century, were both German in their
origin. But without going so far back, the truth is, that if
the German language be less happily developed for the pur
poses of business and political eloquence than the English
and the French, this defect is shared by the Italian lan
guage, and, like it, atones for the defect in those respects by
its peculiar power in poetry. With regard to the higher
uses of science, I believe it will be acknowledged by any
foreigner acquainted with our books, that our superiority is
clear and decisive over every language since the Greek.
In the imitative arts, wherein the other polished nations of
Europe have very little distinguished themselves, the Ger
mans occupy a place next and near to the Italians. In the
modern literature, which has sprung up among the different
nations of Europe subsequent to the intellectual convulsions
of the sixteenth, and the first part of the seventeenth cen
turies, the language and mental cultivation of Germany
have indeed been late to distinguish themselves. But, at
least so far as science, history, and philosophy are concern
ed, the probability is, that the latest literature will be the
richest and the best. The praise of fertility, at least, will
not be refused to us during the last half of the eighteenth
century a period in which the literature and intellectual
refinement of many other nations was either in a state of
pause, of retrogression, or of complete corruption and decay.
How defective we still are in many particular departments,
we are ourselves extremely well aware ; but, in my appre
hension, the time is not now at any great distance when an
acquaintance with the language and literature of Germany
will be looked upon as indispensably necessary to every
man of polite education in Europe.
Of all the northern and eastern nations of Europe, the
Scandinavian exerted, during the middle ages, the greatest
and the most immediate influence over the poetry and
thinking of the West. The influence which they had, in
the character of wandering Normans, upon Europe, and its
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 255
poetry, has already been noticed. They took a great share
in the Crusades ; and partook in every thing interesting,
either in regard to reason or imagination, which was intro
duced or created in consequence of those memorable expe
ditions. The Icelanders traversed every part of Europe
as scientific navigators, and collected in every quarter botn
facts and fictions. The oldest pure fountain of the poetry
of the German nations, and the whole middle age, had
bem preserved in their Edda ; and now they brought back
with them, into their northern climate, the Christian and
chivalrous poems of the southern Europeans. In many of
these particularly in the heroic poems of the Germans
the resemblance to their own northern sagas and personifi
cations was very remarkable. These acquisitions they now
transferred into their own language with peculiar delight
and success. Some parts of what they borrowed every
thing which was in its origin heathenish and northern,
many particular creations of fancy, and in general all of
the wonderful which had been derived from the old theology
they appropriated to themselves with new force, effect,
and feeling, on account of their own more intimate know
ledge of the Edda. That marvellous, which in the poetry of*
the southern peoples had been a fleeting and trivial exercise
of fancy, a mere idle ornament, acquired in the hands of
northern poets a deeper sense, a more affecting truth, and a
more important signification. It was thus that the northern
versions of the Nibelungen came to possess, in some re
spects, the advantage even over the German heroic. The
Icelanders, in this manner, and the Scandinavians in gene
ral, during the middle age, possessed a peculiar chivalrous
poetry of their own, destined to experience the same fortune,
with that of the other nations of Europe first to be diluted
into prose romances, and then to be split into ballads. This
last effect was produced in Denmark exactly as in England
and Germany, and proceeded in a great measure from the
same causes I mean from that interruption which occurred
in the national traditions and recollections in consequence
256 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of the great changes that occurred both in the church and
the state. The national poetry was left to be maintained
by the common people alone, and was in their hands muti
lated, corrupted, and degraded. I do not say this with any
intention of stigmatising ballads as entirely useless ; on the
contrary, these compositions in England, Scotland, Ger
many, and Denmark, although every where affording but a
faint echo of the nobler poetry which preceded them, are
still worthy of great attention both in a historical and in a
poetical point of view. The old literature of the Scandina
vians was one common to the whole of the north. A great
change in its appearance seems to have resulted from the
Reformation ; the vernacular historians, both of Denmark
and Sweden, are Ml of complaints concerning the baneful
effects produced upon their native languages by that im
mense influx of High Dutch books which was followed by
the general adoption of the tenets of the Saxon Luther.
The later literature of Sweden, in particular, is often alleged
by the critics of that country as furnishing a melancholy
proof, that even a nation the most full of character and
feeling is incapable of creating a rich and independent lite
rature, if it continues to show an unceasing predilection for
foreign idioms and models. The Danish literature, on the
other hand, of these latest years, has been rapidly develop
ing itself at the same time with our own, in a manner quite
independent, but yet, as might naturally have been expected,
with a greater leaning to the Germans and the English,
than to the French.
In looking back, one can scarcely help observing a cer
tain resemblance between the old situation of Scandinavia,
before the Reformation, and that of Spain. Each of these
countries possessed a high degree of political and intellec
tual refinement, and each remaining apart, as it were, from
the rest of Europe, formed within itself a complete and dis
tinct whole. The Normans, like the Spaniards, had their
share in the universally chivalrous spirit of the middle age,
which was indeed by no means foreign to their own parti-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 257
cular antiquities. They were also acquainted with the south
of Europe by means of travelling. But neither the inha
bitants of the Scandinavian, nor those of the Spanish pe
ninsula, were ever engaged in any commerce with any of
the other European nations, of so intimate and multifarious
a nature as that which connected France with England from
the eleventh till the fifteenth, or Italy with Germany from
the ninth till the sixteenth century. The literature of the
Scandinavians was also entirely directed to subjects of
national interest, such as poetry, history, or the like. Like
the Spaniards, they paid little attention to higher depart
ments of philosophy; at least no remarkable work of a
purely scientific nature was ever produced by them. It is
quite evident that four countries alone in the centre of
Europe Italy, Germany, France, and England as they
have occupied the first place in the political history of
modern Europe, so in the history of literature also have
they distinguished themselves to such a degree, that from
the time of the first awakening of the European intellect
under Charlemagne, down to the present day, it is scarcely
possible to point out a single great incident in the annals of
philosophy, a single remarkable discovery, extension, retro
gression, or error or, in short, to fix upon a single great
name in the history of philosophy, which does not belong
to one of them. The great and distinct differences between
the philosophy of one of these nations and that of another,
and between that of the same nation in different ages of its
history, together with both the causes and the effects of
these differences, I shall endeavour to lay before you in due
time.
Among the Sclavonic nations, Russia possessed, very ^arly
in the middle age, a national historian in her vernacular
tongue ; an invaluable advantage and a sure token of the
commencement of national cultivation. That this cultiva
tion had been more universal and extensive in Russia pre
vious to the time of the Mogul devastations, is sufficiently
proved by her flourishing commerce, her close connexion
258 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
with Constantinople, and many other historical circum
stances. But to say nothing of other causes, her subjection
to the Greek church was alone sufficient, during the middle
age, and is in some measure sufficient even in our own time,
to keep Russia politically and intellectually at a distance
from the rest of the western world. Of those Sclavonic
nations which belonged altogether to this part of Europe,
the Bohemians already possessed, under their Charles IV., a
full and rich literature, a more near acquaintance with
which, above all for historical purposes, might be very
desirable. From all that we know of it, this literature
appears to have followed the paths of history and science
much more than that of poetry. That the Polish language,
whose fitness for the purposes of poetry has been celebrated
of late years, did, even in the early part of the middle age,
possess a treasure of national poems, is hinted by several
writers, and is extremely probable from the character of the
nation. But I myself am not in possession of the means
either to verify or to disprove it. Should it, however, turn
out that such is not the fact, and that the Sclavonic lan
guages and nations of the middle age were entirely destitute
of any such rich and peculiar poetry as that with which the
nations making use of Germanic and Romanic dialects were
endowed even if this should be so, it may perhaps be no
difficult matter to give a very rational account of the pheno
menon. The Sclavonics, in the first place, took either no
part at all, or at least a very slight part indeed, in the ad
ventures of the Crusades. Secondly, The spirit of chivalry,
although not perhaps originally foreign and unknown, at
tained at no period the same penetrating and commanding
power over them as over the other nations of Europe. And
lastly, It may be that the peculiar theology possessed by the
Sclavonics before the adoption of Christianity, was less rich
and picturesque than the old Gothic system of superstitions,
or at least that their heathenish ideas were more speedily
and entirely eradicated by the prevalence of the true faith.
There is no doubt that the Hungarians possessed, even in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 259
times of very remote antiquity, a peculiar heroic poetry in
their national language. One great and favourite subject of
this poetry was the migration and the conquest of the country
under The Seven Leaders. It is evident, from many pas
sages in the Hungarian chronicles, that even after the intro
duction of Christianity these legends of the heathenish time
were not entirely forgotten. There is, at least, every reason
to think that those writers have actually copied from ancient
poems of that sort. One such poem, indeed, a Hungarian
scholar, by name Revaj, has rescued from oblivion ; its sub
ject is the arrival of the Madyari in Hungary. But the
existence of many such poems might easily be gathered from
the perusal of the chronicle of the Royal Secretary, as he is
called, Bela the same person who fills so considerable a
place both in the history and jurisprudence of his country.
The materials upon which this chronicler wrought were,
I have no doubt, historical heroic ballads, which he has
translated very diligently into prose, and interspersed with
abundance of opinions, and would-be explanations from the
cooler coinage of his own brain. But I am far from approv
ing of the severity with which critics in history are accus
tomed to treat the good secretary. We should value the
book for the relics which it embodies, sorely mutilated as
these no doubt are, of the heroic legends and poetry of the
Madyari ; and not look in it for what it would be absurd
enough to expect we should find in any such place philoso
phical inquiries into political affairs, or skilful elucidations
of historical difficulties. Another theme of the Hungarian
poets was Attila, whom they uniformly represented as a
king and hero of their own nation. In these chronicles, we
find abundant proof that Attila and the Gothic heroes
associated with his name in the Nibelungen-lied and the
Helden-buch, were equally celebrated in the language of
Hungary, and that poems upon these subjects were in
existence down to a period comparatively near ourselves.
It is probable that the destruction of the whole of this
ancient poetry may be referred to the period of Mathias
260 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Corvin, who attempted at once to change his Hungarians
into Latins and Italians, the natural consequence of which
was to bring into comparative neglect the old legends and
poems of the country. The fate which befell Hungary in
the fifteenth century would have befallen Germany in the
eighteenth, had a certain illustrious monarch of that period,
who, like Mathias, thought foreign literature alone worthy
of his attention, been possessed of an influence as great and
undisputed over Germany, as Corvin had over Hungary.
Whatever of the old legends of Hungary and of the monu
ments of its language and poetry escaped the barbarism of
this foreign refinement, fell entirely to the ground during
the time of the Turkish invasions. The Hungarians have
retained nothing but their predilection for historical heroic
poetry. Several great masters of that art have appeared
among them during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ;
and now in our own time, there has arisen one more illus
trious than any of these, Kisfalud ; who has devoted himself
in his mature age to the national legends of his country with
the same ardour and feeling which distinguished the ama
tory poems of his youth.
I close these sketches, these remarks upon the literature
and language, more or less known and understood, of the
different European peoples, with one general reflection
which I have already thrown out upon a previous occasion.
Every independent and distinct nation has, as I believe, the
right to possess a peculiar literature ; that is, to possess an
improved and cultivated national language, for, without
that, no degree of intellectual refinement can become truly
national and effectual, nay, the greatest, being embodied in
a foreign vehicle, cannot fail to be tinged with a certain
stain of barbarism. It is indeed a very absurd way of
showing our partiality for our own language, to desist from
learning any other, or even to deny the advantages which
some foreign languages may possess over our own. Besides
the ancient languages, there are several of the modern
dialects so useful in regard to general cultivation, that what-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 261
fever department a man chooses for himself, he cannot fail to
find one or other of them absolutely necessary for his pur
poses. The external relations of life have, besides, rendered
the acquisition of some of them indispensable. The use of
a foreign dialect in legislation and in courts of law is at all
times distressing, and I might even say unjust ; the use of a
foreign dialect in diplomacy, and in the social intercourse of
polished life, can never fail to produce injurious effects upon
the vernacular language. But when the custom of so using
a foreign dialect has once been fairly introduced, the evil is,
at least for individuals, an irremediable one. It then
becomes the duty of the whole cultivated and higher order
of society to come forward together, to point out by their
influence the proper route between two extremes of entirely
neglecting and exclusively studying foreign languages ; to
give to necessity that which she requires, but never to forget
what is due to our country. The care of the national lan
guage I consider as at all times a sacred trust, and a most
important privilege of the higher orders of society. Every
man of education should make it the object of his unceasing
concern to preserve his language pure and entire to speak
it, so far as is in his power, in all its beauty and perfection.
He should be acquainted generally, not superficially, not
only with the political history, but with the language and
literature of his country ; and so far is the study of foreign
languages from being hostile to all this, that without such
study, I believe no man can acquire the degree of perspi
cacity, or the facility of expression necessary for the pur
poses to which I have alluded. But the use of a foreign
dialect in society should certainly be limited to the strictest
bound of necessity. The obligation to watch over the lan
guage should be most sacred in the eyes of those who stand
highest in the society ; for the more rank, and wealth, and
consequence any individual possesses, the more has the
nation a right to expect from this individual that he shall
contribute to the utmost of his power to the preservation
and cultivation of that which is hers. A nation whose Ian-
262 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
guage becomes rude and barbarous, must be on the brink of
barbarism in regard to every thing else. A nation which
allows her language to go to ruin, is parting with the last
half of her intellectual independence, and testifies her will
ingness to cease to exist. The danger is no doubt great
when a national language is assailed on the one hand by a
systematic plan for its corruption, and on the other by a
foolish and affected fashion which encourages, from mere
silliness, the use of a foreign dialect. But in such matters
as these, the danger ceases to be the moment we are sensible
of its existence. In every thing which depends not upon
the spirit of a moment, but the perseverance of an age, the
victory is always sure to be obtained by the universal and
calmly progressive resistance of men of sense.
From this general survey of the different nations of
Europe, I return to the thread of my history. The great
improvements and discoveries which have given to the
science and literature of modern Europe a new form and
direction, belong, properly speaking, to the eighteenth cen
tury. But that intellectual cultivation which attained its
mighty development in the eighteenth, received its shape
and form in the sixteenth century, through the Reformation.
It was the moving spirit of that event which, both in the
one of these periods and in the other, determined the way
in which the intellectual cultivation should run, the end it
should strive to reach, and the limits within which it should
be confined. In both periods the apparent subjects of dis
pute and tumult were matters, at first sight, little connected
either with refinement or with literature ; for these were
either politics, and the ecclesiastical constitution, the being,
the limits, and the exertions of spiritual powers, or those
mysteries of religion which lie too deep even for the in
vestigation of philosophers themselves. The Reformation,
nevertheless, although these were apparently its objects, had
the effect of shaking and altering the whole of Europe, and
thus came to exert a very great and multifarious, although
certainly an indirect influence over literature and over all
HISTOKY OF LITERATURE. 263
the exertions of intellect in whatever way applied. This
influence was in part salutary, in part hurtful. To the first
I refer the universal extension of the study of Greek, and
the other ancient languages, which now came to be consi
dered as indispensable in a religious point of view, and
which began therefore to be cultivated, if not more zealous
ly, at least far more universally, in all the Protestant coun
tries in Holland, in England, and in the north of Germany.
The love for the ancient languages had in Germany, and
above all in Italy, been such, even before the Reformation,
that so far as these countries are concerned, its influence
was merely an additional circumstance in their favour. The
contests and rivalries of the contending parties were per
haps productive of little eifect in relation to the true objects
of their researches ; for religion is a matter of faith and feel
ing rather than of disputation and dialectic combating. In
a political point of view, the effect of the great ferment has
been far more happy ; but perhaps even here the effect has
been an indirect rather than an immediate advantage, and
that, too, discovered, like most other advantageous conse
quences of the Reformation, not instantly, (as its evil effects
were,) but long after, when the agitated elements had had
leisure to subside into a calm. The effects upon the imita
tive arts were pernicious. I do not allude to those opera
tions of active destruction which took place here and there,
but rather to that more general evil which resulted from the
arts being compelled to depart from their natural and ori
ginal destination. The civil disturbances and wars which
ensued, were in like manner, as usually happens, more
destructive to the arts than to literature. It was probably
in consequence of these events, that the national painting
of Germany, which had begun to flourish with so much suc
cess in the hands of Albert Durer, Lucas Cranach, and
Holbein, stopped before it had time to reach the eminence
it was fitted to attain. These great men were themselves
contemporaries of the Reformation, but they had been edu
cated in the time before it took place, and in their art they
264 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
found no followers. In the Protestant Netherlands paint
ing became devoted to subjects of lesser importance ; and
so employed, in spite of the utmost perfection in execution,
it could never approach the superior power and effect of the
old painting, which had been devoted to religion. In gene
ral there was produced a most unfortunate rapture between
men and their ancestors ; and these, not contented with
laying aside the contested points of faith or ecclesiastical
government, thought it necessary to forget the whole mid
dle age, and to despise the history, the art, and the poetry
with which its recollections were so intimately blended and
united. The loss to Germany was peculiarly unfortunate.
Such a break and throwing aside of the intellectual inherit
ance of our forefathers could scarcely indeed fail to be pro
duced by a revolution so sudden and so entire. But now
that all the causes of the bigotry have ceased to operate with
any violence, it is time surely that we lay it aside, that we
begin to think liberally, and no longer to indulge in any
contempt either of the art or the refinement of the middle
ages. The principle, that the Reformation was productive
of liberty of thought, is one that can scarcely be defended
now. The universal freedom, the full emancipation of in
tellect, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the
eighteenth century, does not at least belong to the imme
diate consequences of the Reformation ; it was produced by
a great mixture of causes over and above the Reformation,
and after all there is not a little reason to doubt whether
the unfettered license it has introduced has been so salutary
and praiseworthy as we have sometimes heard. The near
and immediate effect of the Reformation upon philosophy
and freedom of thinking, was one of constraint. The idea
of such liberality as that which prevailed in Italy and Ger
many under the Medici, Leo X., and Maximilian, was a
thing entirely unknown among the zealous Protestants of
the sixteenth and of the first part of the seventeenth cen
tury. The establishment of such tyranny, political and in
tellectual, as that of a Henry VIII. , of a Philip II., or of a
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 265
Cromwell, was only rendered possible by means of the Re
formation. He who is placed at the head of a new party,
and a great revolution, at once religious and political, pos
sesses a power so unlimited over thought and intellect, that
it is at least entirely the effect of his own choice if he does
not abuse it. To the defenders of the old faith, on the con
trary, under a Philip II., and under several of the French
kings, every mean appeared allowable which could contri
bute to check the further diffusion of the new opinions.
Should any one attempt to prove the beneficial tendency of
the Reformation by quoting instances of persecution from
the times preceding it such as the burning of John Huss
and Jerome of Prague my answer is, that these cruel enor
mities were in part at least the effects of political animosity ;
or if that be not sufficient, that abundance of similar horrors
may be found after the Reformation in the history of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that, too, on both
sides. The first great self-reflecting mind, the first writer
of great and active power whom the Protestants possessed
after the period of the first ferment, Hugo Grotius himself,
living in the freest country then existing, could not escape
imprisonment and persecution. On the other hand, the
dangerous abuses which some had made of liberty, led to
narrow-mindedness and oppression on the part of rulers
otherwise well disposed to be liberal. In Italy, in particu
lar, a speedy termination was put to the then rapidly in
creasing progress of philosophy ; insomuch that a fact soon
became to be doubted, which seems to me abundantly clear
and evident I mean the natural capacity of that ingenious
nation for the higher exertions of intellectual inquiry. The
most distinguished philosophical talents possessed by Iialy
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took a turn so
unfortunate that they have been almost entirely lost to their
country, their doctrines having become adverse not only to
the spirit of the Christian church, but to all those principles
of moral belief without which there is no safety in the social
intercourse of men. In the world of intellect, as well as in
266 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
that of politics, the sure consequence of anarchy is despotism,
and oppression is again invariably the harbinger of lawless
ness. So that there is a perpetual flux and reflux from the
one of these extremes to the other, both alike dangerous,
unless some third and higher influence intervenes, or the
whole bond of constitution is renewed.
When certain panegyrists of the Reformation represent
this as having been in itself alone a step forward of the
human mind, and of philosophy a deliverance from error
and prejudice they are just taking for granted the very
fact upon which we are at issue. One should think, also,
that men might be rendered more cautious in the use of
such expressions, when they reflect, that by the example of
many great nations of Spain, of Italy, of Catholic France
during the seventeenth century, and of Southern Germany
even in these latest times it can be proved, with little
hazard of contradiction, that a very high, nay, that the very-
highest degree of intellectual cultivation is perfectly com
patible with the belief of those doctrines which the friends
of Protestantism decry as antiquated prejudices. The ad
mirers of the Reformation should lay less stress upon its
consequences ; for of these some were, as themselves admit,
altogether unhappy, many remote, and assisted by the co
operation of other causes. Besides, the effects are perhaps
in no case perfectly decisive as to the nature of the thing
itself. The bigoted Catholics on the other hand, who de
spise the Reformation, and abhor it as altogether irrecon-
cileable with their own religious opinions, should at least
recollect that the later, if not the more immediate effects of
that mighty convulsion, have been beneficial and salutary.
If we survey the history of the world with the feeling of
belief if .we are willing to recognise in the fortunes and fates
of mankind the interposing hand of Providence, we shall
perceive the same spectacle in every direction. Every
where we shall see men presented with the happiest oppor
tunities, entreated, as it were, to do good, to know the
trutti,~and to reach the eminence of true greatness and true
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 267
excellence; entreated, however, not compelled; for their
own co-operation is necessary if they would be what fits the
destiny of their nature. Rarely, very rarely, do men make
the proper use of the means they are intrusted to employ ;
often do they pervert them to the most dangerous abuses,
and sink even deeper into their ancient errors. Providence
is, if we may so speak, ever struggling with the carelessness
and the perversity of man : scarcely by our own guilt and
blindness have we been plunged into some great and fearful
evil, ere the Benefactor of our nature causes unexpected
blessings to spring out of the bosom of our merited misfor
tune warnings and lessons expressed in deeds and events,
furnishing us with ever-returning admonitions to bethink
ourselves in earnest, and depart no more from the path of
truth.
With the art of poetry Protestantism disclaimed at first
any connexion; its effects upon both were injurious and
depressing ; history and grammar were, in consequence of
the Reformation, both studied more accurately, and diffused
more extensively ; but with philosophy the change of reli
gion stood in the most intimate connexion. But perhaps
this may be no improper place for giving a short sketch of
the history of philosophy, both before the Reformation, and
in the first century after it I mean, of course, only in so far
as philosophy exerted a real influence upon the universal
intellect of the time.
I have already called your attention to the most remark
able of those philosophical geniuses produced by England,
Italy, and France, in the earlier period previous to the
twelfth century. Germany too was fruitful in such produc
tions, and may boast of an almost uninterrupted series of
them from the reign of Charlemagne down to the Reforma
tion, and even after that event. Upon the whole, barren
ness is, of all reproaches, the one least deserved by the
modern Europeans, even by those of the middle age. If we
must blame them, it should rather be for the mixture of
useless and unprofitable weeds which they have allowed to
268 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
spring up along with their good grain, more particularly
when any new field has been added to the territories of
science. It was thus that, along with the mathematical,
chemical, and medical learning which they borrowed from
the Arabians, they admitted from the same quarter the trash
of astrology and alchemy ; and it was thus that, with the
knowledge of Aristotle, whom they considered as the perfec
tion of all merely human wisdom, there grew up a whole wil
derness of dialectical hair-splittings and sophistical artifices,
of pretty nearly the same nature with those which had for
merly infested the Greeks. The best thing in the philosophy
of Aristotle is the spirit of criticism. But to perceive or
comprehend this, required an enlarged and complete know
ledge of antiquity, such as was in those days quite impossi
ble, and as is, even in our own time, extremely rare. The
critical spirit of Aristotle deserted him in the region of meta
physics alone, because there the only two guides which he
followed reason and experience were incapable of leading
him aright. From an absurd reliance on those metaphysics,
which even in the work of the great master himself are un
intelligible, arose that system of philosophy which has
received the name of the Scholastic. The evil occasioned
by this was, however, abundantly atoned for by the good
effects of the study of the practical physics of Aristotle,
particularly after the time of Albertus Magnus. That the
morals of Aristotle were an important acquisition to the
middle ages I can by no means allow ; the value of that
system to us consists chiefly in the illustration it affords of
the manners, the domestic life, and the political institutions
of the Greeks. Long before the works of Aristotle began to
be studied, our ancestors possessed a system of ethics incom
parably purer and better than his in the Bible ; and their
acquaintance with him only tempted them to deform that
superior system by ingrafting upon it a great variety of
superfluous niceties and classifications. Of the very perni
cious effect which the Aristotelic system is capable of pro
ducing even upon a very refined and learned age, Spain can
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 269
supply us with one very striking example. In the sixteenth
century, when the great question of the treatment of the
Americans was agitated, the minds of many of her best
reasoners, and among others of one who, in every other
respect, was a very excellent man, Sapolveda, were so in
fected with those notions of slavery so prevalent among the
Greek authors, that, principally by their means, measures
were adopted in the national councils equally repugnant to
the principles of natural justice, and to the express precepts
of Christianity.
We are not, however, to suppose that all the evils of the
scholastic system were occasioned entirely by the study of
Aristotle. At first the opposition of the church to his doc
trines was greatly enhanced on account of a crowd of most
dangerous doctrines and opinions which began to come into
fashion about the same time with those properly belonging to
his philosophy. This much, nevertheless, must be admitted,
that from the history of the Arabs, no less than from that of
the middle ages in Europe and of the sixteenth century, there
is reason to believe, that the two notions of conceiving the
Deity to be a mere animating principle of the universe, and
of denying the personal immortality of the soul, appear to
be, if not necessarily, at least were generally connected with
a zealous adoption of Aristotelianism. However this might
have been, the impulse of the age became in a short time
irresistible, and the dominion of Aristotle could no longer be
avoided. Christian philosophers, alike desirous of support
ing the cause of truth, and of extending the limits of know
ledge, then applied themselves to the study of Aristotle, in
the hope of at least turning aside the stream which they
found it was now impossible to turn back. It is no easy
matter to form a proper general judgment concerning these
men who, at least in so far as talents were concerned, de
served the very highest estimation. The false and scholastic
turn of their philosophy was the natural consequence of the
ancient sophistry, (bequeathed as that was, and too incon
siderately accepted,) of the original defectiveness of the
270 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Aristotelic metaphysics, and the Arabian commentaries,
above all, of that spirit of sect which was the animating
principle of the age, and from which (so enticing were its
allurements) even they who were most aware of its exist
ence could seldom keep themselves entirely free. This spirit
of sect and division was nourished and inflamed very power
fully by the universities, wherein many thousands of strip
lings were yearly educated in the very atmosphere of
contention, and taught to consider the violence of disputa
tion as the highest eminence of human merit. For the best
things which the philosophers of the middle ages possessed,
they were indebted either to Christianity, which at all times
secured them from falling into the most dangerous species
of errors, and to the greatness of their own genius and
understanding. But after all, there can be no greater mis
take than to suppose that what we commonly understand
by the name of scholastic, that is, the unprofitable waste of
intellect in empty ideas and unintelligible formulas, was an
error peculiar to the middle ages. The evil had already
displayed itself to excess in the philosophy of the Greeks,
and that, too, in the most flourishing age of its cultivation.
The same thing may be said of modern times ; for not from
Germany alone, but from France and England also, there
could be no difficulty in producing abundance of examples,
veiy often in the persons of those very men who have de
claimed the most loudly against the scholastic philosophy
and against the Stagyrite. It is only requisite that we
look to the essence of the evil, and that we do not allow
ourselves to hold sophistry to be less dangerous, merely
because it presents itself in a form of greater skill and ele
gance.
The prevalence of empty ideas and meaningless words is
a malady incident to human reason, which never fails to
make its appearance the moment we desert the path of
truth; in my opinion, its most pernicious influences are
exerted in active life by means of the distorted artifices of
eloquence, and not in the retired and formal exercises of the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 271
schools. In every case, however, the spirit of sect is its
inevitable consequence.
The philosophy of the middle age may be said to have
been defective, chiefly because it was not thoroughly Chris
tian : because the intellect, knowledge, and ideas of mankind,
were not sufficiently penetrated with the spirit of our reli
gion. In the philosophy of the modern Europeans, which
these inherited as a legacy from the ancients, there are two
great masters to be followed, and each is calculated to lead
those that put confidence in his direction into a particular
train of errors. On the one hand, there is the defect to
which I have already alluded, that over rationalism to which
men are led by Aristotle and the ancient dialectics ; the
other is the Platonic and visionary system of error into
which men are very apt to fall, whenever thought and faith
overshoot those limits which are necessary to the right
exertion of every human faculty. From this proceeded the
second species of philosophy common in the middle age, the
mystic. So long as men confined themselves to the subjects
of religious feeling and conscience, there is no doubt that
this philosophy was not merely an excusable, but a very
excellent guide. But its defectiveness was very apparent
when they attempted to apply it to matters of science. Pla-
tonism, connected as it was with a host of oriental mysteries,
public and concealed, gave the fancy too much room for
play, and in natural science in particular, the adoption of
its tenets was almost always coupled with a belief in astro
logy, and a leaning to the study of magic. This was above
all common in Germany. I may be the more easily excused
for saying so, since, in our own days, there have occurred
many symptoms of a tendency to recur to these errors.
As in former times, pious men began the histories of their
lives with a prayer to God, or a religious sentiment or
aspiration, so it has once more come in fashion to com
mence memoirs with a scheme of nativity, or some as
trological conjecture.* The speculations of natural philo-
* Schlegel alludes to the first paragraph of Goethe s Life.
272 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sophers may certainly select, without offence, any subjects
which promise either knowledge or amusement to those that
pursue them. I am not disposed to throw entire ridicule
even upon the study of secret influences, when it is kept in
its proper place. But the application of such pursuits to
the business of active life, and the belief that human desti
nies can, in any degree, be regulated by the position of the
stars, are absurdities which deserve to be treated with
something more severe than ridicule itself. The pernicious
effect of a firm belief in the potency of these mysterious
influences, the total ruin of all moral and religious principle,
which such a belief brings along with it, has already been
depicted with terrible vigour by the tragic pencil of Schiller
in his Wallenstein. Easy as is the abuse, and dangerous
the partaking of such things, they have been dealt in by
neither few nor inconsiderable persons. An Albertus Mag
nusa mathematician of the fifteenth centuiy, such as
Nicolas of Cusa a pious bishop, such as Trithemius the
first of all orientalists, Reuchlin himself, confessed, without
scruple, their hankering after the possession of secrets which
can never be revealed to man. It would be as unjust as
foolish to deny the merits of these great men, to call in
question their genius, their knowledge, or their piety, on
account of their addiction to follies which, in our own day,
we have seen so nearly revived. But all the dabblers in
the occult sciences were not men of this kind ; the facility
with which such pursuits could be associated with the most
profligate schemes of quackery and charlatanry, is too
apparent in the history of the times. It may be sufficient
for my purpose to mention the name of Agrippa. Even
Paracelsus himself was not free from some such errors. But
Germany possessed, in these early days, many mystic phi
losophers, who devoted themselves entirely to the feelings
of religion. No modern language was so soon applied to
the purposes of the higher philosophy, and to spiritual sub
jects, as oui-s.
There were, from the thirteenth century down to the time
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 273
of the Reformation, very many writers of this kind, both in
High and Lower Dutch. They were connected with each
other, and formed a sort of school, and called themselves
the servants of wisdom, or the heavenly Sophia, under
standing by this name that divine and sublime truth which
was the object of their ambition, and to their love of which
they willingly sacrificed their lives. I shall, out of a great
number, mention only one whose works were of great im
portance in the formation of our language. This is the
preacher, or the philosopher, Tauler, who received, long
after the Reformation, the emulous praises both of Catholics
and Protestants, but who has at last yielded to the common
destiny of oblivion. The scholars of Alsace, who, although
their country has long been politically annexed to France,
still show, by the diligence and depth of their inquiries into
our history and our language, that they are determined by
no means to part with their character of Germans, have
had the merit, in our own time, of recalling the public at
tention to this forgotten sage, and the very high importance
of his works, at least so far as language is concerned. If
we compare his writings with those upon similar subjects
composed in Luther s time, or even a century later, we shall
find their superiority as manifest as is that of the harmoni
ous love poems of the thirteenth century, and the Nibelun-
gen-lied over the rude verses of the sixteenth century. In
this respect, also, the elder time was by no means the more
rude ; but, as its spirit was better, so its language also was
purer than that of the age which came after.
When critics reproach our nation with a tendency to^
mysticism, they are probably not aware how old the failing
is. It would be easy to show that we have been equally
guilty of it ever since the time of Charlemagne. But whe
ther the reproach be really well founded, or whether that
which is the subject of it be not rather deserving of praise
than of blame, I shall not take upon me at the present
time to decide.
In the philosophy of the middle age, as in that of the
274 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
more modern times, the strong and distinct influence of na
tional character is abundantly visible. In the older, exactly
as in the later times, France and England were distinguished
for the production of great thinkers, great doubters, and
great sophists. The Italians were chiefly remarkable for
their strict adherence to the truths of our religion ; but they
also, like the Germans, had a propensity to the higher, the
more spiritual, and the more mystical kind of philosophy.
The leaning to Platonism may be traced even in their poets.
In one word, that philosophy of experience and reason,
whose greatest master among the ancients was Aristotle,
had the greatest number of followers during the middle
ages, as- well as more lately, in France and England. In
this respect, these two nations, in spite of their political
rivalry, coincide at bottom in their views and opinions,
much more closely than at first sight might be imagined.
A propensity to the other and more Platonic species of
philosophy has, on the other hand, distinguished both the
Italians and the Germans, the one the most remarkable
nation for love of art, and the other for depth of feeling ;
insomuch, that widely different as they are in origin, lan
guage, and manners, they have at all times been connected
together by a certain sympathy and community of attach
ments.
LECTURE XL
GENERAL REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TIMES IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING
AND FOLLOWING THE REFORMATION POETRY OF THE CATHOLIC NATIONS, THE
SPANIARDS, THE PORTUGUESE, AND THE ITALIANS GARCILASO, ERCILLA,
CAMOENS, TASSO, GtJARINI, MARINO, AND CERVANTES.
THE state of universal thought, and the progress of philo
sophy, immediately before the Reformation, and in the first
century after it, formed the last subjects of our attention.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 275
The real result of our inquiries may be comprised in the fol
lowing general remarks :
Throughout the whole of Europe, before the restoration
of ancient learning and the reformation in religion, that
empty logical system of words, which went by the name of
Aristotle, was adopted almost universally by the learned ;
and, without any exception whatever, by all the public
seminaries of instruction. In Germany, however, and
afterwards in Italy, there sprung up during the fifteenth
century, by the side of this dead philosophy of words,
another and a higher species of philosophy, which coin
cided in part with the system of Plato, and in part with
that of the Orientals. In particular things, there is no
doubt that this new system led the way to error ; but upon
the whole, at least its principles were just, and, at all events,
it was both richer in import and more profound in its views
than the other. We may see the proof of its superiority
even in the manner wherein it was studied, and in the per
sons of those by whom it was adopted. The seat of its
sway was not in the universities and in the schools its
adherents formed, properly speaking, no sect ; it deserved,
in fact, the name of philosophy, according to the oldest sig
nification of the word a love of wisdom, sought and diffused
for its own sake alone, by men who felt within them the
irresistible vocation to the pursuit of truth. The greatest
naturalists and mathematicians, the most profound masters
of Greek learning, and the best orientalists of the fifteenth
century, both in Germany and Italy, belonged to the follow
ers of this new system. The renewed acquaintance with the
literature of Greece had, on the whole, no other effect upon
this mystical and more Platonic mode of philosophising, but
that of affording to it new materials and new nourishment
out of the innumerable treasures and monuments of ancient
wisdom ; new means of enrichment, and new instruments of
bolder development. These advantages were, in some mea
sure, counterbalanced by the simultaneous introduction of
many new errors, or rather the revival of the forgotten
276 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
dreams of New Platonism and the Orientals. By the resto
ration of ancient literature, the then prevalent species of
philosophy gained additional extent of knowledge, but an
influx of visionary opinions accompanied the change, and,
upon the whole, the power which was received was capable
of being turned to evil as well as to good.
On the other species of philosophy, the Aristotelic, the
effect was still greater. As yet this system had never been
studied or comprehended in its purity, but always mingled
with a variety of Platonic notions, and in some measure
reduced to a sort of subjection to the doctrines of Chris
tianity. But now the opinions of Aristotle began to be
sought for in the original language, and to be viewed in
connexion with the whole system of Grecian cultivation ;
and the change could not fail to be extremely favourable, at
least in regard to form. The external part of the scholastic
philosophy was at all events removed, and that which
remained, learned to clothe itself in a form not so entirely
unworthy of the classical elegance of antiquity and the criti
cal acuteness of the Stagyrite. But the better and the
deeper that the spirit of the ancient philosophy was com
prehended, the more frequently did it happen that individual
students were betrayed into the adoption of such conse
quences of their system as are irreconcilable with religion
and morality ; as, for example, the dogma of establishing
as first cause, in the room of God, a mere principle of uni
versal existence, and the other equally dangerous one, of
denying the personal immortality of the soul. These errors
were abundantly common among the followers of Aristotle,
particularly in Italy, during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen
turies. The attempts to renew some of the other systems
of ancient philosophy, such as the Stoic, which were made
about the same time, were productive of much less effect
upon the general progress of philosophy. Plato and Aris--
totle have so distinctly marked out the two great paths of
human thought and science, that they have remained, and
always must remain, the master-guides of all succeeding
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 277
generations. The other systems of antiquity are valuable,
for the most part, only because they resemble one or other
of these ; they are slight deviations and by-paths, which
soon return again into the main roads. It was for this rea
son that the plans for renewing Stoicism or any other of the
lesser systems, had very inconsiderable success, and pro
duced indeed very little effect of any kind, except that they
could not fail to stimulate thought, and increase yet more
the general ferment of opinions. Of all these systems, the
worst alone, that of Epicurus and of pure materialism,
which traces the origin of every thing to the collision of cor
poreal atoms, began to meet with some success in the seven
teenth century, and in the eighteenth made such progress as
might entitle its adherents to say that they belonged to a
sect.
In common language, we often hear the epoch of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries called a restoration or a
second birth of the sciences. A restoration it undoubtedly
was, at least in respect of that renewed acquaintance with
Greek literature and antiquity, by means of which, if the
historical knowledge of these matters was not indeed ren
dered perfect, it received at least incalculable improvement.
But I can by no means approve of calling it a second birth
of the human intellect and of the sciences, for I should con
sider that name as due, not to such a change as amounts
only to an increase of wealth, and is produced by any exter
nal circumstances, but to one which consists of an awaken
ing out of previous death, and breaks out from the roused
energies of internal life. Such an inward, a living, and a
total change upon philosophy as this, was not even pro
duced by the Reformation ; for after it, as before, the
Aristotelic and Platonic systems still continued to be the
two main divisions of all science. Yet the Reformation
exerted a mighty influence upon the future progress, the de
velopment, and the extension of both systems. With those
Platonic-Oriental doctrines which were before him, and
during his lifetime, so prevalent in Germany, the acquaint-
278 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
ance of Luther himself seems to have been extremely slight ;
such as it was, it helped him to a more cordial hatred of the
scholastic system, and of Aristotle, of whom he used to speak
with great contempt as a " dead heathen." Nevertheless,
the best friend and follower of Luther, Melancthon, was of a
very different way of thinking ; it was, indeed, chiefly by his
means that the authority of the improved scholastic system,
and of Aristotle, was re-established in its supremacy. The
cause of this was as follows: That higher and more
spiritual philosophy, which, wherever it loses sight of truth,
is the most effectual means of introducing all sorts of
visionary error, had this effect to a very remarkable extent
in Germany during the anarchical times of the Reforma
tion. An universal mistrust of it was the consequence.
The Aristotelic philosophy regained its predominant influ
ence over both parties, in Spain as well as in Germany;
for this ancient system of forms, the less the spirit it had,
the more easily was it bent and accommodated to the
purposes of either sect, and the dogmas of either creed.
Although, however, this system was now united with a
somewhat superior knowledge of nature, and with better
skill in language and antiquity, the evils of which it had
formerly been productive still adhered to it ; it continued to
be, after all, a logical word-system, and near at hand as its
extinction appeared to be even during the fifteenth century,
the effects of this favourable moment were now sufficient
to secure the protraction of its existence in every cultiva
ted country of Europe down to the end of the seventeenth
century. In Italy, the bolder species of philosophy, which
there assumed, it must be allowed, the appearance of the
most dangerous and violent opposition, was now oppressed,
and many most distinguished talents fell a sacrifice to
the struggle which ensued. In Germany and England the
higher philosophy was not, it is true, altogether oppressed,
but it certainly was discouraged, and even persecuted, and
became, at all events, entirely excluded from the sphere of
the learned. With so much the greater zeal was it cultivated
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 279
by individuals of the lower orders of society, and extended
in other quarters by the ministration of secret associations.
In either of these ways it could not fail to be corrupted and
degraded, and kept back from that universal development
and effectual influence to which it might otherwise have
attained. It is true, indeed, that the gifts of nature and God
are open to all ; the spirit of deep reflection, and of the highest
science, is by no means confined to the polished classes of
society, and is a thing entirely unconnected with what is
called erudition. Many of the most distinguished of the
Greek philosophers were men of little erudition, and desti
tute of any advantage over other men than what they gained
by their power of thought : the wisest of them all, Socrates,
was no scholar, and never wished to become one. The
first preachers of Christianity were men taken from the
vulgar of the people, and yet we see that they have no fear
to treat subjects of the most mysterious depth in a manner
the most easy and natural. Of such men there has been,
through all ages, a successive series. There often lies, in
the strong and undissipated spirit of the people, an astonish
ing energy both of moral and of intellectual strength. The
founders of sects and of states, the avengers of their country,
and the revivers of religion, have often been men of the
vulgar, called and animated to their great works by the
voice of internal inspiration. The greatest benefits have-
been conferred upon mankind, not by writings but by active
deeds. If we look to the spirit of invention and the gift of
language, and compare philosophy with poetry, we shall
find that even in these respects genius is by no means the
privileged possession of the learned. We know that it has
been possible for a Shakespeare a man whose learning neems
to have been chiefly confined to popular poetry to reach a
height and depth of representation which the most skilful
and erudite poets have in vain endeavoured to attain; I
see no reason why it should appear to] us a thing more
marvellous, that a man of the people in Germany should
have penetrated into those depths of metaphysical inquiry,
280 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and excited an inventive genius on those secret departments
of philosophy, which were entirely out of the reach of the
erudite doctors of the time ; need I add the name of Jacob
Bohme, the Teutonic philosopher, as he has been called a
name which is to the enlightened a stumbling-block, and to
the learned foolishness ; a man who, in spite of all his dis
advantages, had many followers, not in Germany alone,
but even in other countries, also in Holland and England
among others in this last country, the too celebrated and
unfortunate King Charles. I have already more than once
expressed my conviction that the very existence of a poetry
of the vulgar is in itself a sufficient evidence of the decline
and corruption of true poetry ; for that is a possession which
should not belong peculiarly either to the common people or
to the learned, but equally to all the members of which the
national body is composed. If a popular poetry cannot
escape betraying some symptoms of this unnatural state,
some traces of the corruption and barbarism which are
inseparable from this unfortunate separation; how much
more must all this be the case with a popular philosophy
a term which seems to involve in it the very necessity of a
contradiction? However much the genius of individuals
may triumph over the circumstances of their situation, it is
impossible that philosophy can ever acquire, in their hands,
the place which is due to her. This is not the time to depict
and explain more fully the very remarkable system of this
Teutonic philosophy. This much, however, I may remark,
that although it bears veiy distinctly the traces of having
been the creation of one inventive spirit, it is by no means
destitute of points of coincidence with those other forms of
secret philosophy, the influence of which was at that time ever
on the increase. Nor is it at all astonishing that this should
have been so, for at that period the unconquerable thirst after
truth was every where seeking for itself new and more myste
rious paths, and removed as far as possible from the old tracts
of verbal science and erudition : paths which led to fountains
of sublime discovery, of lofty conception, but, we must also
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 281
admit, not unfrequently of wild dreams and unprofitable
error. After the at once visible and invisible bond of the
church was dissolved in certain countries of Europe, another
altogether invisible system of connexion began to occupy its
place. There are degrees in the knowledge of truth, there
are higher and lower steps ; the higher are scarcely ever
attainable to the yet struggling nature of man. I will con
fess that, according to the opinion of Lessing, there are,
among the component parts of human knowledge, some
which are in their very nature secret ; that is, which are of
such a sort that even such as have them in their possession
can never find resolution to reveal them. The publication
appears always ill-timed ; and, moreover, the means of
publication are almost perpetually awanting. The existence
of such difficulties as these is proved by history to have been
common to every age of the world ; it is as impossible to
prevent such species of knowledge as those of which I speak
from being propagated in secret, as it is to render them
common to all the world. However much of truth the
secret system may contain, the opposition between it, and
the open structure of truth, is at all times unfortunate.
Even the separation in the visible church at the era of the
Eeformation, cannot fail to be considered, by all good men,
as a great misfortune, for it was a rupture in the family of
the Christian people, and, as it were, a tearing asunder of
the great body of our species. The existence of an invisible
church, in opposition to the visible, must have at that time
appeared a yet more alarming occurrence ; it must have
been viewed as a sort of separation between soul and body,
a sure mark of dissolution. But the evil effects which might
have been expected have not been realised, the soul and
body of mankind are not yet separated, and the unity of
truth still remains. He who despises the rock upon which
truth stands, will never be able to reach the place of her
temple.
That spiritual, Platonic, and oriental mode of philosophis
ing which had been openly adopted by the great men of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Italy and Germany in the fifteenth century, was, after the
Reformation, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
either altogether suppressed, or left to the vulgar and to in
dividual visionaries, or propagated in secret, and with great
alterations and corruptions. Among the learned men, the
old logical word-system, which went so absurdly by the
name of Aristotle, retained its undisputed sway till almost
two hundred years later ; towards the end of the seven
teenth century, it began to be pressed out of view by new
sects and systems, the consideration of whose merits must
belong to an after period ; for their operation has continued
down to our own day, and their full development was the
work of the eighteenth century.
As the different nations of Europe became now again
more separated from each other, a corresponding and equally
unfortunate division took place among the different sciences
and studies. The events of the period were hurtful, above
all, to the study of antiquity, and prevented it from bearing
any right fruit, or having any active influence upon life. The
first great restorers of erudition were philosophers, men
whose knowledge of the middle ages, and of their own time,
was equal to their knowledge of antiquity, who united ori
ental learning with that of the Greeks and the Romans.
They viewed every thing in its proper place ; they took a
comprehensive survey of things, and judged of them by their
relation to the history of the world, and by the real powers
which they possessed. But after the miserable period of
separation, when philosophy was persecuted, suppressed, or
corrupted, and the middle age forgotten, the attention of the
learned, who had no longer almost any connexion with their
own world or nation, was entirely restricted to the antiquity
of the Greeks and Romans, which they admired without
having any proper feeling for the true beauties of its pro
ductions. Among poets and artists alone did any lively
perception of this exist ; the learned, who scarcely ever
united any philosophy with their classical erudition, were
satisfied with a mere superstitious worship of the languages.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 283
The true and enlightened knowledge of the spirit of anti
quity did not appear till the eighteenth century.
Even in regard to art and poetry, we must always regard "*"
it as unlucky that they should spring up without any con
nexion with philosophy; that the cultivation of the imagina
tion should be separated from that of the understanding ;
and that the former of these should not unfrequently be
placed in exact opposition to the latter. In these stormy
days, however, in the ferment and revolutions of which phi
losophy and history were so much involved, art and poetry,
it must be allowed, formed almost the sole asylum wherein
feeling and intellect had leisure to unfold themselves in the
natural calmness of their beauty.
The poetry of the Catholic countries, the Spanish, the
Italian, and the Portuguese, were in that age so much parts
of one whole, that I think they should all be considered to
gether. The Spaniards, as we have already seen, possessed
very early their national poem of the Cid : their love poetry
continued to flourish in the fifteenth century, later than that
of any other nation. The general spirit of chivalry, and of
the poetry connected with it, was preserved here much longer
than in any other country of Europe. Their Chivalric Ro
mances have a tone of feeling almost peculiar to themselves,
and are distinguished (above all, the oldest and best of them,
the Amadis) by a more polished and beautiful mode of writ
ing than is elsewhere to be found, and by a prevailing fond
ness for tender and idyllic representations. Here too, then,
in the poetry of chivalry, and particularly in that of the
Spaniards and the Germans, we find new confirmation of
what I noticed in an early part of these lectures the par
tiality of all heroic nations and warlike peoples to ihat
which is soft and tender in poetical composition. Along
with the Chivalric Romances there grew up among the Span
iards and Portuguese the kindred species of the Pastoral
Romance. The poetry of Spain, particularly her love poetry,
was cultivated with great success in the fifteenth century,
by two men whose birth, rank, and influence, were of the
284 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
first order Villena and Santillana. In general, ever since
its first commencement, the poetry of Spain has always been-
more cultivated by nobles and knights than by the mere
literati and authors. I know of no nation which numbers
among its poets so many that have borne arms in the cause
of their country. That poetry which we call Spanish, should
rather, in its oldest period, be denominated Castilian ; for
at first it was peculiar to that province alone ; and many
other countries of the Spanish peninsula cultivated poetry
in a manner of their own quite different from that of the
Castilians. In Catalonia there flourished a species of poetry,
which, in respect to language, bore the greatest resemblance
to the Provencial. The last and most celebrated of its pro
ductions was consecrated to the melancholy fate of Charles
of Viane, the last of the royal family, who seems to have
been beloved by the Catalonians as their native Prince, and
the elder brother, by the first marriage, of that Ferdinand
who afterwards ruled over Castile also under the name of
The Catholic, and came on this account to be regarded
somewhat as a stranger by the inhabitants of Arragon.
That province was from this time more and more subjected
and despised ; and the peculiar poetry shared the fate of the
independence of the country where it had flourished ; by
degrees, as the whole political importance came to centre in
Castile, so also were all those ornaments of poetry swal
lowed up in the Castilian poetry, which had before been
scattered throughout the different provinces of that poetical
land. Of all the inhabitants of the beautiful peninsula, the
Portuguese alone, as they continued to be a peculiar nation,
preserved a peculiar language and poetry of their own ; yet
their old strictness of connexion with Castile was still pre
served ; many Portuguese composed in the Castilian dialect,
and much of what commonly passes for Castilian is, in re
ality, by origin Portuguese. The poetry of the two nations
is indeed so intimately connected, that it is far from easy to
adjust their respective claims to the merit of invention. The
Arabs contributed much to enrich and adorn the poetry of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 285
the country which they invaded. It is true, the old Cas-
tilian poems are quite free from any such Arabian influence
or oriental tone ; they are, on the contrary, distinguished by
a strength and simplicity, both of language and of feeling,
which bear the sure marks of a very different origin. The
more distinct is the absence of all Arabic ornament in the
old Castilian poetry, the more clearly do we perceive its pre
sence, in the new. The separation occasioned by differences
of religion and perpetual hostilities, may sufficiently account
for the want of Arabian ornaments in the poetry of the re
moter period. But when Isabella and Ferdinand the Catho
lic (I name Isabella first, because the generous principle
was peculiarly hers,) when they with their knights con
quered Granada, and after seven long centuries rendered
Spain once more entirely free from the foreign yoke ; during
that last war between Moors and Spaniards, the fall of the
Arabic kingdom of Granada was hastened by internal dis
sensions and the discord of its nobles. At the head of two
contending parties were placed the two great families of the
Bencerrajas and the Zegris. The first embraced Christi
anity, and became Spaniards ; the second retreated, after
the final conquest of the capital, to Africa. There yet ex
ist many romances which celebrate the fame and achieve
ments of the Bencerrajas, their bloody feuds with the Zegris,
and the last struggles of the Granadian Arabs. Proud songs
of the most glowing love, and the wildest passion for glory ;
mutilated heroic fragments of the most tender feeling ; simple
in their language, but yet by no means devoid of the eastern
fi re | these Granadian productions, consecrated to the glory
of particular families and tribes, are in their tone and import
entirely Saracen, and resemble in most things, so far as we
can judge, the original poetry of the Arabian people. Here,
in these romances, the most beautiful, according to my judg
ment, possessed either by the Spanish, or by any other mo
dern people, the Arabian spirit and oriental colouring can
no longer be mistaken ; they have tinged with their own
hue the whole of the succeeding poetry of Spain. The gar-
288 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
worse, by the narrow decisions of the French taste. Iir
regard to national value, of all modern literatures the first
place belongs to the Spanish, the second to the English. I
do not mean to say that the latter of these is inferior in any
degree to the former ; but it has had to contend with a
greater variety of anti-national elements, and it has gone
through a greater number of changes and temporary declen
sions from the right path. The national unity of the Eng
lish literature has been preserved in spite of all these ob
stacles, but rather as if in consequence of some tacit law,
than as if from the mere feeling and tendency of its charac
ter. I am far from asserting that this is the only point of
view from which literature ought to be surveyed. I shall
have occasion in the sequel to show that many literatures
derive the greater part of their interest from elements of a
very different description.
Garcilaso, and some other poets of the time of Charles
V. are usually held up by the Spanish critics as models of
beautiful language and perfect taste. There is no doubt
that they are models of composition worthy of great atten
tion ; above all, when we compare them with the artificial
and corrupted style of the poets who succeeded them. But
I can never believe that either Garcilaso, or any one of his
contemporaries, has reached the same point of perfection in
poetical language which Virgil did among the Romans, or
Racine among the French. Their poems are rather happy
effusions of the feeling of love, than great classical works.
A lyrical and idyllic poet may show the happy condition of
language and poetry in his country, but he can never bring
either to their full perfection ; for lyrical poems are of too
narrow limits and too confined import for this. It is only
an epic or a dramatic poet who can ever become a univer
sal and abiding standard for the art and language of his
nation. The life of the Spanish people was then so chivalric
and rich, their wars in Europe so great and glorious, and
their adventures on the sea and in the new world so won
derful and so gratifying to the imagination, that the invented
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 289
marvellous of the old romances appeared dull and common
place when contrasted with these realities. About this
time, in other countries, the fashion commenced of turning
the subjects of the old chivalric romances into epic poems.
In Spain things took a different turn, and poetry became
daily more and more historical in its themes. Such at least
is the case with the most celebrated epic of the Spaniards,
the Araucana of Ercilla, wherein the wars of the Spanish
adventurers with a free and brave American nation are
celebrated or narrated. The appearance of the foreign
country, and its savage inhabitants, wildernesses, and natu
ral curiosities, campaigns and combats, all are depicted with
such truth and vivacity, that we are kept for ever in mind
that the poet was an eye-witness of all that he describes.
This first of Spanish epics abounds in individual passages of
great poetical power and beauty ; but as a whole, it is cer
tainly rather a versified book of travels and history of war,
than a poem. The heroic poem should at all times unite
historical truth and dignity with the free play of fancy in
the regions of the marvellous ; it matters little whether the
groundwork be historical or fictitious. In my opinion the
first of all the national heroic poems which the Spaniards
possess, is unquestionably the Cid. The Portuguese poet
Camoens was in these respects far more fortunate than
Ercilla. As the wildernesses of America then belonged to
Spain, so the riches of India fell to the share of his nation ;
a circumstance infinitely more happy for the purposes of the
poet. In him, too, we feel that the poet was also a warrior,
a mariner, an adventurer, and a circumnavigator. He
begins, indeed, with the most violent praise of truth, and
boasts that he intends to beat Ariosto by means of real in
cidents, far surpassing in splendour of marvellousness the
fictitious achievements of Orlando and Euggiero. At its
commencement his poem is written in strict imitation of the
Virgilian model, a constant adherence to which was indeed
the chief fault of all the epic poets of that age. But
Camoens, like his own Gama, soon leaves the servile coast-
T
288 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
worse, by the narrow decisions of the French taste. Iir"
regard to national value, of all modern literatures the first
place belongs to the Spanish, the second to the English. I
do not mean to say that the latter of these is inferior in any
degree to the former ; but it has had to contend with a
greater variety of anti-national elements, and it has gone
through a greater number of changes and temporary declen
sions from the right path. The national unity of the Eng
lish literature has been preserved in spite of all these ob
stacles, but rather as if in consequence of some tacit law,
than as if from the mere feeling and tendency of its charac
ter. I am far from asserting that this is the only point of
view from which literature ought to be surveyed. I shall
have occasion in the sequel to show that many literatures
derive the greater part of their interest from elements of a
very different description.
Garcilaso, and some other poets of the time of Charles
V. are usually held up by the Spanish critics as models of
beautiful language and perfect taste. There is no doubt
that they are models of composition worthy of great atten
tion ; above all, when we compare them with the artificial
and corrupted style of the poets who succeeded them. But
I can never believe that either Garcilaso, or any one of his
contemporaries, has reached the same point of perfection in
poetical language which Virgil did among the Romans, or
Racine among the French. Their poems are rather happy
effusions of the feeling of love, than great classical works.
A lyrical and idyllic poet may show the happy condition of
language and poetry in his country, but he can never bring
either to their full perfection ; for lyrical poems are of too
narrow limits and too confined import for this. It is only
an epic or a dramatic poet who can ever become a univer
sal and abiding standard for the art and language of his
nation. The life of the Spanish people was then so chivalric
and rich, their wars in Europe so great and glorious, and
their adventures on the sea and in the new world so won
derful and so gratifying to the imagination, that the invented
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 289
marvellous of the old romances appeared dull and common
place when contrasted with these realities. About this
time, in other countries, the fashion commenced of turning
the subjects of the old chivalric romances into epic poems.
In Spain things took a different turn, and poetry became
daily more and more historical in its themes. Such at least
is the case with the most celebrated epic of the Spaniards,
the Araucana of Ercilla, wherein the wars of the Spanish
adventurers with a free and brave American nation are
celebrated or narrated. The appearance of the foreign
country, and its savage inhabitants, wildernesses, and natu
ral curiosities, campaigns and combats, all are depicted with
such truth and vivacity, that we are kept for ever in mind
that the poet was an eye-witness of all that he describes.
This first of Spanish epics abounds in individual passages of
great poetical power and beauty ; but as a whole, it is cer
tainly rather a versified book of travels and history of war,
than a poem. The heroic poem should at all times unite
historical truth and dignity with the free play of fancy in
the regions of the marvellous ; it matters little whether the
groundwork be historical or fictitious. In my opinion the
first of all the national heroic poems which the Spaniards
possess, is unquestionably the Cid. The Portuguese poet
Camoens was in these respects far more fortunate than
Ercilla. As the wildernesses of America then belonged to
Spain, so the riches of India fell to the share of his nation ;
a circumstance infinitely more happy for the purposes of the
poet. In him, too, we feel that the poet was also a warrior,
a mariner, an adventurer, and a circumnavigator. He
begins, indeed, with the most violent praise of truth, and
boasts that he intends to beat Ariosto by means of real in
cidents, far surpassing in splendour of marvellousness the
fictitious achievements of Orlando and Kuggiero". At its
commencement his poem is written in strict imitation of the
Virgilian model, a constant adherence to which was indeed
the chief fault of all the epic poets of that age. But
Camoens, like his own Gama, soon leaves the servile coast-
T
290 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sailing of his predecessors, ventures into the wide expanse
of ocean, and makes his triumphant progress through rich
and undiscovered lands. As the mariner in the midst of
the troubles and tempests of the sea, perceives, by the spicy
gales, that he is approaching to his Indian haven, so over
the later cantos of the Lusiad there is diffused the rich air
and resplendent sun of the oriental skies. The language is
indeed simple, and the purpose serious ; nevertheless, in
colouring and fulness of fancy, Camoens here surpasses even
Ariosto, whose garland he so venturously aspired to tear
away. But Camoens does not confine himself to Gama
and the discovery of India, nor even to the sway and
achievements of the Portuguese of his day: whatever of
chivalrous, great, beautiful, or noble, could be gathered
from the traditions of his country has been inweaved and
embodied into the web of his poem. It embraces the whole
poetry of his nation ; among all the heroic poets either of
ancient or of modern times there has never, since Homer,
been any one so intensely national, or so loved and honoured
by his countrymen, as Camoens. It seems as if the national
feelings of the Portuguese^excluded from eveiy other sub
ject of meditation by the degraded condition of their empire,
had centred and reposed themselves in the person of this
poet, considered by them, and worthy of being considered
by us, as worthy of supplying the place of a whole troop of
poets, and as being in himself a complete literature to his
country. The most interesting parts of the poem are those
passages at the beginning and the close, wherein Camoens
addresses himself to the young monarch Sebastian the same
who was destined to involve in the miseries of his destinies
the whole fortunes of his people with love and animating
admiration, and yet with some portion of seriousness and
warning, as it might be the privilege of a grey-haired veteran,
such as he was, to address his king.
Somewhat later than Camoens appeared Tasso, a poet
nearer to ourselves by his language, and, in part also, by
his subject, which, by the way, is chosen with the utmost
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 29 1
possible felicity for the Crusades unite, in a manner else
where unequalled, the whole fulness of the chivalrous and
the marvellous, with the seriousness of historical truth.
His subject was still more adapted for his own time than
it is for ours ; for the old contest between Christendom and
the powers of Mahomet had not yet terminated. Even in
the days of Charles V. the heroes and warriors of Spain
still flattered themselves with the hope of regaining the
lost conquests of Godfrey in the Holy Land ; a thing which,
after all, might well have seemed quite possible, after the
naval power of Spain had acquired the undisputed superi
ority in the Mediterranean, and particularly after limits had
fairly been set to the tremendous power of the Turkish
emperor by land. An inspiration not only poetical but
patriotic was derived from the cause of Christendom by this
poet, in whom love of glory and piety of feeling were equally
predominant. But he has by no means equalled the great
ness of his subject ; on the contrary, he has made so little
use of its riches, that he may be said to have spent only the
superfluities of its treasure. He, too, was in some degree
confined by the Yirgilian form, from which he has borrowed,
with no great success, a few pieces of what is commonly
called the epic machinery. Yet Camoens was not pre
vented by the same sort of belief in regard to the proper
form of an epic from interweaving into his poem every
thing that could adorn a national heroic poem, and from
doing entire justice to the materials of which he had made
choice. But in truth, even had his ideas of epic art been
more just, I doubt whether Tasso could ever have attained
the same success. He belongs, upon the whole, rather to
the class of poets who represent themselves and their own
exquisite feelings, than of those who can create in their
strength of imagination another world, and lose individual
feelings in the luxury of their own inventions. The most
beautiful parts of his poem are episodes which might have
been introduced with equal propriety into any other epic,
and have no strict connexion with the subject of the Jem-
202 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
salem. The magic of Armida, the beauty of Clorinda, and
the love of Erminia these passages, and such as these, are
the things that bind us to Tasso ; forms of which our Ger
man poet has made Tasso himself to say :
They are not shadows that produce a dream,
I know they are eternal, for they are.*
In Tasso s lyrical poems there is a glow of passion, and
an inspiration of unfortunate love, which delight us even
more than the little pastoral of Aminta, although that, too,
is throughout impregnated with the feeling of love. We
feel in these poems what the true fountain of love poetry is,
and cannot help contrasting them in a very favourable man
ner with the artificial and cold sonnets of the school of Pe--
trarch. Tasso is altogether a poet of feeling ; and as Ariosto
is throughout a painter, so over the language and versifica
tion of Tasso there is poured forth the whole charm of
music; a circumstance which has, without doubt, greatly
contributed to render him the favourite poet of the Italians.
His popularity exceeds very much that of Ariosto. Indi
vidual parts and episodes of his poem are frequently sung
in the gondolas of the Arno and the Po ; and the Italians
having no romantic ballads like those of the Spaniards, have,
by cutting down the Jerusalem into fragments, supplied
themselves with a body of ballads by full more harmonious,
graceful, noble, and poetical than was ever possessed by any
other people. Perhaps this mode of dividing their great
poem was the best both for the enjoyment and the feeling
of it, for there is in truth very little to be lost by throwing
aside the connexion of the poem as a whole. How little
satisfied Tasso himself was with his own epical art, is suffi
ciently evident from the many changes and remodelings
(for the most part unfortunate ones) which his great poem
underwent. The first of his attempts was a mere romance
of chivalry; afterwards, in the decline of life, he entirely
recast the whole of the Jerusalem, upon which his fame is
Goethe
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 293
founded, sacrificing to the morose morality which he had
adopted, all the most delightful passages in the poem, and
introducing, throughout the whole work, a cold and destruc
tive allegory, little calculated to make up for what he had
taken away. He also attempted a Christian epic on the
subject of the Creation. But even with poetical povers
much more powerful than his, how could it have been pos
sible to extend a few mysterious words of Moses into as
many cantos with any portion of success ? In speaking of
Dante I have already said something on the poetical treat
ment of such subjects, and I mention this poem of Tasso
here, chiefly because it was this in particular which Milton
had before his eyes. In his poem of the Creation, Tasso
laid aside the use of rhyme, although that forms in truth
the greatest charm of man}*- of his productions, and although
no poet ever possessed the same command over the instru
ment which he did ; so severe a critic was Tasso of his own
poems. I do not however think that we should judge equally
hardly of him ; he certainly does indulge in a few plays of
thought, or concetti, as they are called, but he has beauties
sufficient to atone for more than all his defects. What sort
of an idea of poetry can remain to us, if we take from it the
liberty to be a play of fancy? If we are determined to
weigh and balance every thought so strictly, there is no
question that nothing will remain with us but the sobriety
of prose. Even in prose, if we analyse it with sufficient ac
curacy, we shall easily discover, in the works of the best
writers, images, here and there, which are not perfectly
just. Many of the fanciful thoughts of Tasso are not only
full of meaning, but beautiful as images. A poet of feeling
and of love may well be pardoned such trifling errors ; 1 jnlts
of the same kind may be found even in these amatory poems
of the ancients, which are usually held up by modern critics,
like the head of the Gorgon, a terrible image of classical
strength and purity, in opposition to the extravagant fancy
of the romantic poets.
If we regard Tasso merely as a musical poet of feeling, it
294 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
forms in truth no proper subject of reproach, that he is in a
certain sense uniform, and throughout sentimental. Uni
formity of this sort seems to be inseparable from that poetry
which is in its nature lyrical ; and I confess it seems to me
even a beauty in Tasso, that he has spread this soft breath
of elegy even over the representation of the charms of sense.
But an epic poet must be richer in every thing ; he must be~"
multiform ; he must embrace a whole world of circumstances
the spirit of the past and of the present, of his nation and
of nature ; he must have command, not over one chord alone,
but be master of the whole complicated instrument of feel
ing. In this sort of poetical wealth Camoens is far the
superior of Tasso ; in his epic poem there are even many
passages of tender feeling and of love, which may sustain a
comparison with the most beautiful parts of Tasso. In him,
too, amidst all the splendour and charm of his southern ima
gination, there breaks through, at times, a tone of delightful
lamentation and sorrow ; and he is entitled to the name of a
romantic poet, even had he no other claim, because he is
entirely penetrated with the glow and inspiration of love.
But he unites the picturesque fulness of Ariosto with the
musical magic of Tasso ; and what is far more important, he
connects both of these with the serious dignity of the true
heroic poet an attribute which Tasso rather wished for
than possessed.
After what I have said, you will easily perceive that I
make no secret of preferring Camoens to either of the other
great Catholic epic poets, Ariosto and Tasso. I am, how
ever, willing to confess, that such judgments as these are at
all times produced more or less by personal feeling, for of
all those component parts which make up the excellence of
a poet, a few only can be subjected to the decision of gene
ral principles, while far more is left to be approved or dis
approved of, according as it may happen to suit the fancy
or feeling of the individual. There is a well-known anec
dote of Tasso, which I cannot help wishing to recall to your
recollection : it is said that when he was asked which of the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 295
Italian poets was, in his opinion, the greatest, he replied,
not without considerable emotion, that Ariosto was the
second the self-love of a poet makes him set so exclusive
a value on those qualities which he himself possesses. A
lover of poetry is apt to be prejudiced in the same way in
favour of those which he is himself most capable of feeling.
I believe that in Tasso the poetical language of Italy ap
peared with as much of the noble and graceful dignity of the
old Roman, as it could have, without throwing totally aside
the nature and beauty peculiar to its own construction.
After his time, the leaning to the antique became every day
stronger, not only in respect to form and style of writing,
but also to subjects. The last great poet of the yet nour
ishing period, Guarini, also a poet of love like Tasso, shows
himself in many individual passages of his lyrical pieces, to
have been possessed of deeper thought, and even master of
a more elevated style, than was ever attained by the poet
of Jerusalem. But in the love poems of Tasso, the strain
of feeling is certainly more natural and charming. Guarini s
Arcadian drama, the Pastor Fido, is without any laboured
imitation, and although quite full of real feeling and love,
entirely impregnated with the spirit of antiquity, and even
in the form of its composition, great and noble like the
drama of the Greeks. Upon the whole, the theatrical part
of the elder Italian literature is by no means the most bril
liant one, and their attempts at reviving the tragedy of the
ancients have been above all miserably cold and unsuccess
ful ; it is some compensation for this, that so much perfec
tion was reached in a new species of writing which at
least as used dramatically is quite peculiar to Italy. The
superiority of the Italians, in this respect, has been acknow
ledged by the other nations of Europe : I doubt whether any
modern poem has been so much admired and so often tran
slated as the Pastor Fido. In France itself, down to the
time of Corneille, it was the favourite model of imitation.
As a drama, indeed, it was by no means a work fitted to
form a path, and establish a theatre, and in so far it may be
296 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
said to be very deficient in merit. But, on the other hand,
the lyrical poetry of the Italians never took a bolder flight
than in some of the choruses and particular speeches of this
poem. In treating of Tasso, I have already spoken of that
play of thought peculiar to the Romanic love poets, and the
concetti of the Italians. The same grounds of apology which
Tasso possesses, may in general be pleaded in favour of
Guarini, although it must be admitted that some passages
are too remote from the natural and the innocently playful,
too coldly elaborate and artificial, to admit of any exculpa
tion. Guarini has a few passages which might seem not un
worthy of the noble and serious style of a great poet of anti
quity ; but he certainly touches the limit of that region of vo
luptuous taste in which Marino appears to have delighted a
poet who has united every thing of luxuriant and effeminate
which is to be found in Ovid, or any of the ancient amatory
poets, with all of playful and conceited which can be gather
ed out of Petrarch, Tasso, and Guarini, and blended them
all together into one sea of luscious sweetness, which is the
more disagreeable to good taste, because every part of the
flood has the appearance of proceeding from the fountain not
of nature but of imitation.
The poetry of Spain, in its separated situation, was both
much longer upheld, and much more happily developed.
The imitation of the antique was less predominant, because
the national feeling was more acute and lively. For the
same reason, the poetry of Spain was more connected with
the present; romance writing acquired a point of excellence
far above what is known among any other people, and the
theatre became, not only the most original, but also the
richest in Europe.
In poetry, the language of Spain has never had any one
era which can be taken as a complete model of perfection for
all other periods ; and although in later times Garcilaso,
and the writers of his time, are commonly enough talked of
as classics, this is only in a very limited meaning of the
word. The poetical language of Spain remained at all times
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 297
free : a great deal too much art has, indeed, been at times
employed upon it, and it has often been formed into an
appearance far too intensely poetical. But at no time has
it been subjected to any universal rule, excepting only that
which regards the prevalent system of metre. This appears
so much the more remarkable, because even in the earliest
times the prose language of the Spaniards attained a form
the most fixed and regular ; the sharpest precision has there
become so much a second nature, that while the prose of
other languages has for the most part tended to corruption,
in the way of neglect and carelessness, theirs has rather had
to struggle with errors of an opposite description. The dan
ger has been that of degenerating from extreme accuracy
and acutencss into a sort qf over nicety, for which they only
have a precise name Ahiideza. Yet of this defect there is
no trace in some of the best Spanish writers, among whom
the first place is unquestionably due to Cejrvantes. In his
writing, the prose authors of Spain possess a model of per
fection, pure and exquisite, such as has never been attained
by her poets, chiefly, it is probable, on account of the ex
treme luxuriance of imagination and invention by which
they are distinguished.
The great Avork of Cervantes is deserving of its fame, and
of the admiration of all the nations of Europe, (which it has
now enjoyed for more than two centuries,) not merely on
account of the beauty of its style, and the perfection of its
narrative ; not merely because, of all Avorks of wit, it is the
richest in spirit and invention ; but also because it is a most
lively and altogether epic picture of the life and peculiar
character of Spaniards. It is from this that it derives its
ever-enduring charm and value, while the many imitations
of it, produced in France and England, are already forgotten
or in a fair way of becoming so. What I once said before,
in speaking of poetical works of wit, that in such works
the writer should be careful so to adorn Avith a rich effusion
of poetry his narrative, machinery, and the whole of his lan
guage, as to preserve undegraded his title to the name of
298 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
a poet, receives a strong confirmation from the example of
Cervantes. It is common enough to hear critics who talk
of him enlarge altogether upon his satire, and say nothing
of his poetry ; and there is no doubt that while satire is alike
good to all the world, his poetry is exquisitely Spanish. But
he who is capable of studying and relishing Cervantes
aright, well knows that mirth and seriousness, wit and
poetry, are mingled with success elsewhere unparalleled
in this rich picture of life ; and that of no one of these
elements can the worth and beauty be appreciated unless
we observe how it is graced and adorned by the juxtaposi
tion or absolute infusion of the others. The other prose
works of Cervantes, his pastoral romance Galatea, his no
vels, and the pilgrim romance which he wrote last of all,
partake more or less in these qualities of style and invention
which distinguish his Don Quixote a work which is en
tirely unique in species, and which, the more it is imitated,
appears even the more inimitable. This work is the proud
est ornament of Spanish literature ; and with justice may
the Spaniards be proud of a romance, which, as an universal^
national work, has been equalled by no other writer of this
order, and which, as a picture of the life, manners, and spirit
of a nation, is almost entitled to be classed with the most
admirable productions of the epic muse.
LECTUEE XII.
OF ROMANCE DRAMATIC POETRY OF THE SPANIARDS SPENSER, SHAKESPEARE,
AND MILTON AGE OF LEWIS XIV .THE FRENCH THEATRE.
THE romance of Cervantes has been, notwithstanding its
high internal excellence, a dangerous and unfortunate model
for the imitation of other nations. The Don Quixote, a work
in its kind of unexampled invention, has been the origin of
the whole modern romances, and of a crowd of unsuccessful
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 299
attempts among French, English, and Germans, the object
of which was to elevate into a species of poetry the prosaic
representation of the actual and the present. To say no
thing of the genius of Cervantes, which stands entirely by
itself, and was sufficient to secure him from many of the
faults of his successors, the situation in which he cultivated
prose fiction was fortunate far above what has fallen to the
lot of any of them. The actual life in Spain, in his day, was
much more chivalric and romantic than it has ever since
been in any country of Europe. Even the want of a very
exact civil subordination, and the free, or rather lawless life
of the provinces, might be of use to his imagination.
In all these attempts to raise the realities of Spanish life
by wit and adventure, or by the extraordinary excitements
of thought and feeling, to a species of poetic fiction, we can
perceive that the authors are always anxious to create for*
themselves, in some way or other, the advantages of a
poetic distance ; if it were only in the life of Italian artists,
a subject frequently treated in German romances, or in that
of American woods and wildernesses, one veiy common
among those of foreigners. Even when the scene of the fable
is laid entirely at home, and within the sphere of the com
mon citizen life, the narrative, so long as it continues to be
narrative, and does not lose itself altogether in wit, humour,
or sentiment, is ever anxious to extend, in some degree, the
limit of that reality by which it is confined, and to procure
somewhere an opening into the region where fancy is more
at liberty in her operations : when no other method can be
found, travelling adventures, duels, elopements, a band of
robbers, or the intrigues and anxieties of a troop of strol
lers, are introduced pretty evidently more for the sake of
the author than of his hero.
The idea of the Romantic in these romances, even in some
of the best and most celebrated of them, appears to coincide
very closely with that of irregulated and dissolute conduct.
I remember it was the observation of a great philosopher,
that the moment the world should see a perfect police, the
300 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
moment there should be no contraband trade, and the tra
veller s pass should contain an exact portrait and biography
of its bearer, that moment it would become quite impossible
to write a good romance ; for that then nothing could occur
in real life which might, with any moderate degree of orna
ment, be formed into the groundwork of such a fiction. The
expression seems quaint, but, I suspect, the opinion is found
ed very nearly upon the truth.
To determine the true and proper relation between poetry,
and the past or the present, involves the investigation of
the whole depth and essence of the art. In general, in our
theories, with the exception of some very general, meaning
less, and most commonly false definitions of the art itself,
and of the beautiful, the chief subjects of attention are
always the mere forms of poetry, things necessary, without
doubt, but by no means sufficient, to be known. As yet
there has scarcely been any theory with regard to the**"
proper subject of poetry, although such a theory would evi
dently be far the most useful in regard to the eifect which
poetry is to have upon life. In the preceding discourses
I have endeavoured to supply this defect, and to give some
glimpses of such a theory, wherever the nature of my topics
has furnished me with the opportunity.
With regard to the representation of actual life in poetry >
we must, above all things, remember that it is by no means
certain that the actual and present are intractable or un
worthy subjects of poetical representation, merely because
in themselves they appear less noble and uncommon than
the past. It is true that in what is near and present, the
common and the unpoetical come at all times more strongly
and more conspicuously into view ; while in the remote and
the past, they occupy the distance, and leave the foreground
to be filled with forms of greatness and sublimity alone.
But this difficulty is one which the true poet can easily***
conquer ; his art has no more favourite mode of displaying
itself than in lending to things of commonplace and every
day occurrence, the brilliancy of a poetic illumination, by
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 301
-extracting from them higher signification, and deeper pur
pose, and more refined feeling, than we had before suspected
them of concealing, or dreamed them to be capable of ex
citing. Still the precision of the present is at all times
binding and confining for the fancy ; and when we, by our
subject, impose so many fetters upon her, there is always
reason to fear that she will be inclined to make up for this
restraint by an excess of liberty in regard to language and
description.
To make my views upon this point intelligible to you in
the shortest way, I need only recall to your recollection
what I said some time ago, with regard to subjects of reli
gious or Christian import. The invisible world, the Deity,
and pure intellects, can never, upon the whole, be with
propriety represented by us nature and human beings are^
the proper and immediate subjects of poetry. But the
higher and spiritual world can be every where embodied
and shadowed forth in our terrestrial materials. In like
manner, the indirect representation of the actual and the
present is the best and most appropriate. The bloom of
young life, and the high ecstasies of passion, as well as the
maturity of wise reflection, may all be combined with the
old traditions of our nation ; they will there have more room
for exertion, and be displayed in a purer light than the
present can command. The oldest poet of the past, Homer,
is at the same time to us a describer of the present in its
utmost liveliness and freshness. Every true poet carries
into the past his own age, and, in a certain sense, himself.
The following appears to me to be the true account of the
proper relation between poetry and time. The proper busi
ness of poetry is to represent only the eternal, that which
is, at all places and in all times, significant and beautiful ;
but this cannot be accomplished without the intervention of
a veil. Poetry requires to have a corporeal habitation, and^
this she finds in her best sphere the traditions of a nation,
the recollections and past of a people. In her representa
tions of these, however, she introduces the whole wealth of
o02 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the present, so far as that is susceptible of poetical orna
ment ; she plunges also into the future, because she explains
the apparent mysteries of earthly existence, accompanies in
dividual life through all its development, down to its period
of termination, and sheds from her magic mirror the light
of a higher interpretation upon all things ; she embraces
all tenses the past, the present, and the future in order
to make a truly sensible representation of the eternal or the
perfect time. Even in a philosophical sense, eternity is no
nonentity, no mere negation of time, but rather its entire
and undivided fulness, wherein all its elements are united,
where the past becomes again new and present, and with
the present itself is mingled the abundance of hope, and all
the richness of futurity.
Although, upon the whole, I consider the indirect repre
sentation of the present as the one most suitable for poetry,
I would by no means be understood to be passing a judg
ment of condemnation upon all poetical works which follow
the opposite path. We must leave the artist to be the
judge of his own work. The true poet can show his power
even though he takes a wrong way, and composes works
which are far from perfection in regard to their original
foundation. Milton and Klopstock must at all times be
honoured as poets of the first class, although no one will
deny that they have both done themselves the injustice to
choose subjects which they never could adequately describe.
In like manner, to Richardson, who erred in a very
opposite way, by trying to imitate Cervantes in elevating
to poetry the realities of modern life, we cannot refuse the
praise of a great talent for description, and of having at
least manifested great vigour in his course, although the
goal which he wished to reach was one entirely beyond his
power.
The spirit of Spanish fiction has distinguished itself with
equal excellence, and with far more richness, upon the
theatre than in romance. The lyrical poetry of feeling is
the fruit of solitary love and inspiration ; even when it does
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 303
not confine itself to the immediate circumstances of an indi
vidual ; when it seizes upon an age and a nation, it is still
powerful only as the emanation of individual feeling. But
heroic poetry implies a nation ; one which either is now or
has been ; one which possesses recollections, a great past, a
legendary history, an original and poetical mode of thinking
and observing a mythology. Both of these species, the
lyric as well as the epic, are much more the children of
nature than of art. But dramatic poetiy is the production
of the city and society ; nay, it cannot flourish unless it have
a great metropolis to be the centre point of its development.
Such, at least, is its most natural and happy situation ;
although schools of imitation and rivalry, established in
smaller spheres of action, may in the sequel contend at
times not unsuccessfully with the capital, the first seat of
the dramatic art. There is no difficulty in perceiving why
the stages of Madrid, London, and Paris enjoyed a full
century of splendour ; were brought, each in its own way,
to perfection ; and were rich, almost to superfluity, long
before either Italy or Germany could be said to possess any
thing worthy, properly speaking, of the name of a theatre.
For although Rome has been, even from antiquity, the
capital of the church, and Vienna, ever since the fifteenth
centuiy, the seat of the German empire, yet neither the one
city nor the other has ever become the metropolis of a
nation in the same manner with those three great cities of
France, England, and Spain.
As the Spanish monarchy was, down to the middle of the
seventeenth century, the greatest and the most splendid in
Europe, and as the national spirit of the Spaniards was the
most developed, so the stage of Madrid, the living mirror
of Spanish life, was the first which arrived at its period of
glory. Its richness and fulness of invention have, at all
times been recognised by the rest of Europe ; to its peculiar
form and meaning, to the true spirit and sense of the
Spanish drama, less justice has been done. Had it no
other advantage but this, that it is thoroughly romantic,
304 HISTOEY OF LITERATURE.
that alone would be sufficient to render it an object well
worthy of attention ; it would be a very interesting thing to
see what sort of dramatic poetry that is, which is the pure
production of the chivalric poetry in general, and of that
peculiar direction of fancy which belongs to modern Europe
and the middle ages. In the theatre of no other country
can we find so good an example of this as in the Spanish,
which always remained quite free from all influence and
imitation of the antique ; while, on the other hand, the
Italians and French have been led away by their desire to
renew in their purity the proper tragedy and comedy of the
Greeks, and while these models (acting, as they did, chiefly
through the medium of Seneca and the older French plays)
have not been without a very considerable influence even
upon the drama of the English.
If we consider the Spanish stage in its first celebrated
lord and master, Lope de Vega, its general excellencies will
appear to us only in a dim and imperfect light ; and we
shall, upon the whole, form no very high opinion of the
perfection of the Spanish drama ; so hasty and redundant
are his almost innumerable plays. As in the lyrical songs
of one poet, so also in all the dramatic works of one artist,
there may in general be observed a certain uniformity and
resemblance, which must, of course, lighten very much
the labour of his composition. In the dramas not only of
one poet, but even of a whole age or an entire nation, the
groundwork is often one general IDEA, which in all of them
is properly the same, although in each it is presented in a
different point of view, and acting with a different species of
operation ; like so many variations of a juridical theme, or so
many various propositions in mathematics, all following
from the adoption of the same general principle. When a
poet has once clearly and thoroughly comprehended this
idea, and fixed upon the manner in which he is to use it for
his idea and his stage, provided he be at the same time a
perfect master of language and theatrical effect, it may very
easily happen that he shall produce a very great number of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 305
works in a very regular form, and even without appearing
to have been guilty of negligence either in regard to the
expression or the arrangement of his productions. It was
thus that the great dramatists of antiquity produced, each of
them, more than a hundred plays. But the number of the
dramas of Lope de Vega, however liberal we may be, must
certainly surpass all limit of permitted fertility. The greater
part of them must have been not composed, in any proper
sense of the word, but dashed off in the manner of a mere
improvisatore. I admit that Lope, among all dramatical
ready writers, and bulky writers of all nations, and down to
the very latest times, is the first and the most of a poet, in
richness of invention, in splendour of imagination, and in
the fire and strength of his language. The two last qualities
are indeed so common in all the poetry of his nation, that
we need scarcely enlarge upon their praise as belonging pe
culiarly to him. Considered by itself, this swiftness of dra
matic composition, even with all the talent and fancy of
Lope de Vega, is by no means excusable, either in a poeti
cal or in a moral point of view. A strength of arrangement,
and a steady law, are so much the more necessary for the
stage, because in no other species of composition are care
lessness and corruption so easily tolerated, in no other
are the public and the author in so much danger of leading
each other astray. How easy it must be for a dramatist of
such genius as Lope, to carry his age beyond all limits of
judgment ; how easily, even one without any very splendid
qualifications, by means of a sort of theatrical routine, and
a little skill in passionate effect, may bring the public taste
to such a point that all higher requisites and ideas are
entirely forgotten ; we have had so many examples of all
this, that it would be quite useless to expatiate upon it.
On the other side, theatrical success, we must remember, is
of all other means of excitement the strongest and most
irresistible in its operation on the vanity of a poet. The
public themselves are in general the first to spoil a favourite
u
306 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
dramatist ; they express so much satisfaction with his early
and imperfect attempts, that it is no wonder he should soon
consider himself as absolved from all obligation to be careful
in his com positions. This danger of demagogic corruption
and anarchy is a circumstance which was often remarked
and lamented by the best of all dramatic judges, the ancients.
However much, in regard to some other species of poetry,
as for example that which is properly called popular poetry,
our indulgence may be due to a rapid and careless method
of composition, the theatre has no similar claim. The stage
is entirely a creature of art, and even although hasty and
inaccurate writing may be tolerated in plays, unless their
plan be clearly laid, and their purpose profoundly consi
dered, they want the very essence of dramatic pieces;
unless they be so composed, they may indeed amuse us with
a view of the fleeting and surface part of life, and of per
plexities and passions, but they can have none of that deep
sense and import, without which the concerns of life,
whether real or imitated, are not worthy of our study.
These lower excellencies of the dramatic art are possessed
in great abundance by Lope de Vega, and many others of
the ordinary Spanish dramatists : the plays of these men
display great brilliancy of poetry and imagination, but when
we compare them with the profounder pieces of the same or
of some other stages, we perceive at once that their beauties
are only of a secondary class, and that they afford no real
gratification to the higher parts of our intellect. How little
these, indeed, are accustomed to be taken into account, we
may easily gather from the single fact, that very many
critics usually speak of Calderon, and Lope de Vega, as
poets of the same order, while in truth it would be difficult
to find two men more entirely and radically dissimilar both
in mind and in art. If we would form a proper opinion of
the Spanish drama, we must study it only in its perfection,
in CaJdgron the last and greatest of all the Spanish poets.
Before his time, affectation on the one hand, and utter
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 307
carelessness on the other, were predominant in the Spanish
poetry ; what is singular enough, these apparently opposite
faults were often to be found in the same piece. The evil
example of Lope de Vega was not confined to the depart
ment of the stage. Elevated by his theatrical success, like
many other fluent poets, he had the vanity to suppose that
Jie might easily shine in many other species of writing, for
which he possessed, in truth, no sort of genius. Not con
tented with being considered as the first dramatist of his
country, nothing less would serve him but to compete with
Cervantes in romance, and with Tasso and Ariosto in the
chivalric epic. The influence of his careless and corrupt
mode of composition was thus extended beyond the theatre ;
while the faults from which he was most free, those of ex
cessive artifice and affectation in language and expression,
were carried to the highest pitch by Gongora and Quevedo.
Calderon survived this age of poetical corruptions ; nay, he
was born in it, and he had first to free the poetry of his
country from the chaos, before he could ennoble it anew,
beautify and purify it by the flames of love, and conduct it
at last to the utmost limit of its perfection.
This incident in the history of Spanish poetry its sudden
rise to unexampled excellence, immediately following a
period of unexampled corruption is one veiy well worthy of
our attention. It may serve as a sufficient correction of the
commonplace opinions and theories on which the doctrine
of regular progress and decline in art is maintained. For
our own age and nation it may be a lesson of great value,
to see how, from the midst of dead artifice and corrupted
excrescence, the imagination and poetry of Spain sprung
at the call of one voice into light and beauty, as the Phoenix
is regenerated and renewed out of the ashes of her own
decay.
But in order to set before you the spirit of the Spanish
drama as it appears in its perfection in the works of Cal
deron, it is necessary for me to prefix a few words upon the
true essence of the dramatic art in general, according to the
308 HISTORY OF LITERATURE
peculiar views which I have adopted. It is only in the first
and lowest scale of the drama, that I can place those pieces
in which we are presented with the visible surface of life
alone, the fleeting appearance of the rich picture of the
world. It is thus that I view them, even although they
display the highest sway of passion in tragedy, or the per
fection of all social refinements and absurdities in comedy,
so long as the whole business of the play is limited to ex
ternal appearances, and these things are brought before us
merely in perspective, and as pictures for the purposes of
drawing our attention, and awakening the sympathy of our
passions. The second order of the art is that, where in dra
matic representations, together with passion and the pictoric
appearance of things, a spirit of more profound sense and
thought is predominant over the scene, wherein there is dis*
played a deep knowledge, not of individuals and their affairs
alone, but of our whole species ; of the world and of life, in
all their manifold shapes, contradictions, and catastrophes ;
of man and of his being, that darkest of riddles as such
as a riddle. Were this profound knowledge of us and our
nature the only end of dramatic poetry, Shakespeare would
not merely deserve to be called the first in his art, but there
could scarcely be found a single poet, either among the an
cients or the moderns, worthy for a moment to be compared
with him. But, in my opinion, the art of the dramatic poet
has, besides all this, yet another and a higher end. The
enigma of life should not barely be expressed, but solved ;
the perplexities of the present should indeed be represented,
but from them our view should be led to the last develop
ment and the final issue. The poet should entwine the future
with the present, and lay before our eyes the mysteries o /
the internal man. This is indeed something quite different
from what we commonly demand in a tragedy, by the name
of catastrophe. There are many celebrated dramatic works
wherein that sort of denouement, to which I here allude, is
altogether awanting, or which, at least, have only the out
ward form, but are quite destitute of the internal being and
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 309
spirit of it. For the sake of brevity I may here refer you to
what I said, in one of my late lectures, concerning the three
worlds of Dante, and of the art with which he has repre
sented to us three great classes of human beings some in
the abyss of despair, some in the region of hope and purifi
cation, some in the enjoyment of perfect blessedness. All
that I then said may be applied in a certain way to the dra
mas, and in this sense might Dante himself be called a dra
matic poet, but that he has chosen to give us only a series
of catastrophes, without setting before us, except by some
casual allusion, the actions and passions of which these ca
tastrophes are the result. Corresponding to these denoue
ments of human destiny, there are also three modes of that
high, serious, dramatic representation, which sets forth, not
merely the appearances of life, but also its deeper purpose
and spirit, which gives us not only the knot, but the solution
of our existence. In one of these we lose sight of the hero
in the darkness of a perfect destruction ; in another the con
clusion, although mingled with a certain dawn of pleasure,
is yet half sorrowful in its impression ; and there is a third,
wherein, out of misery and death, we see a new life arisen,
and behold the illumination of the eternal man. To show what
I mean by dramas whose termination is the total ruin of their
heroes, I may mention among the tragedies of the moderns,
Wallen stein, Macbeth, and the Faustus of the people. The
dramatic art of the ancients had a peculiar fondness for this
altogether tragical catastrophe, which accorded well with
their belief in a terrible and predestinating fate. Yet a
tragedy of this kind is perhaps the more perfect in propor
tion as the destruction is represented not as any thing ex
ternal, capricious, or predestinated, but as a darkness into
which the hero has sunk step by step, descending not with
out free will, and in consequence of his own guilt. Such is
the case in those three great modem tragedies which I have
cited.
This is, upon the whole, the favourite species among the
ancients, yet their theatre is not without some beautiful
310 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
specimens of the second and milder termination ; examples
of it occur in both of the two greatest of the Greek trage
dians. It is thus that JEschylus, after he has opened before
us the darkest abyss of sorrow and guilt, in the death of
Agamemnon, and the vengeance of Orestes, closes his mighty
picture in the Eumenides with a pleasing feeling, and the
final quelling of the spirit of evil by the intervention of a
milder and propitious Deity. Sophocles, in like manner,
after representing the blindness and the fate of (Edipus, the
miserable fate and mutual fratricide of his sons, the long
SOITOWS of the sightless old man and his faithful daughter,
is careful to throw a ray of cheering light upon the death of
his hero, and to depict in such colours his departure into the
protection of pitying and expecting deities, as to leave upon
our minds an impression rather of soothing and gentle
melancholy than of tragical distress. There are many in
stances of the same kind both in the ancient theatre and
the modern ; but few wherein the working of the passions
is adorned with so much beauty of poetry as in these.
The third method of dramatic conclusion, which by its
representation makes a spiritual purification to be the result
of external sorrows, is the one most adapted for a Christian
poet, and in this the first and greatest of all masters is Cal-
deron. Among the great variety of his pieces I need only
refer you to the Devotion to the Cross, and the Steadfast Prince,
plays which have been very frequently translated, and the
remarkable excellence of which has been, upon the whole,
pretty generally recognised. The Christianity of this poet,
however, does not consist so much in the external circum
stances which he has selected, as in his peculiar feeling, and
the method of treating his subject which is most common
with him. Even where his materials furnish him with no
opportunity of drawing the perfect development of a new
life out of death and suffering, yet every thing is conceived
in the spirit of this Christian love and purification, every
thing seen in its light, and clothed in the splendour of its
heavenly colouring. In every situation and circumstance,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 311
alderon is, of all dramatic poets, the most Christian, and
for that very reason the most romantic.
Since the Spanish poetry remained at all times free from
foreign influence, and throughout purely romantic, since
the Christian chivalric poetry of the middle ages continued
with this nation far longer than with any other, even down
to the times of their most modern refinement, and received
among them a form more elegant than elsewhere, this may
appear to be no improper place for saying something, in
general, concerning the essence of the romantic. It consists
entirely in that feeling of love which is predominant in the
Christian religion, and through it in poetry also ; by which
sorrows are represented as only the way to happiness ; by
which the tragic serious of the Greek mythology, and heath
enish antiquity, is softened into a more cheering play of
fancy, and in consequence of which, even in regard to the
external forms of representation and language, every thing
is selected which seems most to harmonise with this feeling
of love, and this play of fancy. In this sense of the word,
taking the romantic to mean nothing more than the peculiar
beauty and poetry of Christianity, all poetry might seem to
have some claim to the epithet. In fact the romantic is by
no means inconsistent with the ancients and the true an
tique. The legends of Troy, and the poems of Homer, are
throughout romantic ; so is all of the really poetic kind which
is to be found in the old verses of Indians, Persians, Arabi
ans, or Europeans. Wherever the highest life is compre
hended and represented in its deeper meaning, there are to
be heard at least some echoes of that godlike love, whose
centre point and full harmony lies certainly in the Christian
religion. Even in the ancient tragedians the echoes of this
feeling are here and there scattered, in spite of the general
darkness and worldliness of their conceptions ; the internal
love in the midst of all their errors and false images of hor
ror, breaks through in noble sentiments, and diifuses the
light of its sublimity over all their bewildered imaginations.
JEschylus and Sophocles are not worthy of admiration on
HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
account of their inimitable composition alone, but of their
profound feeling and sentiment. In none of the vivid and
natural poets of antiquity is this charm entirely wanting.
The romantic is not opposed to the ancients and the an- .
tique, but to those false and frigid erudite among ourselves,
who strive to imitate the form without being gifted with any
portion of the enthusiasm of the antique ; and those other
moderns who, labouring under an equal mistake, attempt to
increase their influence upon active life by making the pres
ent their subject, and fail in their attempt, because the con
finement to which they thus voluntarily condemn themselves
is more than sufficient to neutralise any advantage which
they might have hoped to derive.
It will be easily understood that between these three
species of dramatic conclusion and representation that of
destruction, of reconciliation, and of glorification, there must
be room for many intermediate steps and blendings. It
was only for the purpose of letting you know what I con
ceive to be the true termination of a dramatic piece, that I
have formally and separately described these three species
although, after all, they certainly are to be found sepa
rately as well as mingled. Even the opposition of ancients
and .moderns is not a perfect one, but depends merely on
the preponderance of one element a more or a less. Even
among the ancient plays we may find some approximations
to that method of tragic representation which terminates in
purification, and in like manner, we may find, among the
moderns, tragedies of utter destruction, which can sustain
a comparison with the most powerful masterpieces of the
ancients, with whom that was the more favourite species of
catastrophe.
Since, however, the excellence of dramatic representation
lies in the internal depth of feeling, and the hidden mys
teries of the spiritual life, it is evident that the works of
antiquity, whatever may be their perfection as pieces of
writing, and as high models to stimulate our ambition, they
can, in particular instances, furnish no fit rule or example for
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 313
our imitation. In general we may be assured, that in regard
to the higher drama and tragedy, there cannot be such a
thing as a rule useful for all nations. Even the modes of
feeling among the Christian peoples (connected as they are
by their common religion) here, where the peculiar principle
of the internal life should be most powerfully brought for
ward, are found to be so essentially different, that it would
be foolish to require any universal harmony, or to imagine
that any one nation could lay down effectual laws for the
other. In regard to tragedy and the higher drama at least,
so intimately are these connected with internal life and pecu
liar feeling, that every nation must be the inventor of its
own form and its own rules.
I am very far, then, from wishing to see the Spanish
drama or Calderon adopted as a perfect and exclusive model
for our theatre ; but I am so sensible of the high perfection
to which the Christian tragedy and drama attained in the
hands of that great and divine master, that I think he can
not be too much studied as a distant and inimitable speci
men of excellence, by any one who would make the bold
attempt to rescue the modern stage, either in Germany or
elsewhere, from the feeble and ineffectual state into which
it has fallen. Least of all is the external form of the Span
ish drama suitable for us. Its flowery fulness of images and
southern fancies may be excellent, where this overflowing
wealth is nature, but to imitate these qualities elsewhere is
the height of absurdity. The remarks which I have already
made on more occasions than one, with regard to the poeti
cal representation of mystical subjects, may be applicable in
general to those plays of Calderon which are in their import
allegoric and Christian.
The chief fault of Calderon for even he is not without
them is, that he, in other respects the best of all romantic
dramatists, carries us too quickly to the great denouement
of which I have spoken above ; for the effect which this
produces on us would have been veiy much increased by
our being kept longer in doubt, had he more frequently
314 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
characterised the riddle of human life with the profundity
of Shakespeare had he been less sparing in affording us, at
the commencement, glimpses of that light which should be
preserved and concentrated upon the conclusion of the
drama. Shakespeare has exactly the opposite fault, of too
often placing before our eyes, in all its mystery and per
plexity, the riddle of life, like a sceptical poet, without giv
ing us any hint of the solution. Even when he does bring
his drama to a last and a proper denouement, it is much
more frequently to one of utter destruction, after the man
ner of the old tragedians, or at least to one of an interme
diate and half-satisfactory nature, than to that termination
of perfect purification which is predominant in Calderon.
In the deepest recesses of his feeling and thought, it has
always struck me that Shakespeare is far more an ancient
I mean an ancient not of the Greek but of the Northern or
Scandinavian cast than a Christian. In some particulars
at least we must allow that the Spanish drama affords the
best of all models, particularly in regard to its comedy,
which is in every respect thoroughly romantic, and therefore
truly poetical. Even upon the stage no true success can
ever attend any attempts to raise the representation of the
prosaic reality to the rank of poetry, either by means of
psychological acumen, or the wit of society; and whoever
compares what go on other stages by the name of plays of
intrigue and plays of character, with the romantic witchery
of the pieces of Calderon, and his countrymen, will scarcely
be able to find words to express his sense of the immeasure-
able superiority of their poetical wealth over the poverty of
the German stage ; above all, over what passes for wit in
the comedies with which we are entertained.
The poetry of all the southern and Catholic countries
continued throughout the sixteenth, and even in the seven
teenth century, to partake of the same qualities, and undergo
the same vicissitudes. In the other countries of Europe, a
great rupture was produced by the reception of the Protes
tant faith, for the old creed could not be driven into con-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 315
tempt without carrying along with it a variety of images,
allusions, personifications, poetic traditions and legends, and
modes of poetical composition, which were more or less
intimately connected with it. As among the Protestant
countries, the one which retained most of the old system,
both in regard to the condition of the clergy, and the exter
nal forms of worship, was England, so here also was poetry
first cultivated in a rich and beautiful manner, and, it may
be added, in a manner resembling, in every important parti
cular, the poetry of the Catholic south ; this is sufficiently
manifest in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. There is no
occasion to recall to your remembrance how fond Shake
speare is of the romantic of the chivalrous time, and even of
the southern colouring of fancy ; Spenser is himself a poet
of chivalry, and both he and Milton followed romantic,
above all Italian, models. The nearer literature comes to
ourselves, the richer her productiveness appears in these
modern times, so much the more necessary does it become
for me to confine myself to those poets and those writers
alone, who mark the perfection of language, and cultivation
in their nations, and are on that account for other nations,
and for the whole world, the most important and instructive.
But in truth these three greatest poets of England contain
within themselves every thing that is really great and re
markable in regard to her elder literature of the sixteenth
and seventeenth ages.
The chivalrous poem of Spenser, the Fairy Queen, pre
sents us with a complete view of the spirit of romance
which yet lingered in England among the subjects of Eliza
beth ; that maiden queen who saw herself, with no ordinary
delight, deified while yet alive, by such playful fancies of
mythology and the muse. Spenser is a perfect master of
the picturesque ; in his lyrical pieces there breathes all the
tenderness of the Idyll, the very spirit of the Troubadours.
Not only in the species and manner of his poetry, but even
in his language, he bears the most striking resemblance
to our old German poets of love and chivalry. The history
316 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of the English literature was indeed quite the reverse of
ours. Chaucer is not unlike our poets of the sixteenth
century ; but Spenser is the near kinsman of the tender and
melodious poets of our older time. In every language
which is, like the English, the product of the blending of
two different dialects, there must always be two ideals,
according as the poet shall lean more to the one or the
other of the elements whereof his language is composed.
Of all the English poets, the most Teutonic is Spenser ;
while Milton, on the contrary, has an evident partiality to
the Latin part of the English tongue. The only unfortunate
part of Spenser s poetiy is its form. The allegory which he
has selected and made the groundwork of his chief poem, is
not one of that lively kind which prevails in the elder chi
valrous fictions, wherein the idea of a spiritual hero, and the
mysteries of his higher vocation, are concealed under the
likeness of external adventures and tangible events. It is
only a dead allegory, a mere classification of all the virtues-
of an ethical system ; in short, snch a one, that, but for the
proper names of the personages, we should never suspect
any part of their history to contain " more than meets
the ear."
The admiration with which Shakespeare regarded Spenser,
and the care with which he imitated him in his lyrical and
idyllic poems, are circumstances of themselves sufficient to
make us study, with the liveliest interest, the poem of the
Fairy Queen. It is in these minor pieces of Shakespeare,
that we are first introduced to a personal knowledge of the
great poet and his feelings. When he wrote sonnets, it
seems as if he had considered himself as more a poet than
when he wrote plays ; he was the manager of a theatre, and
he viewed the drama as his business ; on it he exerted all
his intellect and power : but when he had feelings intense and
secret to express, he had recourse to a form of writing with
which his habits had rendered him less familiar. It is
strange but delightful to scrutinise, in his short effusions,
the character of Shakespeare. In them we see, that he who
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 317
stood like a magician above the world, penetrating with one
glance into alTtTie depths, and mysteries, and perplexities
of human character, and having power to call up into open
day the darkest workings of human passions that this
great being was not deprived of any portion of his human
sympathies by the elevation to which he was raised, but
preserved, amidst all his stern functions, a heart overflow
ing with tenderness, purity, and love. His feelings are
intense, profound, acute almost to selfishness, but he ex
presses them so briefly and modestly, as to form a strange
contrast with most of those poets who write concerning
themselves. For the right understanding of his dramatic
works, these lyrics are of the greatest importance. They
show us, that in his dramas he very seldom speaks according
to his own feelings, or his own thoughts, but according to
his knowledge. The world lay clear and distinct before his
eyes, but between him and it there was a deep gulf fixed.
He gives us a portrait of what he saw, without flattery
or ornament, having the charm of unrivalled accuracy and
truth. Were understanding, acuteness, and profoundness
of thought, (in so far as these are necessary for the charac
terising of human life,) to be considered as the first qualities
of a poet, there is none worthy to be compared with Shake
speare. Other poets have endeavoured to transport us, at
least for a few moments, into another and an ideal condition
of mankind. But Shakespeare is the master of reality ; he
sets before us, with a truth that is often painful, man in his
degraded state, in this corruption which penetrates and con
taminates all his being, all that he does and suffers, all the
thoughts and aspirations of his fallen spirit. In this respect,
he may not unfrequently be said to be a satirical poet ; and
well, indeed, may the picture which he presents of human
debasement, and the enigma of our being, be calculated to
produce an effect far more deep and abiding than the whole
body of splenetic and passionate revilers, whom we com
monly call by the name of satiric poets. In the midst of
all the bitterness of Shakespeare, we perceive continually
318 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
glimpses of thoughts and recollections niote pure than sati
rists partake in ; meditation on the original height and ele
vation of man the peculiar tenderness and noble minded
sentiment of a poet ; the dark world of his representation
is illuminated with the most beautiful rays of patriotic in
spiration, serene philanthropy, and glowing love.
But even the youthful glow of love appears in his Romeo
as the mere inspiration of death, and is mingled with the
same sceptical and melancholy views of life which, in Ham
let, give to all our being an appearance of more than natural
discord and perplexity, and which, in Lear, carry sorrow
and passion into the utmost misery of madness. This poet,
who externally seems to be most calm and temperate, clear and
lively, with whom intellect seems every where to prepon
derate who, as we at first imagine, regards and represents
every thing almost with coldness, is found, if we examine
into the internal feelings of his spirit, to be of all others the
most deeply sorrowful and tragic.
Shakespeare regarded the drama as entirely a thing for
the people, and at first treated it throughout as such. He
took the popular comedy as he found it, and whatever en
largements and improvements he introduced into the stage,
were all calculated and conceived according to the peculiar
spirit of his predecessors and of the audience in London.
Even in the earliest of his tragic attempts, he takes possess
ion of the whole superstitions of the vulgar, and mingles in
his poetry, not only the gigantic greatness of their rude
traditions, but also the fearful, the horrible, and the revolt
ing. All these, again, are blended with such representations
and views of human debasement as passed, or still pass,
with common spectators for wit, but were connected in the
depths of his reflective and penetrating spirit, with the very
different feelings of bitter contempt or sorrowful sympathy.
He was not, in knowledge, far less in art, such as, since the
time of Milton, it has been usual to represent him. But
I believe that the inmost feelings of his heart, the depths of
his peculiar, concentrated, and solitary spirit, could be
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 319
agitated only by the mournful voice of nature. The feeling
by which he seems to have been most connected with ordi
nary men is that of nationality. He has represented the
heroic and glorious period of English history, during the
conquests in France, in a series of dramatic pieces which
possess all the simplicity and liveliness of the ancient
chronicles, but approach, in their ruling spirit of patriotism
and glory, to the most dignified and effectual productions of
the epic muse.
In the works of Shakespeare a whole world is unfolded.
He who has once comprehended this, and been penetrated
with its spirit, will not easily allow the effect to be dimi
nished by the form, or listen to the cavils of those who are
incapable of understanding the import of what they would
criticise. The form of Shakespeare s writings will rather
appear to him good and excellent, because in it his spirit is
expressed and clothed, as it were, in a convenient garment.
The poetry of Shakespeare is near of kin to the spirit of the
Germans, and he is more felt and beloved by them than any
other foreign, I had almost said, than any vernacular, poet.
Even in England, the understanding of Shakespeare is
rendered considerably more difficult, in consequence of the
resemblance which many very inferior writers bear to him in
those points which come most immediately before the eye.
In Germany, we admire Shakespeare, and are free from
this disadvantage ; but we should beware of adopting either
the form or the sentiment of this great poet s writings as the
exclusive model of our own. They are indeed, in them
selves, most highly poetical, but they are far from being the
only poetical ones ; and the dramatic art may attain per
fection in many other ways besides the Shakesperian.
The delightful chivalry of Spenser, and the freedom of
the universal Shakespeare, were misunderstood, contemned,
and even persecuted, after the spirit of fanaticism, which,
in the days of Elizabeth and James, had existed only as a
hidden disorder, burst forth at once in all its power and
offensiveness, in all its overwhelming and disgusting viru-
320 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
lence, under Charles I. Shakespeare was, in a peculiar
manner, an object of hatred to the Puritans, for whom he
certainly seems to have had no partiality, exactly as he
still is to their descendants the Methodists, and other similar
sects, which are at present so powerful in Britain. But,
although the Puritans disliked Shakespeare, they were by
no means without poetry ; on the contrary, in the bosom of
their sect and age, there was produced a poet who must
ever be classed with the first and most remarkable of his
nation, and of the world. The poetry of the world and
human nature was held as unlawful among the bigots ; the
art which would express the image of that time was obliged
to be entirely directed towards spiritual concerns, as is the
case with the ever-serious and stately muse of Milton. The
Paradise Lost partakes in all those difficulties and defects,
which, as I have already said, attend all Christian poems
which attempt to make the mysteries of our religion the
subjects of their fiction. It is strange that Milton did not
observe, that the loss of Paradise forms in itself no complete
whole, but is only the first act of the great Christian history
of man, wherein the creation, the fall, and the redemption,
are all equally necessary parts of one mighty drama. It is
true that he sought afterwards to remove this main defect
by the addition of the Paradise Regained, but this poem is
too insignificant in its purpose and size to be worthy of
forming the keystone to the great work. When compared
with the Catholic poets, Dante and Tasso, who were his
models, Milton, as a Protestant, laboured under consider
able disadvantages, by being entirely denied the use of a
great many symbolical representations, histories, and tradi
tions, which were in their hands the most graceful orna
ments of Christian poetry. He was sensible of this, and
attempted to make amends for the defect by adopting fables
and allegories out of the Koran and the Talmud, such as are
extremely unfit for the use of a serious Christian poet. The
excellence of his epic work consists, therefore, not in the
plan of the whole, so much as in particular beauties and
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 321
passages, and in general in the perfection of the high lan
guage of poetry. The unusual admiration which was at
tracted to Milton in the eighteenth century rested upon par
ticular traits and representations of paradisaic innocence and
beauty, and upon the picture of hell, and the character of its
inhabitants, whom this poet has depicted in a style great
and almost antique, as giants of the abyss. Whether it
has, upon the whole, been advantageous for the English
language of poetry that it has been leaning more to the
Latin than to the Teutonic side, that it has followed Milton
more than Spenser this is a point which I cannot help
viewing as extremely doubtful. If such a leaning, however,
was to take place, there is no question that Milton was the
best model in that way, and in many respects well entitled
to be himself the standard of the high and serious poetical
language of England. But the truth is, that any exclusive
standard is injurious in a language so composed of opposite
elements as the English is ; for it is the very nature of such
a language, if not to be perpetually vacillating between two
extremes, yet certainly to retain the freedom of approxi
mating more nearly at different times to the two opposite
boundaries of its domain. The whole wealth of the English
tongue, powerful as it is in this mixture, and the various
modifications which that admits of, can only be appreciated
by those who study it in Shakespeare.
After the Puritan period had passed away, the English
literature and language began to be infected with another
species of barbarism ; the adoption of the then corrupted
but predominant taste of the French. It was not till the
full restoration of political freedom took place, at the close
of the seventeenth century, that intellect recovered from
the oppression under which it had lain. So deeply had the
foreign taste taken root, that the eighteenth century had
commenced before the old poets of the nation began to be
as it were discovered, and brought into light out of oblivion.
The French literature possessed, in the latest Burgundian
times, under Francis I. and in the sixteenth century,.^
322 HISTORY OP LITERATURE.
great abundance of those historical memoirs of which it
has at all times been so productive ; pictures after the life,
which, by their exquisite representation of individuals, and
by the immense number of traits, the immediate offspring
of personal observation, have the effect of entirely trans
porting us back into the manners, society, and general
spirit of the age depicted. The peculiar talent for applying,
in a tone of social intercourse, a species of light and sar
castic philosophy to the ordinary affairs of life, was in like
manner very early developed among the French. I need
only allude to two great masters in these two different
walks of literature, Philip de Commines and Montaigne.
The old French language is for the most part careless, inac
curate, and perplexed with intricate periods, but along with
all these defects it possesses, in the hands of Montaigne, and
some of the better writers of the old time, a certain naivete
and natural tone of sentiment, which are the more charming,
on account of the careless and unaffected style in which
they are expressed. But that, upon the whole, the French
language of the sixteenth century was extremely ill adapted,
either for poetry or wit that it was altogether unworthy of
being compared with the languages of the neighbouring
countries and gave little promise of the noble and tasteful
perfection to which itself has since attained all this may
easily be gathered from Marot and Rabelais, in spite of the
high talents which both of these writers possess. If we
take a general view of the neglected, uncultivated, and, in
many respects, barbarous condition of the older French
literature and language, we cannot fail to consider the
changes introduced into both, by Cardinal Richelieu, and
the academy of which he was the founder, as a very neces
sary and fortunate one. The literary supremacy of the new
academy was indeed, like the political sway of its head, a
yoke of iron ; its operations partook of the celerity and deci
sion of despotism. The regulation of language was its first
attempt, and this certainly was very soon crowned with the
most complete success. In prose this is universally to be
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 323
Seen : not only the first and most celebrated writers, but we
might almost say all the writers of the last part of the
seventeenth century, are distinguished by a peculiar charm
of noble style. We have only to reflect on the immense
number of letters, memoirs, (even of women,) tracts of men
of business, none of them ever intended for the press, and
composed by persons who made no pretensions to the cha
racter of writers ; all these are remarkable for a peculiar and
graceful taste, of which scarcely any trace is to be discovered
among the French authors of the succeeding age. Among
the poets, I think that, at the same period, Racine attained,
in language and versification, a point of harmonious perfec
tion, even beyond what has been reached by Milton in
English, or even Virgil in Latin, and very far superior to
any thing which has ever since been seen in France. With
a view to the poetry itself, and even for its language, it is
true there is much reason to wish that, along with this
skilful perfection, a little more freedom had been left ; that
the elder French poetry of the chivalrous period, which, as
we have seen, produced not a little of beautiful and lovely,
both in regard to language and invention, had not been so
entirely and without exception thrown aside. It might
have been quite possible to unite, as was done by the
Italians, and by some other nations, the perfection of a rich
and earnest style with the poetical spirit of chivalry. The
French language and poetry might then have preserved a
great deal more of that romantic tendency and old poetical
freedom which Voltaire so often wished they could regain,
and which he himself attempted, although with very imper
fect success, to restore. Yet such a forgetting and total
contemning of all that has gone before is inseparable from
every great and entire change, even in literature. It was a
revolution. As might have been expected, much secret
opposition at all times remained against the harsh sway,
and this became more and more apparent, when, in the
days of the Regent and Lewis XV., the French learned to
think, with even increasing earnestness, after the freedom
524: HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of the English, not only in civil affairs, but also in literature
and in language. In consequence of the irregular, and in
part ill-intentioned manner wherein these inclinations were
gratified, and the foreign modes introduced and rendered
predominant, there arose, during the time of these princes,
that corruption of taste which, having gradually attained its
summit, broke out into the wildest appearances of anarchy,
even before the revolution, and which, like other rebels will,
I fear, be with great difficulty ever completely reconciled to
the restoration of the ancient obedience.
The true flourishing period of the French poetry was the
latter half of the sixteenth century. Ronsard, in the six
teenth century, was only the remote forerunner of the great
poets of the age of Lewis XIV. ; Voltaire, in the eighteenth,
was only their ingenious follower, who attempted, with some
times great, and sometimes very indifferent success, to sup
ply what he conceived to be the chief defects of the poets of
his own time. The true defect which presses most severely
on the French poetry is this, that the cultivation of the more
artificial species was not preceded by any truly classical,
successful, and national epic poem. Ronsard, indeed, at
tempted this, nor is he without fire and energy, but his
style is full of false bombast ; as it often happens that when
any one attempts to make a sudden escape from barbarous
rudeness he is very apt to fall into the opposite defect of
far-sought, pedantic, and artificial expression. Of all the
poets, even including those of Italy, who have corrupted
their language by desiring to make it too much like that of
antiquity, the defect is most visible in the writings of Ron
sard. Even the choice of the subject in his Franciade, must
be considered as extremely unhappy. Had a French poet
chosen some part of the ancient national history to be the
groundwork of an epic poem, he might have been excused
for introducing, by way of episode, the fable which traces
the Franks from the heroes of Troy an absurd fable to be
sure, but one which was very commonly believed among the
knights and minstrels of the middle ages. But it was cerr
HISTORY OP LITERATURE. 325
tainly an unfortunate idea to think of making such a foolish
legend the very basis of the epopee. The achievements and
fortunes of St Lewis might, in many respects, have appeared
the best subject of an epic poem for a poet of old France ; for
they stand in the most intimate connexion with the whole
world of romance, and in the midst of all the seriousness of
historic truth ; and the associations of patriotism and piety,
connected with the adventures of a sainted hero, present to
the fancy as wide a range as could have been produced by
the most perfect rejection of every thing either true or natu
ral. The only difficulty was that presented by the ill-fated
termination of the crusade of St Lewis. In the story of the
Maid of Orleans, which was selected by Chapelain, the dif
ficulty consisted in this, that the heroine who delivered
France, was betrayed into the hands of her enemies, and
abandoned to a shameful death by the hands of her own
countrymen, who had, in the former part of her life, deified
and adored her The same thing which has often happened
in the history of French heroes, occurred in literature to Ron-
sard. He was praised beyond all bounds in his own lifetime,
and exalted to the very heavens ; immediately afterwards
he fell to the dust, and past into the most perfect oblivion.
But the name of Ronsard is still one which must not be
omitted in the history of literary France ; for it is undeni
able that the great Corneille, the friend and admirer of Cha
pelain, had formed himself in the elder school of Ronsard,
or at least reminds us, every now and then, of the peculi
arities of his diction.
The tragedy of the French is considered by themselves as
the most brilliant part of their literature, and as such has
ever attracted the chief attention of other nations. Their -
tragedy expresses so abundantly their national character
and mode of feeling, that there is no difficulty in conceiving
why they should have come to think so highly of it, even
although the subjects of its earlier productions are almost
never taken from their own national history. It is not in
deed to be denied, that all these Greeks, Romans, Span-
326 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
iards, and Turks, whom it represents to us, are Frenchmen
in many things besides their language ; yet it is certainly
unfortunate that the French tragedy has remained almost
entirely foreign, and very rarely represented French heroes.
The circumstance is probably to be explained by the want
of any successful and universally known French epic poem.
Besides, the most tragical incidents in the old French his
tory could not fail to excite disagreeable recollections and
comparisons, ill adapted for the purpose of a stage entirely
dependent upon the court. It was the great defect in French
literature, that an authoritative tone of appeal to the na
tional feeling was kept up by no one species of serious
poetry above all, that this was utterly lost sight of by
their first tragedians. The defect was well understood by
Voltaire, and he attempted to remedy the evil by choosing
subjects out of the old French history, and more generally
by introducing the feelings and manners of the chivalrous
period upon the stage. The national feelings which he en
deavoured to excite, did not begin to display themselves
till considerably after ; but the glory is indisputably his, of
having succeeded, in romantic tragedy, beyond any other of
his countrymen.
Although, however, the subjects of French tragedy, are,
with a few exceptions, foreign, yet this whole department
of their literature is, without doubt, in the highest degree
expressive of the peculiar turn and feeling of the French
spirit and character. I therefore gladly recognise in it a spe
cies of poetry highly perfect in its execution, and thoroughly
national in its tendency ; but the more natural it is, the less
is it adapted to be the standard and model of any other
theatre. It is the duty of every nation to be the inventors-"
and creators of their own drama.
The form of the French tragedy is regarded by most as a
mere imitation of the Greek, and judged of by that standard ;
but it ought to be recollected that the great masters of the
French stage were themselves the first who suggested the
fact to us, and pointed this out in their prefaces, as the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 327
proper point of view from which their productions should be
contemplated. Racine appears in this respect to the great
est advantage ; he speaks with a true and lively knowledge
of the Greeks, which we should in vain seek for in any of
the other French writers ; and if his judgment be not always
satisfactory to us, (for the Greeks have been much more ac
curately studied since his time than before it,) we can yet
recognise, in all that he says, a feeling of the excellence of
their art and poetry, which none but great poets, such as
Racine himself was, are capable of possessing. Corneille,
in his prefaces, is always battling with Aristotle and his
commentators, who are indeed very often much in his way,
till at the close we find him ratifying either a total capitula
tion or a hollow truce with those fatal enemies of all poeti
cal freedom. We cannot avoid being surprised at the humi
lity with which this mighty genius seems to submit himself
to fetters so confining, and so entirely self-imposed. The
prefaces and dissertations of Voltaire always open with the
same assertions, namely, that the French nation, and, if
possible, still more the French stage, is the first in the world,
and that nevertheless Corneille and Racine, with all their
excellencies, have left very much to be done. The reader
is commonly left in a situation which enables him very
easily to discover who is, in Voltaire s opinion, the great
genius destined to supply all these defects, and to surpass
Corneille and Racine as much as they do the tragedians of
foreign nations.
That the form of the Grecian tragedy, and the celebrated
treatise of Aristotle, (as it is understood by them,) have in
many respects confined and injured the French poets that
a great part of the law of the three unities, more particu
larly of those of time and place, is absurd, and in total oppo
sition to the true nature of poetry, in which we do not
consider physical possibility with arithmetical exactness,
but rather judge according to the effect produced on the
imagination by a verisimilitude not historical but poetical,
all this has been so frequently handled since the time of
328 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Lessing, that it is needless to revive a contest which has
been so often fought with the same issue. There is only
one observation which I shall make, and that is of the his
torical kind ; of all the French writers, the one who did
most to establish the enslaving influence of the mistaken
Greek models and critics, was Boileau. How hurtful the
effects of his precepts must have freen on the French poetry,
may be gathered from the one fact, that he treats Corneille
with almost the same severity as Chapelain. What gives
the most perfect idea of the man is, to my view, that well
known maxim of his, " of a rhyming couplet, the last verse
should, if possible, be first made." Instead of the true
judgment and feeling of art, in his own criticism, he is fond
of a species of ridicule which is in general by no means the
most delicate ; and instead of poetry, he is most anxious for
a full and perfect rhyme. I perfectly agree with the opinion
of Racine, who wrote in these terms to his son, concerning
his friend Boileau, " Boileau is an excellent man, but at
bottom he knows absolutely nothing about poetry."
Another great rule of this critic is the one borrowed from
Horace, according to which a work of intellect should be as
many years before it is published, as a human child lies
mouths in the womb before it is born. In spite, however,
of all the authority of Boileau, there is no doubt that the
Athalie of Racine, and the Cid of Corneille, which I must
always hold to be the two most glorious productions of
French poetry, were neither of them subjected to any such
process of tedious elaboration, but both brought at once
before the world in the inspiration and glow of their first
conception. These two creations, the finest of which the
French stage can boast, may best inform us what height
that stage has reached, and at what point it has been
obliged to stop in its imitation of the nobler drama of the
Greeks.
However little the modern expounders of Aristotle may
be aware of its consequences, the fact itself is sufficiently
certain, that the lyrical songs form the essential part in the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 329
tragedy of the ancients ; that the dialogue is a mere appen
dix and interlude to the chorus, not the chorus to the
dialogue ; and that he who would imitate this species of
writing with success, must be at least as much a lyrical as
a dramatic poet. The Cid of Corneille is intensely lyrical,
and the tone of this inspiration alone gives it that magical
power, against which envy and criticism are of no avail.
Racine, in his Athalie, has restored the chorus of antiquity,
with many alterations no doubt, but in a manner which
seems to me exquisitely adapted for the purposes which he
had in view. Had the French tragedy advanced further
in the path pointed out by its two greatest masters. in their
two most excellent productions, I have no doubt it might
have approached, much more nearly than it has done, to
the power and dignity of the antique ; many of the narrow
fetters, imposed by mere prosaic misunderstanding, would of
themselves have dropt away, and the genius of the drama,
being more at liberty, would certainly have attempted
achievements of higher ambition than any to which it has
as yet aspired.
The universal custom of striking out the lyrical part of
the ancient tragedy, was productive of a very great incon
venience ; more particularly when the subject of the drama
happened to be one of those same mythological legends
which had of old been handled by the Greeks. When the
lyrical part is taken away, the plot was found to be too little
to fill up the tragedy, and recourse was had to the same
means of supplying the vacant space, which had been
adopted by the ancients themselves when their drama was
on its decline. The plot was thickened by a crowd of inter
polated intrigues, extremely hurtful to the purpose and
dignity of tragedy ; or else the whole was filled up with that
rhetoric of the passions, which every tragical subject aifords
such easy means of introducing. In one point of view this
last expedient has been of great advantage to the French
tragedy ; it has lent to it a strength which it wants in all
other respects, and enabled it to express, with great effect,
330 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the character and spirit of a nation, among whom, in all
their relations, rhetoric has always exerted the greatest
influence whose private life itself is filled in a great mea
sure with this very rhetoric of the passions. Besides, a
certain measure of this rhetoric is a necessary and indispen
sable element of all dramatic representation. The thing is,
no doubt, overdone in the French tragedy ; but its prepon
derance there is founded upon national feeling, and any
attempt to imitate the peculiarity^would be quite absurd
among any foreign people more particularly among those
who have greater feeling for poetry than natural talent for
rhetoric.
The partiality of the French for this rhetorical part of
their tragedy is so great, that the decision of the audience
is founded much more upon the oratory of the individual
speeches, than the dramatic connexion and effect of the
whole piece. But if we attend to those parts of their drama
of which they themselves are in general negligent, and
study in particular those plays which have a true and poeti
cal denouement of the kind which I have above described,
we shall find that, even in this respect, the French tragedy
is the child of the antique ; that its termination is in general
one of complete destruction, or that, if there be any soften
ing, the sorrow still continues to be by far the predominant
material. There are indeed a few delightful exceptions.
In his Athalie, Racine shows himself to be a Christian poet,
and brings victory out of the conflict ; and in the Alzire, in
like manner, death and suffering are represented as the
avenues of eternal life and blessedness. This last play is
the masterpiece of Voltaire ; in it he appears indeed worthy
of his two illustrious predecessors.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 331
LECTURE xnr.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BACON, HUGO GROTIUS, DESCARTES,
BOSSUET, PASCAL CHANGE IN THE MODE OF THINKING SPIRIT OF THE EIGHT
EENTH CENTURY PICTURE OF THE ATHEISM AND REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OP
THE FRENCH.
THE seventeenth century was rich in distinguished writers,
not only in elegant literature, poetry, and eloquence, but
also in the sciences and in philosophy. The philosophy and
system of thinking which belonged to the eighteenth cen
tury, which during that period extended themselves over all
the departments of literature, and even acquired a most
determinate influence over the fate of men and of nations,
these were not without their precursors in the age imme
diately preceding ; although it is true that the first founders
and establishers of the new doctrines soon ceased to attract
much attention, after their labours were surmounted by the
more imposing structures of their successors. It is abso
lutely necessary, however, to take into view Bacon, Des
cartes, Locke, and some other of the heroes of the seventeenth
century, before we can rightly depict or understand the true
nature of those intellectual and moral changes which were
introduced by Voltaire and Rousseau, not only into France,
but into all Europe, and in general into the whole spirit of
the eighteenth century.
The sixteenth century was the age of ferment and strife,
and it was only towards its close that the human mind
began to calm and collect itself after the violent convulsion
it had undergone. With the seventeenth century com
menced that new mode of reflection and inquiry to which
the way had been laid open by the restoration of classical
learning, the great improvement in natural science, and that
universal shaking and separation of faith occasioned by the
332 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
reformation of Luther. The first name to which we turn is
that of the great Bacon. This mighty genius, by carrying
the spirit of inquiry out of the verbal contentions of the
dead schools, into the regions of experience, above all of
life and nature, has become the father of modern physics :
he made and completed many illustrious discoveries himself,
of many more he seems to have had a dim and imperfect
foresight ; it is the work of ages to follow out the hints
which are dropped by such a spirit in the progress of its ex
cursions. By means of his rich and indefatigable intellect,
the whole sciences of experience have been immeasurably
enlarged, or rather they have been entirely regenerated ; the
common shape of mind, nay, we may say, the common shape
of life, in modem Europe, has received a spark of new ani
mation from the inspiring touch of this Prometheus. The
dangerous consequences produced by the injudicious exten
sion of his principles, at the time when his followers and
admirers in the eighteenth century thought they could de
rive more than he had ever dreamed of, from experience
and the senses the laws of life and commerce, and the just
notion of faith and hope and threw away from them, as
mysticism, whatever cannot be proved by the common ex
perience of sense : these, indeed, were alarming and repre
hensible, but they cannot be with justice ascribed to the
spirit of Bacon. I need only recall to your recollection one
celebrated saying of his, which has by no means become
obsolete, that philosophy, when studied superficially, leads
to unbelief and atheism, but when profoundly understood, is
sure to produce veneration for God, and to render faith in
him the ruling principle of our life. Not only in religion,
but even in natural science, this great man believed in many
things which have been despised as mere superstitions by
his followers and admirers in later times. It is not easy to
suppose that he was influenced, in regard to these matters,
by the mere faith of custom, and some not yet overcome
attachment to the common prejudices of his day. For in
truth his expressions concerning the world above the senses,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 333
bear as much as any part of his writings, the clear impress
of his penetrative and peculiar spirit. He was a man who
had as much feeling as invention ; and although the world
of experience had revealed itself to him in altogether a new
light, the higher and divine region of the spiritual world,
which is situated far above common experience and sense,
was not viewed by him either obscurely or remotely. How
little he himself partook, I will not say, in the rude mate
rialism of his followers ; but even in that spiritual deification
of nature which became fashionable in France, and, though
in a lesser degree, in Germany, during the eighteenth cen
tury, this may be abundantly proved by a simple maxim
which he has uttered respecting the proper essence of true
and philosophical inquiry in physics. In the natural philo
sophy of the ancients, says he, there is this to blame, that
they held nature to be an image of the Godhead ; for, ac
cording to truth, with which also the Christian doctrine has
no variance, man alone is a type and image of God, while
nature is no glass, likeness, or similitude of him, but only
the work of his hands. By the natural philosophy of the
ancients, it is sufficiently evident, from the extensive form
of Bacon s argument, that he here meant to designate not
any one particular system, but in general every thing most
good and excellent in the opinions of the ancients concern
ing natural philosophy a term under which it is besides
more than probable that he comprehended not physical
science alone, but mythology and natural religion. When
Bacon, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures, asserts
that it is the privilege of man alone to be an image of the
Deity, we are not to understand that he had ascribed to man
this high and peculiar excellence, merely as being the most
glorious and complex of all natural productions ; he took the
language of the Bible in its literal sense, and believed this
resemblance and image to be the gift of God s love and in
spiration. In the figurative expression, that nature is no
mirror or image of God, but only the work of his hand, there
may be found, if we understand it in its due profoundness
334 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of meaning, a perfect statement of the true relation between
the world subject and the world superior to the senses
between God and nature. It expresses that nature is not
self-originating or self-existent, but a production of the
divine will for a particular purpose. We may obtain from
this short and simple maxim respecting the natural philoso
phy of the ancients, and that of the Christian Scriptures,
and of Bacon, a clear and intelligible guide to point out the
right path between the dangers of impious veneration for
nature on the one hand ; and on the other, of that dark
aversion for nature into which confined and partial reason
too often falls, when, directing itself entirely to morality, it
can neither understand external nature, nor the Deity who
is alike predominant over the natural and the moral world.
The proper distinction and relation between nature and
Deity, is the leading principle not only of all thought and
belief, but of human life and intercourse. This circum
stance, and the saying of Bacon, which embraces the result
of all his reflections concerning nature, are the more worthy
of our attention, because, even in our own time, philosophy
is still, for the most part, divided between these two ex
tremes ; the one that culpable deification of nature, which
distinguishes not between the Creator and his works God
and the world ; the other, the hatred and blindness of those
despisers of nature, whose reason is too exclusively egotis
tical in its direction. The right middle-path between these
two opposite errors, or the true_jecognition of nature, finds
its expression in the feeling which we have of our own in
ternal connexion with nature, as well as of our superiority
over it, and in that peculiar reverence and admiration with
which we regard all those parts of nature that have in them
something of a higher and different character all of lovely
or of lawful ; which reveals to us, in a more striking man
ner, the traces of a fashioning hand and a superintending
intellect.
The influence exerted during the seventeenth and a great
part of the eighteenth centuries over philosophy and univer-
HISTORY OP LITERATURE. 335
sal thought, by Lord Bacon, was not more considerable
than that of Hugo Grotius over the practical and political
world, and the general eithics of international intercourse.
And in truth this influence was a happy and wholesome
one ; for as, after the dissolution of that religious bond which
formerly united the western nations in one political system,
the universal and impious statesmanship of Machiavelli had
always been becoming more and more the favourite rule of
conduct, surely no greater service could be rendered to
humanity, than giving to self- destroying Europe an univer
sal and composing law for all her nations unhappily so
much divided in faith, so much inflamed in passions, and so
much corrupted by the prevalence of a doctrine alike abound
ing in sophistry and vice. Hugo Grotius was universally
acknowledged to have accomplished this noble purpose. It
is an elevating thought that a mere man of letters, a philo
sopher, having no power except that of his own intelligence
and eloquence, should have been the unassisted founder of
such a system of national law : as he gained by his exertions
the veneration of his contemporaries, so he is no less entit
led to the gratitude and admiration of posterity. If we con
sider it as a system, the national law founded and introduced
by Hugo Grotius and his followers may appear indeed ex
tremely defective, and be sufficiently open to the cavils of a
sceptic. The religious bond of the elder political union was
an irremediable loss. In the absence of this the doctrine of
right was now to be founded entirely upon the innate and
necessary ideas of men respecting their own social place and
destination. The more entirely the universal morality was
grounded by Grotius and his followers on nature and reason,
and conducted according to the capabilities of these imper
fect guides, the more did the first great fountain of all
morality come to be neglected ; and the more unavoidably
did it happen that both the theoiy and practice of national
law lost themselves in a multitude of useless, and, in part at
least, inextricable difficulties and niceties, on the one side
and on the other, in a set of conclusions which were no less
336 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
dangerous than extravagant. It is indeed difficult to con>
pute how much evil, both in opinion and in action, was pro
duced by the doctrines of natural right, and the statesman
ship of reason, in the last half of the eighteenth century.
Yet it must always remain a great benefit, that through the
doctrine of international law, extended and recognised by
means of Grotius, a mighty bulwark was placed before the
encroaching stream of corruption for at least one full cen
tury. From 1648 to 1740 there is no doubt that many evi
dent and great outrages against international justice were
committed, but they were all exclaimed against ; and it was
much that power and ambition were thus subjected to some
constraint, and compelled to observe at least the appear
ances of rectitude. Even from 1740 to 1772 these benefi
cial effects were still displayed ; and, although certainly in
a less degree, perhaps even in the more stormy and tumul
tuous period which succeeded. Now, indeed, the nations of
Europe have undergone a second great convulsion, and as
peoples and states have been so much changed, it is no
wonder that the old rules and forms, by which their inter
course was regulated, should have passed away.
Of all the writers who have produced a great and univer
sal effect on the practical world, and the political relations
of Europe, the influence of Grotius has certainly been the
most salutary. In regard to the importance of his works,
he can only be compared with Machiavelli before, and Rous
seau after him.
In addition to his labours for the restoration and recog
nition of justice and its theory, the active intellect of Grotius
was also exerted in the attempt to set forth the truth of reli
gion in a formal, and, so to speak, in a rational manner. It
was one of the indirect effects of Protestantism that religion
came to be perpetually looked upon as a subject of conten
tion, and consequently to be treated as a matter of reason
an error which formed besides a part of the original spirit
and system of the second great leader of the Reformation,
Calvin. Grotius has had many followers in an attempt, of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 337
which the audacity seems every day more remarkable, al
though there can be no reason to doubt the excellence of his
motives. In itself, I must consider it as a sure token of
declining religion, that what is by nature a matter of the
most internal feeling and lively faith, should be embraced as
a business of mere reason, and considered as the fit subject
of learned controversy that the truth of religion should be
handled like a process of civil law, or, what is still worse, as
Pascal would have desired to see it, like the solution of a
regular problem in geometry.
I cannot bring myself to look upon the philosophical la
bours of Descartes as equally important with those of these
two great men ; his influence upon his own age, and the fol
lowing one, was rather dangerous and productive of error,
than salutary and truly vivifying. In general, Descartes
appears to me a perfect proof that a man may be, at least
as the exact sciences have as yet been cultivated, a great
mathematician, (which he certainly was for his age,) with
out being on that account the more successful in philosophy.
It is true, that those hypotheses, from which Descartes
attempted to explain not only all the separate facts in
physics, but even the origin of the universe, have been long
forgotten. His system possessed only for a very short time
its supremacy, and was, in fact, never very much extended
out of France. Yet his strange hypothesis of the vortices
was not without a considerable and even abiding effect upon
the spirit of the seventeenth, and through that, of the eight
eenth century. Above all, his method, as he calls it, or the
mode in which he began to philosophise, has found many
imitators. It was the great object of his desire to be through
out an original thinker, in the strictest and most perfect sense
of the word. For this purpose, he resolved to forget, once for
all, every thing he had before known, thought, or believed,
and to begin entirely anew. Of course, all the philosophers
and inquirers of preceding ages were entirely neglected, and
their labours overlooked as matters unworthy of notice by
this original reflector. Were it possible at pleasure to throw
338 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
entirely and effectually aside the thread of inherited thought,
(by which we are, in spite of ourselves, inseparably con
nected through language,) the consequences of this could be
no other than destruction. The case would be exactly as if
some innovator in the political world should dream himself
capable of stopping the great wheel of public life, and of
substituting, in place of that complicated machinery which a
nation has formed for itself in the progress and struggle of
ages, some simpler, and, as he thinks, better invention of his
own devising, a constitution springing fresh and pure from
his own unassisted reason. The absurdity of any attempt
to attain either philosophical truth or political faultlessness
by such contempt and oblivion of the past, has been demon
strated by many unhappy examples in the history both of
nations and of literature. The most natural consequence
of all such attempts is, that the inquirer neither sees nor
avoids those first and usual errors into which human reason
is most apt to fall, when it attempts to discover truth en
tirely by its own power ; errors are thus needlessly revived,
and even held up as great discoveries, which have already
been often corrected or confuted. As for the total oblivion
of all that has gone before us, that, as I have said above, is
an impossibility ; so impossible is it to erect any fabric of
perfect and independent originality in philosophy, that Des
cartes is by no means the only one of these self-satisfied
philosophers, whose most boasted and original opinions turn
out, after all, to be mere new versions of what had been
often said, in different words, by their predecessors. The
borrowing is indeed unintentional, but it is produced by a
mixture of imperfect self-deception, and obscured, but not
extinguished, reminiscence. It is usually supposed to have
been a great merit of Descartes, that he drew so perfect
a line between spirit and matter. It must, however, appear
unquestionably somewhat strange and surprising, that it
should have been looked on as something so new and origi
nal to make a distinction between intellect and body ; but,
in truth, the mode in which Descartes made his distinction
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 339
was so unsatisfactory, and merely mathematical, that no
good resulted from it, and the whole thoughts of those who
adopted it were lost in inextricable difficulties, in the attempt
to explain the connexion between soul and body, and their
mutual influences upon each other. Philosophy continued,
after the time of Descartes, to vacillate between the prin
ciple of personal consciousness, and the world of the senses,
one set of inquirers vainly endeavouring to explain every
thing on the former ; and another, still more absurdly, to
deduce from the experience of the latter, even those doc
trines of morality and theology with which it has not the
smallest connexion. In every case, the true relation be
tween the soul and the senses remained entirely incompre
hensible, so long as men had lost all sight of that higher and
godlike region upon which both depend, and from whose
light both must first be illuminated and explained. We
often hear Descartes praised for the mathematical precision
with which he has, from reason alone, described the being
of God. If this be a merit, in my opinion, it does not belong
to him : it was an idea borrowed from those elder philoso
phers of the middle age, who were treated with so much
contempt by Descartes and his age. It is true, that they
considered the matter in a point of view quite different from
that of Descartes and the period following their own. To
the highest of all truths, of which, in a way peculiar to
itself, we have also the most firm and fearless knowledge,
and which forms, in fact, the animating spirit and central
point of all other thoughts and impressions, even of all the
active purposes and views of life, to this truth these old
philosophers attempted, with modesty and perseverance, to
add the additional and far inferior arguments of reason. As
every creature, or being in nature, makes known involun
tarily, in one way or another, the inscrutable greatness of
its Creator, so may also the human reason, otherwise so
vain of itself, and its own powers, be permitted to join the
general chorus which does honour to the Deity. As in hu
man affairs, it is always looked upon as the highest triumph
340 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of a good and right cause, when even its enemies and oppo
nents are compelled to bear unwilling witness to its truth
and excellence, so also may the reason of man be admitted
to furnish evidence of divine truth. But if we attempt,
after the manner of Descartes, to explain exclusively or
chiefly from reason the being of God, which we must learn
to comprehend from the suggestions of very different autho
rity, we are, in fact, degrading God to a dependence upon
reason, or at least to a companionship and equality with it.
There never has been, nor ever can be, any successful at
tempt, after men have lost their respect for that other and
higher authority, to demonstrate the existence of God to
those who neither feel nor believe it.
The followers and disciples of Descartes founded a new
sect in France, which for a short time maintained its supre
macy. Yet there were not a few who, remaining indepen
dent, and even preserving their religious principles, embraced,
nevertheless, as much of the Cartesian system as they ima
gined they could reconcile with their belief. This was, in
many respects, the case with Malebranche, although he in
deed was never able completely to get rid of those difficulties
which Descartes had seen concerning the connexion between
thought and its external objects, between spirit and matter.
Huet acquired great fame as an opponent of Descartes, and
a critical, acute, and philosophical defender of revelation ;
while, at the same time, Fenelon, without partaking, in any
degree, of the peculiar philosophical and metaphysical con
tentions of his day, wrote in the most exquisite language,
from no inspiration but that of his own amiable and Chris
tian feelings. But religion owed her preservation much
more to another distinguished Frenchman, whose name I
have, as yet, purposely forborne to mention this is Bossuet,
a writer who, so far as eloquence and language are con
cerned, has always been considered as one of the first which
his country has produced. It may, indeed, be matter of
some doubt, whether the splendour of such eloquence as his
be altogether an appropriate vehicle for the truths of religion,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 341
trhether the simplicity of our faith do not better accord with
a more artless and unlaboured style of composition. But
even if this should be so in the general, there can be no
question, that at that particular period, as in every other
period when religion is a matter of contest, and truth not
entirely triumphant, a preacher, such as he was, possessed
at once of the clearest and most comprehensive understand
ing, and of the most vigorous eloquence, must have been an
acquisition of the highest importance to the cause he had
undertaken to defend. Besides, we must recollect, that the
eloquence of Bossuet was by no means confined to subjects,
strictly speaking, theological ; for whatever in life and in
morality, in church and state, in politics and histoiy, and in
general, whatever in human affairs is calculated to lead the
mind to serious reflection, was always regarded by this great
man in a religious point of view, and considered as a fit sub
ject of the eloquence of the pulpit.
If it may be permitted to compare an orator, so far as his
language and composition are concerned, with poets, I think
there is something in Bossuet which places him on a higher
level than any of the poets which were his contemporaries.
The perfection of style is enclosed in a very narrow sphere,
between two extremes, that of the lofty and sublime, and
the merely artificial ; its charm consists in the mingling of
these two elements. There is nothing more rare or difficult
than to preserve this medium. On the one side there are
many poets who are both great and sublime, but in whom
there is a want of refinement, perfection, or, in general, of
harmony. Others, in their anxiety to be polished, lean too
much to the side of effeminacy and delicacy ; they are noole
and elegant, but not great ; they want the strength which
is necessary to constitute the sublime. Voltaire seems to
have been well aware of this from the mode in which he
criticises the two great tragedians, his predecessors, whom
it was the highest ambition of his life to surpass. It was
no difficult matter for him to detect, in Corneille, individual
passages, wherein the language appears obsolete, rude, or
342 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
even corrupt and bombast. But it seems to me, that he had
a higher reverence for the genius of this poet than for that
of his rival, perhaps as bearing some resemblance to him
self; and that he hoped, by his own fire and energy in
passion, to surpass Racine, whom he held to be deficient in
power and elevation. But, in truth, I apprehend that his
opinion of Racine was not, upon the whole, a correct one ;
if we look only to the rhetoric of passion, among the crowd
of French tragedies which have made that the chief object
of their ambition, we shall, with difficulty, find any one
which can sustain a comparison with the Phedre. The
Athalie is animated with the force of another and yet higher
inspiration. If in many of his other plays, as, for example,
in Berenice, the chief excellence appears to consist in a har
monious repose of representation, and exquisite delicacy of
characterising ; this was rendered necessary by the nature
of the fable. Yet this much may easily be conceded to Vol
taire, that Racine would have been a greater and more per
fect poet, had he united to the harmonious faultlessness of
language and versification which he possessed, to that noble
and graceful style which forms his peculiar beauty, here and
there, somewhat more of that impetuous sublimity which
often loses a great part of its effect on account of the profuse-
ness with which it is lavished among the scenes of Corneille.
So far as language and representation are concerned, and so
far as an orator can be classed with poets, I think that this
union of excellencies was possessed by Bossuet. With the
strictest purity and refinement, with a style, the noble ele
gance of which has never been surpassed, he is master,
whenever his subject requires it, of a greatness and sub
limity which he never suffers to swell into the bombast. I
am happy to agree with the most severe of the French critics
in the judgment which they have formed respecting the high
excellence of this man and his writings ; and the more so,
because they are not only examples of perfect style and ex
pression, but also rich fountains of the most sublime and
salutary truths.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 343
" There is yet another point in which the excellence of
Bossuet as a writer and orator, even above the great poets of
his age and nation, is sufficiently conspicuous. The French
literature is, in many essential circumstances, fashioned after
the model of the earlier refined nations of antiquity ; it is in
part grounded on this imitation, in the same manner that
the Eoman literature was upon the imitation of the Greek.
This in itself is no reproach, and in a certain degree, indeed,
is necessary with the literature of every nation whose refine
ment has a date subsequent to that of others, and more par
ticularly whose spirit, like that of the Eomans and the French,
has been more directed to the external and practical life,
than to the internal activity of intellect. It would be
absurd to class the literature of the Romans, in regard to
inventiveness of spirit, with that of the Greeks ; but I have
endeavoured to show how, notwithstanding its great inferi
ority in poetry and philosophy, the Roman feeling and idea
of Rome, predominant in all its works and writers, have
been sufficient to give it a character and excellence of its
own. The same effect was produced on Bossuet by the
religion which animated him, for his religion was no mere
faith of custom, but the spirit of his life, and, as it were, a
second nature, by which he was enabled to see and compre
hend more clearly all the mysteries of the first. For this
reason it is that he preserves all the independence of an
original writer, and is the equal and rival, rather than the
follower, of those ancients who were both his models in
style, and the fountains of his learning and opinions. What
the idea of their country and of the greatness of Rome was
to the Romans, and what this idea gave to them ever as
writers, Christianity was, and gave, in a much higher de
gree, to Catholic France, during the period when the spirit
of Bossuet was the ruling one. Religion was the free part
of the soul, which enabled it to maintain itself unsubdued by
the encroaching influences of the antique. So far, however,
was this from being commonly the case, that the best poet
which France at that time possessed, who was also the
344 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
most religious, stopped short in his career, before he had
reached the point of perfection which he certainly might
have attained, in consequence of the collision which took
place between his ideas of Christianity, and his too exclu
sively antique notions in regard to the dramatic art. It is
well known that Racine, after he had become completely
penetrated with the opinions of the Jansensists, adopted
ideas of absurd strictness respecting his own art, and even
desisted from writing for the theatre. This excess of moral
scrupulousness in the great poet, cannot fail to impress us
with an amiable notion of the man, and that is indeed
sufficiently confirmed by all that we know of his private
history, and by the scope and tenor of his letters. And if
it be true that he judged too severely of the capabilities of
the theatre, it is unquestionably quite as true, that in the
dramatic art and representation of his time, there were
many things not very easily reconcilable with the doctrines
and morality of the Bible. There was always a want of
harmony between Christian sentiments and the vehicle in
which they were conveyed. Upon the whole, there is the
greatest reason to regret that Racine did not finish what he
so well began in his Athalie, and demonstrate the possi
bility of making the drama of France a Christian drama,
without diminishing its excellence. How great in these
respects is the superiority of the Spanish poetry over the
French ! Among that thoroughly Catholic people, religion
and fiction, truth and poetry, do not stand at variance from
each other, but are all united in the most harmonious beauty.
The party of the Jansensists gave to France many dis
tinguished writers, among whom I need only mention Pas
cal ; but, upon the whole, I am convinced that the contro
versies which they introduced had any effect rather than a
fortunate one on the French literature. I shall only recall
to your recollection, in a very few words, the subject of
most of their contests. It was a difficulty as old as human
reason, and which human reason never can thoroughly
explain the nature of the free will of man, and its recon-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 345
cileraent with the necessity of nature the omniscience and
omnipotence of the Deity. This is a matter entirely subject
to reason, and which of right, therefore, should never have
been connected with religion. The judicious friends and
defenders of Christianity have never pronounced any opirion
respecting it, excepting only a negative one, to express their
dislike of the two equally reprehensible extremes. But as
in the fifth and sixth centuries, when the doctrines of free
will, and the power of man s own exertions, in regard to his
virtue, were so much brought forward, that he was repre
sented as a being independent of God, and not requiring his
aid, all the friends of Christianity were obliged to bestir
themselves in order to get the better of this error ; so in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, their chief object was
to combat those very opposite dogmatists who maintained
that man, to obtain and fulfil all the purposes of his being,
needs only to lay aside all exertion and all free will, who
adopted, in the main, the antique notions of dark and in
flexible destiny, or at least the Mahometan ones of predes
tination and fatality. This controversy was in itself an use
less one, but it was rendered far more hurtful than it needed
to have been by the manner in which it was conducted. The
Provincial Letters of Pascal have, in consequence of their
wit, and the beauty of their language, become standard
works in French literature ; but if we would characterise
them by their import and spirit, they form nothing more
than a masterpiece of sophistry. He disdains none of the
tricks of that dangerous art, by which he thinks he can
render his opponents, the Jesuits, contemptible or odious.
That violence was in many respects done to truth, those
acquainted with the history of the time well know, but
even although that had been much less frequently the case
than it really was with Pascal, every one must admit that
an author, such as he was, employed his genius in a very
culpable manner, when he set the example of writing con
cerning religion in the tone of apparent levity and bitter
sarcasm. At first, indeed, this mode was adopted by one
346 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
Christian against others, men whom he personally hated,
although they were seriously religious, because they did not
measure the truths of Christianity by the geometrical stand
ard which he himself preferred. But how soon were the
same weapons turned against religion itself. The witty and
exquisitely expressed sophistry of Pascal, was an admirable
but a dangerous model, copied with but too much success
by Voltaire ; and easily coupled by him with all the kin
dred artifices of Bayle a genius of the highest order, who
applied a most various erudition in order to throw out
doubts, insinuations, mockeries, and jests, against religion,
and to make his approaches on every side, like a treacher
ous underminer, towards the yet unshattered bulwarks of
our faith.
In general the spirit of philosophy in the last part of the
seventeenth century, leaned more and more to evil. We
may learn from the example of Hobbes alone how much the
new doctrines of Bacon, without any intention or fault of
that great man himself, had the tendency to promote unbe
lief and materialism. But as yet the spirit of the time was
not ripe enough to receive the doctrine of unlimited right in
the strongest sense, as expressed in the Leviathan. In or
der to have preached with success such an atheistical view,
both of the physical and political world, Hobbes should have
come a century, or at least half a century later. Locke, on
the other hand, received much greater favour, because his
opinions were not so much at variance with the received
moral principles and feelings of his time, and because the
tendency of his book, although almost as greatly, was by no
means so apparently irreligious. In truth his errors were
the more dangerous, on account of the unsuspicious shape
in which they made their appearance. It is quite evident
that no higher kind of belief or hope can obtain a place,
where every thing is enclosed within the narrow limits of
the senses, and their experience. Locke himself, indeed,
was a good Christian, but this is only one instance more,
that he who first opens a new line of thought very seldom
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 347
pursues it so far as to perceive even its most inevitable con
sequences. If we adopt his principles, we must inevitably
renounce all other thoughts, and limit ourselves to the feel
ing, the experience, and the enjoyment of the senses ; and
those who in later times have openly professed these no
tions, although they called themselves independent philoso
phers, where in truth only the disciples of Mr Locke. When
men began to reflect somewhat more deeply on the proper
subjects of this sensible experience, and then on the power
which it possesses, and the effect which it produces, a mighty
variety of doubts sprung up in every direction, particularly
in England. The doctrine, that the only true knowledge is
that shaped out by the senses and experience, is in general
decided, although not openly expressed, materialism, and in
France it very soon threw aside the veil, such as it was.
Indirectly, and indeed entirely contrary to his wishes, New
ton himself paved the way for the philosophy of the eight
eenth century ; for the defenders of the new opinions were
proud of appealing perpetually to his authority ; and thought,
indeed, that after his stupendous discoveries in physics, no
thing is so great but that it may be attained without the
assistance of religion. Both Newton and Bacon would have
turned away with disgust from those who professed to be
their greatest admirers in the eighteenth centuiy. These,
indeed, with all their reverence for his philosophy, did not
scruple to talk at times of his attachment to Christianity as
a weakness in the mind of Newton. In many of his expres
sions concerning the Deity, and his connexion with nature,
we may perceive the traces not merely of an animated feel
ing, but of a deep sentiment, marks that, though he was not,
in strict speaking, a philosopher, and knew nothing of meta
physics, he had nevertheless thought, in an original manner,
on all the highest subjects of reflection.
In the eighteenth century, the English were the first people **
of Europe, in literature as in every thing else. The whole of
the modern French philosophy was produced by that of Bacon,
Locke, and other Englishmen; at least, it borrowed all its
348 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
first principles from them. In France, however, it soon as
sumed an appearance quite different from what it had ever
had in England. In Germany, on the other hand, the mighty
regeneration of literature in the middle of this century, re
ceived its first impetus and ruling direction principally from
the poetry and the criticism of the English.
Voltaire was the first who contributed, in a great degree,
to bring the philosophy of Locke and Newton into France.
It is singular with what a perversity of genius this man
makes use of all the marvellous greatness of nature as
revealed to him by the science of England, not for the pur
pose of exalting the character of the Creator, but for lowering
that of men : how fond he is of dwelling on the insignifi
cance of this earthworm, amidst the immeasurable splen
dours of stars and planets. As if the spirit, the thought
which can comprehend all this universe of suns and stars,
were not something greater than they ; as if God were some
earthly monarch, who, among the millions over which he
rules, may well be supposed never to have seen, and almost
to have forgotten the existence of some paltry village on the
border of his dominions. The eighteenth century in general
made no use of the physical knowledge it inherited from the
seventeenth, except one extremely hostile to the higher
truths of religion. In Voltaire, indeed, there is no such
thing to be found as any regular system of infidelity, scarcely
even a single firm principle, or settled philosophical opi
nion, or even precise form of philosophical doubt. As the
sophists of antiquity took a pleasure in showing the versa
tility and ingenuity of their spirit, by defending first one
opinion and then the one exactly opposite to it, so Voltaire
wrote one book in favour, and another in contradiction of
Providence. Yet in so far is he sincere, that he cannot help
letting us see very plainly which of these works is his own
favourite. Throughout all his writings, whatever be their
subject, he cannot resist any opportunity of introducing his
impious wit, and showing his aversion for Christianity, and,
in part at least, for all religion. In this point of view his
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 349
spirit operated as a corrosive and destructive engine for the
dissolving of all earnest, moral, and religions modes of
thinking. Yet it appears to me that Voltaire has done even
more harm by the spirit and purpose which he has thrown
over history, than by his derision of religion. He felt what
was the defect of French literature in this department, as
well as in that of poetry. Since the time of the Cardinal
Retz, the abundance of historical memoirs, alike interesting
from their subjects and the lively mode of their composition,
had increased to such a degree, that they might almost be
said to be a proper literature by themselves and certainly
to form one of the most brilliant parts of the whole litera
ture of France. But in consequence of these memoirs, there!
is no doubt that history declined too much into the tone of
conversation, became split into particulars, and lost itself
at last, to the great injury of historical truth, in an endless
variety of anecdotes. However delightful the perusal of
such works may be, they are, after all, only the harbingers
and materials of history, not histories, in the proper accep
tation of the word. At least there is much space interven
ing between the best possible style of writing such anecdotes,
and a style of historical composition such as that of the
ancients was, or among the moderns, that of Machiavelli.
The French literature possesses many excellent narratives,
some well collected, and (even as pieces of writing) praise
worthy tracts, concerning the older history of the country,
but no truly classical, national, and original work of history.
Voltaire was very sensible of this defect in the literature of
his nation, and with his usual vanity of universal genius,
attempted to supply it himself. That in regard to art he
was not entirely successful ; that as a writer of history, even
in respect to the mode of composition adapted for works of
that kind, he can sustain no comparison, I do not say with
the ancients, but even with the best English historians
Hume and Bobertson; this is now universally admitted
even in France itself. Nevertheless, the spirit in which he*
viewed history very soon acquired very great influence even
300 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
over English writers particularly Gibbon and became
almost the ruling historical spirit of the eighteenth century.
The essence of this mode of thinking in respect to history
which proceeded from Voltaire, consists in expressing, on
every opportunity, and in every possible form, hatred for
monks, clergymen, Christianity, and, in general, for all
religion. In regard to politics, its prevalent spirit is a par
tial, and, in the situation of modern Europe, an absurd pre
dilection for the republican notions of antiquity, accompanied
very frequently with an altogether false conception, or at
least extremely imperfect knowledge of the true spirit and
essence of republicanism. Among the followers of Voltaire
this went so far as to take the appearance of a decided and
bigoted hatred of all kingly power and nobility, and in gene
ral of all those modes of life and government which have
been produced by what is called the feudal system ; and all
this, in spite of Montesquieu, who characterised and praised,
with the acuteness and liberality of a true philosopher, what
these comparatively ignorant writers were only capable of
reviling. How much was set in a false light, how greatly
historical truth was injured, and the whole of the past un
worthily condemned, begins now to be discovered, since
historical inquirers have adopted a more profound and
accurate method of research. For after the philosophy of
the eighteenth century had entirely accomplished its own
destruction, and the religion which it would have overthrown
had come victorious out of the struggle, every thing in his
tory and in the past has begun to be seen in a more just and
natural point of view. Yet there remain many falsifica
tions, errors, and prejudices, with regard to past ages, which
have still to be amended ; for in no department did the
philosophy of the last century so deeply and so extensively
establish its influence as in history, where its wickedness
and falseness are, of course, less observable to those who
take facts upon trust, than when their spirit is brought
distinctly forward in the shape of philosophical doctrine and
opinion.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 351
In regard to Voltaire, I must observe that he seems to
have been actuated by motives of a personal nature, which
render the spirit of his histories still more narrow and un
just. It is evidently his purpose to make us believe that all
the ages before that of Lewis XIV. were ages of darkress,
and that even then, all nations except his were mere hordes
of barbarians. This much exalted monarch plays this
important part in the historical and intellectual drama of
Voltaire, because he, it seems, while the whole earth was
wrapped in chaos and barbarism, was the first who pro
nounced a creative FIAT LUX. Yet the great writers of the
time of Lewis, and even Newton and Locke, were, after all,
only the first faint rays of the coming splendour. The mid
day sun of entire illumination and freethinking did not,
according to Voltaire s opinion, manifest himself till some
what later. But however inclined he was, in the general, to
flatter the foolish vanity of his nation, yet, in many moments
of mirth or displeasure, he spoke, either from levity or bitter
ness, in a very different tone, as, for example, in that well
known saying of his, that " the character of a Frenchman
is made up of the tiger and the ape." In other more mode
rate but not less caustic expressions, it is easy to see how
thoroughly Voltaire had studied and comprehended his
countrymen. But this was a piece of knowledge which he
never displayed except by accident.
Even Montesquieu contributed towards the formation of
this philosophy of the eighteenth century ; principally, as I
apprehend, because he neglected to give any rule or standard
of unity to that immense collection of admirable political
remarks and opinions which he laid before the world. This
was exactly in compliance with what was then the usual
fashion in every department of thought and action. The
erudition, the genius and powerful reflections of this great
and remarkable writer, contributed only to increase the
general relaxation of all principle ; for the spirit of the age,
being furnished with no guiding rule, floated hither and
thither amidst that vast sea of political facts and precepts,
352 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
like a ship without anchor or compass, upon the waves of
the ocean.
The tendency to sublime and elevating thoughts, even to
religious feelings and views, is so strong in our nature, and
occasions to call these forth are so profusely scattered over
the world around us, that we cannot be at all surprised to
find that many of the great French naturalists remained
entirely, or at least in a great measure, free from the preva
lent spirit of irreligion, and have even here and there risen
to a style of reflection much higher than that of their age.
Although many of his opinions do not harmonise with re
vealed religion, and many others cannot stand the test of
philosophy although he himself was by no means free from
the material fetters or the entirely physical system of philo
sophy which was then in fashion ; yet I can never help con
sidering the great Buffon as one who is entitled to be classed,
at least in the way of comparison, with the better thinkers of
the eighteenth century. Among the latter authors I may
just allude to the zealous and intellectual Bonnet.
The social manners and constitution of modern Europe,
and more particularly of France, had become, in very many
respects, so remote from nature, that we can scarcely won
der that a restless and inquiring spirit should have gone
entirely to the opposite extreme. But how little fitted ad
miration and respect for nature alone are to supply human
life with a proper rule of conduct, the example of Rousseau
affords a sufficient proof. In regard to the feeling and zeal *
which animated him, Rousseau, as a reasoner, is not only
superior to Voltaire, and all other French philosophers of the
last century, but of a class entirely different from them. The
influence which he exerted over his age and nation was per
haps only on that account the more hurtful. It is only when
a strong mind, striving passionately in quest of truth, pur
sues its researches in a wrong direction, and embraces error
in room of it, that error assumes a form of real danger, and
becomes capable of seizing possession of generous natures,
whose general principles are in an unsettled state. The wit
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 353
of Voltaire contributed very much to unsettle and relax
principle, and thereby paved the way for Rousseau. But
this man s impetuous and overwhelming eloquence drew
into the whirlpool of error many whom the mere sophistry
of wit and pleasantry could never have led astray. It is
true that at first Rousseau s pictures of savage life, and his
theory of a pure democracy of reason, gave rise to more
wonder than conviction. But as it was this man s fortune
to become the founder of a new system and method of edu
cation, wherein the development of the individual man is
supposed to be best conducted upon the isolated principle
of seclusion, and entirely without regard to his situation as
a citizen, we need not be astonished to find that at a some
what later period even the wildest of his dreams about natu
ral politics found both admirers and defenders. After hav
ing seen that the extension of physical science contributed
very much, in its misapplied condition, to immorality, irre-
ligion, and even atheism, it is no wonder that a direction
equally culpable and dangerous was given by the philoso
phers of the eighteenth century to the improved knowledge
of men and nations. But however much men might refine
and adorn their descriptions of American savages, in order
to promote the idea of the possibility of natural perfection,
there remained always a few points in the testimony of
every traveller which presented insurmountable difficulties
to the admirers of barbarity. In Voltaire, on the other
hand, and in many other French writers of his time, we
may observe an equally absurd predilection, another ex
treme one as far removed as can well be from the wiM
freedom of savages : I mean a passion for the Chinese, a
people polished into perfect tameness and uniformity, and
exhibiting the best specimen of what has since been called
" the Despotism of Reason." An age which was perpetu
ally endeavouring to substitute a complete system of police
in the room of the antiquated influences of religion and
morality, which regarded the perfection of a few manufac
tures as the sole and highest object of human society, and
z
354 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
what they called " the doctrine of pure ethics," as the ne
plus ultra of illumination an age such as this could scarcely
indeed fail to contemplate, with mighty admiration, the
spectacle of a nation which has, according to its own ac
count, possessed for some thousand years laws without reli
gion, which has had newspapers some centuries longer than
ourselves, which can imprint upon porcelain colours more
brilliant than we are acquainted with, and make paper
thinner and finer than any European manufactory. It is
lamentable to see into what contemptible perversities the
misdirected ingenuity of a few rational men can conduct
both themselves and their contemporaries.
Voltaire and Rousseau were the first who gave its form "
and shape to the spirit of the eighteenth century; but they
had many coadjutors in their attempts, many who were in
defatigable in rendering the moral philosophy of Locke more
decided in its principles as well as bolder in its consequences,
and in rendering it, so improved, the manual of the age.
What results this produced in regard to human life, may be
learned from the single example of Helvetius. This man
proved to the satisfaction of his readers, that selfishness,
vanity, and sensual enjoyment are the true and certain
guides, the only rational ends of enlightened men, the only
realities in human life and his readers soon began to sus
pect that the same principles ought to be extended to the
whole universe. Mind, according to this doctrine, there is
none, for matter is every thing, and man is distinguished
from the brutes, not by intellect, but by hands and fingers
advantages which, in some degree at least, he appears to
share with the monkey. The difference between the man
and the monkey was indeed diminished very much, in the
opinion of many philosophers of this time, and it was a very
favourite speculation to discover the existence of intermedi
ate and connecting species between them. It is much to be
regretted that Rousseau did not fulfil the intention he once
expressed, of openly combating the dogmas of Helvetius.
He must, in the course of such a controversy, have at least
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 355
been compelled to settle and explain somewhat more fully
his own principles ; and these, however erroneous, possess,
when compared with those of the other, much that is both
good and noble, and capable of being improved.
The last step in the progress of the French ante-revolu
tionary philosophy, is that marked by the congenial spirit
of Diderot. I may, without question, assume the fact, that
this man was the centre point and animating principle, not
only of the Encyclopedia, but also of the Sysieme de la Na
ture, and of many other works connected in the same spirit
of audacious atheism. He wrought indeed much more in
secret than in public ; he was different from Voltaire and
Rousseau in this, that he had less vanity of authorship than
they, and was perfectly satisfied when he could gain the
victory, without wishing to be personally held up as the
victor. He was peculiarly distinguished by a most fanatical
hatred, not only of all Christianity, but of all kinds of reli
gion. He maintained that these are all alike founded in the
superstitious terrors left on the minds of a half-destroyed
race, by those terrible revolutions in the natural world, the
traces of which are still so apparent around us. In many
of the writings of this school, even the name of Atheism is
not concealed, but it is openly stated that man can never be
happy till he learns to throw aside the whole doctrine of a
Deity an opinion, the absurdity of which has been but too
fatally demonstrated by the experience of a few subsequent
years. Of all the forms in which this atheistical system was
brought before the world, perhaps the most singularly ex
travagant was the theory which represented Christ as a
mere astronomical symbol a being never possessed of his
torical existence and the twelve apostles as so many old
signs of the zodiac. The whole spirit of this system, and
the whole of the practical purposes which it was intended
to serve, may be learned from the single well-known wish,
of which the fathers of the revolution made no secret " that
the last king might be burned on a funeral pile, composed
of the body of the last priest."
356 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE XIV.
LIGHTER SPECIES OF WRITING IN FRANCE, AND IMITATION OF THE ENGLISH
FASHIONABLE LITERATURE OF BOTH COUNTRIES MODERN ROMANCE THE
PROSE OF BUFFON AND ROUSSEAU POPULAR POETRY IN ENGLAND MODERN
ITALIAN THEATRE CRITICISM AND HISTORICAL COMPOSITION OF THE ENGLISH
SCEPTICAL PHILOSOPHY RETURN TO A BETTER AND HIGHER SPECIES OF
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE BONALD AND ST MARTIN SIR WILLIAM JONES AND
BURKE.
FROM the time of Louis XIV. the French language has
always possessed great wealth in all these lighter species of
writing whose inspiration consists of imagination and wit.
Yet even in this respect the elder times were the more for
tunate. No later writer of comedies has come near to
Moliere ; the peculiar charm of La Fontaine, in his artless
species of poetical narration, remains inimitable. Voltaire,
who in his opinions and philosophy belongs so entirely to
the later time, and was even the founder of its principles,
so far as literature and poetry are concerned, is one of the
elder school, and so forms a sort of point of connexion be
tween it and the new. His success in comedy was far less
than in tragedy ; but he is quite unrivalled in his variety of
miscellaneous, witty, and occasional poems of every kind.
The minor poems and songs of the French had always this
tendency to social wit and fashion, while those of the Eng
lish, on the other hand, partook more of the true nature of
lyrical poetry, and were distinguished by their depth of
thought, and their tone of natural feeling in description.
The more poetry attaches itself to the present, and the life
of society, the more local does it become, and subject to
the influences of fashion. Many comedies, romances, and
songs produced in the end of the seventeenth or the be
ginning of the eighteenth century, which are in themselves
lull of talent, and were in their day very celebrated in France,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 357
have since become as obsolete as the manners and opinions of
the society which they represent. Should the poetry of any
nation confine itself entirely to these species, and to subjects
exclusively modern to dramatic pictures of manners without
fable to tales taken from the life of ordinary society and
witty occasional poems it would be almost as impossible and
absurd to attempt a historical or critical account of it, as to
make a display of anatomical skill upon the ephemerides of a
summer evening. The objects of these productions is nothing
more than to fill up the idle hours of fashionable life and
amusement ; and even although, in order to fulfil this pur
pose, they may at times make use of feeling, passion, and
original thoughts, their end still continues to be pastime a
thing which may be attained quite as well without poetry
as with it.
It is true, without doubt, that in the miscellaneous and
trifling species of poetry, there are to be found productions
which bear as decidedly the stamp of genius as the first works
of the epic poet or the tragedian. The beauty, however, is
seldom so universal. It depends very often entirely upon
expression, and its delicacies, things which can be more
easily felt than explained. A heroic poem or a tragedy can
be very well comprehended although translated into a differ
ent language, and in general the greater its intrinsic excel
lence is, the less does it suffer by such a transmutation. But
I doubt whether any foreigner, however complete may be
his familiarity with the French language, can ever sympa
thise, in its utmost extent, with the admiration which French-
*men express for La Fontaine. Naivete, elegance, and the
stamp of genius, these every one must recognise in him ,
but a Frenchman feels and enjoys something still more ex
quisite than these, and this depends on the language, to an
entire feeling of whose numberless peculiarities no foreigner
ever can attain. Many even of the most celebrated charac
teristic pieces of Moliere are now become too antiquated for
the stage and actual representation, and can be admired
only in reading. However high we may be inclined to
358 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
place these as individual works, and in the scale of French
poetry, their effects, as the beginning of a new species of
writing, and as models for future artists, have been very far
from fortunate. The characters of Labruyere or Theophras-
tus may be set forth in a dramatic form, but they can never
become poetry. Even the rhetoric of the passions, when it
forms the sole animation of the tragedy, is far from coming
up to our ideas of what tragedy ought to be ; in like manner,
the psychological wire-drawing of characters and passions
in comedy furnishes a very unequal substitute for poetry and
wit. The tendency to this extreme minuteness of charac
terisation has frequently formed a subject of reproach against
the higher comedy of the eighteenth century. From it the
change was by no means a difficult one to those ethical
treatises in the shape of comedies, of which, unfortunately
for his own nation, and still more so for ours, Diderot was
the inventor.
The original French character is, I believe, quite as light
and careless as it is usually represented ; but among the
French books of the eighteenth century, I confess I can
perceive very few traces of this, even in those situations
where it might have appeared with the greatest propriety.
This must be ascribed to the ever increasing spirit of philo
sophical and political sectarianism ; and even from the ex
ternal history of the period it is quite easy to see why a
passionate species of rhetoric came to acquire a complete
predominance over the old trivial spirit of the French. The
truth is, that the nation itself had undergone as great a
change as its literature. The ruling philosophy of morals*
was indeed expressed by some poets in light and humorous
strains ; but it carried most by much too far, and quite
beyond all the limits of poetry. Materialism is essentially
inimical to poetry, and deadening to fancy. Thejnagip of
the muse must lose all its power over one who is thoroughly
penetrated with the degrading doctrines of Helvetius.
On the other hand, the passion for freedom, and the ado
ration of nature, which, chiefly by means of the followers of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 359
Rousseau, became predominant in the new philosophy, were
not easily to be reconciled with the fonnal accuracy of the
elder French poetry in the seventeenth century. From this
circumstance there arose an internal conflict, and enduring-
struggle to get rid of the ancient authority ; and this broke
out in an open rebellion of taste, and produced an entire,
although perhaps only a transitory, anarchy in literature,
even before the period of the political revolution : hence the
predilection for the poetry of England. Even Voltaire had
much use of it in particular instances, not only without
acknowledgment, but in the midst of perpetual sarcasms
against Milton and Shakespeare. In all the French efforts
in the higher walks of poetry, this influence of the English
is even in our own times sufliciently apparent. The desire
to give tragedy a greater freedom of construction and more
of historical import, without however entirely laying aside
the old system, is still undiminished, although it has never
as yet produced any very considerable results. The last
works of elevated poetry which have acquired a classical
reputation in France are descriptive poems of the species
peculiar to England. But of all species of writing, none
was so much the favourite of the literati of the new school
as the romanpe ; for whatever fetters might have been im
posed on all the regular forms of poetical composition, this
at least remained perfectly free. When Voltaire clothed his
wit in this form, when Rousseau embodied in it his enthusi
asm and his eloquence, when Diderot chose to make it the
vehicle of his immortality, romance became, in the hands of
each of these men of genius, exactly what he found it most
convenient for himself to make it. The two first of them
had many followers, who attempted to embody a similar
spirit in the form of a more regular narration, and under the
guise of a more exact delineation of the present modes of
life. No one is ignorant into how many romances the prin
ciples and opinions of Candide have been wrought. Others
were more the imitators of Rousseau ; among these, not a
few who partook in his passion for nature, have chosen to
360 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
lay the scene of their fictions among the wildernesses of
America regions in which they might certainly consider
themselves as quite free from the domestic tyranny of Aris
totle and Boileau. The most distinguished of these are
Bernardin de St Pierre, and Chateaubriand.
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot made use of the romance
very frequently, merely because they knew not in what
other form they could so conveniently express certain philo
sophical opinions. But if we regard romance as a species
of poetry, and as the regular representation in narration of
incidents taken from actual life and manners, it is quite evi
dent that the French have even in this species of writing
been the imitators of the English, although I am far from
thinking that they have attained equal excellence with them.
In invention and power of representation, perhaps Richardson
may be entitled to the first place. Although this writer has
already become antiquated and obsolete both at home and
abroad, although his attempts at the higher species of poetic
fiction are in the main unsuccessful, and although his ex
treme copiousness is vulgar and disagreeable, we should, I
suspect, attribute the decline of his popularity to any thing
rather than a deficiency of genius. The species of writing
which he adopted is a false one, and even a more powerful
genius than that of Richardson could not easily get over the
difficulties which it presents. Among the modern imitators
of Cervantes, the most accomplished are Fielding and Smol-
let. Of all the romances in miniature, (and perhaps this is
the best shape in which romance can appear,) the Vicar of
Wakefield is, I think, the most exquisite. That other spe
cies of romance, of which the purpose is not narration but
humour, and which loses itself in the mere play of wit and
sentiment, was carried by its first inventor, Sterne, to a
point of excellence at which none of his French imitators
have arrived.
If we must give an opinion of those works of intellect
which serve the purposes of mere fashion and daily use, as
we should of any other species of fashionable manufacture,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 361
I think the common ran of English novels and romances
are as much superior to the common run of the French, as
Smollet and Fielding are superior to the best of the French
novelists.
I must not omit to mention one circumstance which has
been extremely unpropitious to French romance ; I allude to
the extraordinary abundance, in this literature, of memoirs,
confessions, books of letters and anecdotes, all more or less
partaking in the nature of the romance. I am not aware
that any tale of Marmontel has ever excited so universal
an interest as his memoirs ; and I am quite sure that no
French romance ever produced half so much effect as the
Confessions of Rousseau.
In general, poetry, during the eighteenth century, was
driven out of fashion in France by prose ; this, we must
admit, although not without many great errors and faults,
was rich, and in the hands of the most eminent writers was
developed with the highest power and eloquence. Voltaire s
style in prose is animated and witty like himself ; it is per
fectly adapted to him and his purposes. The more severe
French critics disapprove of his prose, and in history, indeed,
I think it is by no means a suitable one. Many Germans
find something very delightful to them in the style of Dide
rot, and I agree with them that he shows a perception and
feeling of the more delicate beauties of imitative art by no
means common among the writers of his country ; but his
language is incorrect and hasty, and wholly devoid of that
pure elegance which characterises the witty writings of the
best French authors. In respect to style, Buifon and Rous
seau are justly regarded with the highest admiration. The
former is perhaps the richesf and most graceful of the two ;
but he was so much fettered by the nature of his work, that
he never could introduce his rhetoric without an episode,
and this has destroyed in a great measure the effect which
he was fitted by nature to produce. It may appear natural
enough that he should have given his theory of love in
the article Dove. But we could scarcely have looked for a
362 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
rhetorical treatise on the subject of the dispersion of nations
under the word Hare. Aristotle allowed himself no such
liberties in his capacity of natural historian. As a scientific
writer Buffon can sustain no comparison with the illustrious
Greek whom it was his chief ambition to rival. Upon the
whole, I coincide with those who give the preference to
Rousseau over Buffon ; for, although his style is in parti
cular respects equally defective, there is more unity of pur
pose, and a more eloquent flow of composition in his works.
His charm lies much more in this last peculiarity, than in
the extraordinary beauty of individual passages. My feel
ings perfectly accord with those who esteem Rousseau the
first of all the French writers of the last century, in regard
to skill and power of eloquence; but I must not conceal
from you that I, nevertheless, look upon the beauty of his
composition as holding a place extremely below the sublime
oratory of Bossuet.
Should the present condition of affairs ever be altered,,
and the superiority of prose over poetry in the language and
literature of France become less tyrannical ; in other words,
should poetry ever revive among the French, I am clearly
of opinion that their best means of attaining great excellence
will consist, not in any strict imitation of English models,
or of any foreign models whatever, but in a hearty recur
rence to the old spirit and poetry of their own nation. The
) imitation of another nation can never be perfectly success -
/Jill, for the most perfect productions of this nation remain
"/always foreign to those who make them their models.
1 -Every nation has enough in its power when it can go back
; to its own original and most ancient poetry and legends.
The further back we go in history, the more intimate do we
? find the connexion between different nations to be. But it
is in the very first ages of national existence that the foun-
c_dations both of national character and national poetry are
laid.
In England, at the beginning of last century, the leaning
towards a French taste in poetry was still evident ; its in-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 363
fluence is apparent in the elaborate versification of Pope,
and in the tragedy which Addison wrote with a view to
promote what he conceived to be more just ideas concerning
poetical theory among his countrymen. Yet both of these
authors contributed in no small degree towards bringing
Shakespeare and Milton out of oblivion. Pope s translation
of Homer, however remote it may be from the simplicity of
the old bard, increased, nevertheless, the general love for
this great poet of nature and antiquity, and is itself a proof
of the existence of this love. In the original poems of Pope
we can perceive abundant traces of that predilection for
thought which has rendered didactic poetry so much a
favourite among the English. I have already expressed my
belief that this species contains always something of the
frigid and unpoetic; and England has furnished another
example that, such as it is, it becomes very soon exhausted.
The common materials of didactic poetry were, however,
often combined, in England, with the more poetical elements
of passion and melancholy ; as, for example, in the gloomy
and enthusiastic Young. Thomson expressed his feelings
more tastefully and beautifully in that species of poetry
so much loved by his countrymen, and, after his own time,
so much copied by foreigners the descriptive. The passion
for nature was the origin of the national love of Ossian ; and
although neither the sorrow of Ossian nor the despair of
Young be every where prevalent, the spirit of serious medi
tation is certainly much more diffused over the lyrical poems
of England during the eighteenth century, than even those
of France. By the side of the ever increasing veneration of
Shakespeare, there grew up, chiefly in consequence of the
writings of Percy, a passionate love for the old ballads and
popular poems. The more of these were discovered, (and
the wealth of the Scots in particular is almost boundless,)
the more did the love of them overcome that of eveiy other
kind of writing, and engross the whole of the English lite
rature, with the single exception of romances and plays for
daily use. In France, then, at the end of the seventeenth
364 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the higher kinds
of poetry were cultivated in a manner too regular and pre
cise, and gradually sunk into the tone of social wit. In
England, on the other hand, serious thoughts and poetical
descriptions of natural scenery were the chief materials at
the commencement of the last century, and, at its close, the
universal passion was for the ancient national ballads
melancholy echoes of the lost poetry of a more heroic time.
Those acquainted with the modem literature of England are
well aware how this propensity has been fostered by the
genius of the poets who are our own contemporaries.
Upon the whole, during last century, the state of poetry
was a very poor one, at least when compared with the riches
of antecedent times, even in countries where poetry is inter-
termingled with all the enjoyments of life, as in Spain ; or
where the spirit of art forms almost the character of the
nation, as in Italy. In this last country, however, although
the higher species of poetry produced no new works worthy
of being placed by the side of those of the more ancient
period, the theatre, at least, was more successful and fruit-
rul than it ever before had been. In Metastasio, Goldoni,
Gozzi, Alfieri, we may discover, in a separate state, all
those elements of a poetical drama, which, in a more blended
condition, characterise our own stage. In Metastasio we
find the highest musical beauty of language; in Goldoni
common life is represented in a light and delightful manner,
with those airy accompaniments of masking and carnival
which appear natural to an Italian. In Gozzi s fantastic
popular stories, and plays of witchcraft and spectacle, we can
perceive an abundance of the true poetical power of inven
tion ; but there is a great want of that musical harmony and
elegance of fancy which are requisite before invention can
take just possession of the stage. In the dramas of Alfieri,
an attempt is made to revive the sublimity of the antique ;
an attempt so noble that it is well worthy of great praise,
even when it is not entirely successful.
I am not certain but the same remark which I made a few
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 365
pages back, respecting the comparative merits of the modern
French and English romances, might be with equal pro
priety applied to their modern dramas. Both are mere
species of manufacture, and I think the English are rather
the best of the two. The Italian theatre lies much nearer
ourselves, both in regard to external shape and later de
velopment.
The critical books of the English, and in particular most
of their treatises concerning poetry and the imitative arts,
are distinguished by greater freedom, originality, and know
ledge of the antique, and bear, on these accounts, more affi
nity to our own modes of thinking than those of the French.
Although, however, our German criticism certainly received
its first impulse from the study of the English works of Har
ris, Home, Hurd, Watson, &c., we soon became sufficiently
independent of these ; and, perhaps, in no department of our
literature is there so much originality as in this.
Of all the works connected with elegant literature which-"
the English produced during the last century, by far the
most important are their great historical writings. They
have, in this department, surpassed all the other European
nations ; they had, at all events, the start in point of time ;
and have become the standard models both in France and in
Germany. The first place is, I believe, universally given to
David Hume. But however salutary may be the spirit of
scepticism in the conduct of historical researches, I am
strongly of opinion that this spirit, when it is not confined
to events alone, but extends its doubts to all the principles
of morality and religion, is by no means becoming in a great
national historian, and will, in the end, diminish in a very
considerable measure the influence which the native genius
of this singular man might well have entitled him to main
tain over the minds of his countrymen.
Narrow principles and views of things not perfectly just,-*"
are, I am free to confess, in my estimation, much better
fitted for a great historian than no principles at all, and a
deadening want of feeling, warmth, and passion. When
366 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
these are removed, the only remaining means of creating
interest in a historical work is the love of opposing the rul
ing opinions, and of paradoxy. The leaning to this species
of opposition is most evident in Hume. However praise
worthy and salutary it might be, that such a writer as Hume
was, should take up a set of opinions opposed to those of the
Whigs a party in this day, as well as in our own, possessed
of perhaps too much influence over the literature of England
and should represent a most important part of the British
history with a predilection for the unfortunate house
Stuart, and the principles of the Tories ; it is evident, that
had he written without any such views, he might have attain
ed to an eminence far beyond that which he has reached, and
descended to posterity, not as the first of all party writers of
history, but as the author of a truly great national work, the
spirit and excellence of which should have been equally
admired and appreciated by all the English. In his treat
ment of the elder periods of the English history, he is quite
unsatisfactory and meagre ; he had no love for its antiqui
ties, and could not transport himself back into the spirit of^
remote ages.
In regard to style, few writers of any country can sustain-^
a comparison with Robertson ; his expressions are select
and elegant, but always clear and unlaboured. But he is
veiy inferior in respect to other matters of far greater im
portance, the research and import of his histories. The
English themselves are now pretty well convinced that he
is a careless, superficial, and blundering historian, although
they study his works, and are right in doing so, as models
of pure composition, extremely deserving of attention, dur
ing the present declining state of English style. To speak
from my own feelings, I think Robertson, although upon the
whole a beautiful writer, is too fond both of verbosity and
of antithesis. The ambition of fine writing, and of the de
sire to treat matters in an elaborate and oratorical manner,
appear to me to be extremely erroneous and out of place in
a writer of history. If historical composition is to be con-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 367
sidered merely as a display of writing, no modern author
need ever flatter himself with the least hope, I do not say of
equalling, but of approaching the great historians of anti
quity. We have it in our power, however, to surpass them "
in another way, namely, by considering history in a more
scientific manner, and making use of those opportunities and
instruments of information in which our times are so much
superior to those of Greece and Rome. If we make this our -
object, the best style which we can adopt is the most simple ;
we should write clearly and carefully, but avoid all appear
ance of artifice, superfluity, affectation, or ambitiousness.
Gibbon is a writer full of thoughts ; his language is in
general powerful and exquisite, but it has, to a great excess,
the faults of elaborateness, pompousness, and monotony.
His style is full of Latin and French words and phrases.
The English language, as being of so very mixed a nature,
and as possessing such a variety of words and phrases, and
constructions Latin, French, and domestic, has no very ex
act standard to regulate the proportion of the different ele
ments which are placed at the disposal of those who use it.
That elaborate and half-Latin manner of writing by which
Gibbon is distinguished, had before him been brought very
much into fashion by the example of the critic Johnson ; in
principle at least the English have now departed from it,
and speak of it as a false species, and hostile to the spirit of
their language. The work of Gibbon, however instructive
and fascinating it may be, is nevertheless at bottom an
offensive one, on account of his deficiency in feeling, and j
his propensity to the infidel opinions and impious mockeries
of Voltaire. These are things extremely unworthy of a h : s-
torian, and in the periodic and somewhat cumbrous style of
Gibbon they appear set off to far less advantage than in the
light and airy compositions of his master. He never seems
to be naturally a wit, but impresses us with the idea that he
would very fain be one if he could. Although I have men
tioned some faults which I think I perceive in each of these
three great writers, yet their general excellence is not to be
368 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
disputed, and is felt by none more deeply than myself; they
appear indeed to great advantage with whomsoever we com
pare them, and never more so than when we turn from their
writings to those of their followers and imitators. With all
the abundance of his Italian elegance, what is the overloaded
and affected Eoscoe when compared with Gibbon ? Coxe,
although master of a good and classical style, resembles
Robertson in no respect so much as in the superficialness of
his researches ; and the statesman Fox has nothing in com
mon with Hume but the bigotry of his party zeal. The art-
of historical writing is evidently quite on the decline in Eng
land. One great cause of this consists, I imagine, in the
want of any stable and satisfactory philosophy a defect ~
sufficiently apparent even in the three great writers whom
I have enumerated. Without some rational and due con
ceptions of the fate and destiny of man, it is impossible to
form any just and consistent opinion, even concerning the
progress of events, the development of times, and the for
tunes of nations. In every situation, history and philosophy-
should be as much as possible united. Philosophy, if alto
gether separated from history, and destitute of the spirit of
criticism, which is the result of the union to which I have
alluded, can become nothing more than a wild existence of
sect and formality. History, on the other hand, without
the animating spirit of philosophy, is merely a dead heap of
useless materials, devoid of internal unity, proper purpose,
or worthy result. The want of satisfying and sane views
and principles, is nowhere more conspicuous than in those
histories of mankind, as they have been called, originally
produced in England, and more recently written among our
selves. From the immense storehouse of travels and voy
ages, a few facts are collected, which make up loose por
traits of the fisher, the hunter, the emigration of the early
nations, and the different conditions of agricultural, pastoral,
and commercial peoples. This is called a view of the his
tory of mankind, and there is no doubt that it contains many
individual points of great interest and importance, with
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 369
respect to the progress and habits of our species. Such would
be the case, even if we should treat of men entirely according
to their corporeal subdivisions of white, black, red, and
brown. But how little is gained by all this as to the only
real question, an answer to which should form the proper
history of mankind ! How little do we learn as to the origin
and proper state, or the present lamentable and fallen con
dition of human nature ! The answer to this question, which
is the essence of all history, can only be supplied by religion
and philosophy ; that philosophy, I mean, which has no
other ambition and no other end but to support religion. In
these false histories of mankind, the worthy offspring of the
degraded and material philosophy of the eighteenth century,
the predominant idea is always, that man sprung originally
from the dust like a mushroom, and differed from it only by
the possession of locomotive power and of consciousness.
The ambition of their authors is to represent us as originally
brutes, and to show how, by the progress of our own ingeni
ous contrivances, art has been added to art, and science to
science, till our nature has gradually reached the high emi
nence on which it now stands. The greater intimacy of con
nexion can be established between us and the ourang-outang,
(that favourite of so many philosophers of the last century,)
the more rational are supposed to be our opinions concern
ing our species, and its history.
The philosophy of sensation, which was unconsciously
bequeathed to the world by Bacon, and reduced to the shape
of a regular system by Locke, first displayed in France the
true immorality and destructiveness of which it is the
parent, and assumed the appearance of a perfect sect of
atheism. In England it took a different course; in that
country it could not indeed be supposed likely to produce
the same effects, because the old principles of religion were
regarded as far too intimately connected with national wel
fare, to be easily abandoned. The spirit of English thought
was moreover naturally inclined to adopt the paradoxical
and sceptical side of this philosophy rather than the mate-
2 A
370 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
rial and atheistical. The most singular phenomenon in the
whole history of philosophy is perhaps the existence of such
a man as Berkeley, who carried the system of Locke so far,
as utterly to disbelieve the existence of the external world,
and yet continued all the while a devout Christian bishop.
How external objects come into contact with our intellect,
so that it forms notions of them this was a point upon
which the philosophy of that time neither came nor could
come to any satisfactory conclusion. All that we perceive
or feel of these things, is after all only an impression, a
change upon ourselves. We may pursue it as far as we
will ; we can lay hold on only such a notion or perception of
an object, not the object itself, that seems, the more we
seek it, to fly the further from us. If we consider nature,
as either itself animated, or as the medium instrument and
expression of life, then this perplexity is at an end, and
every thing becomes clear. We have no difficulty in con
ceiving, that between two living and mutually operating
spiritual natures, there may exist a third nature apparently
inanimate, to serve as the bond of connexion and mutual
operation, to be their word and language, or to serve as the
separation and wall of partition between them. We are
familiar with such an idea, from our own experience, be
cause we cannot have any intercourse of thought with our
brother men, or even analyse our thoughts, except through
the operation of exactly similar means. The simple con
viction, however, that the sensible world is merely the
habitation of the intellectual, and a medium of separation as
well as connexion between intellectual natures, had been
lost along with the knowledge and idea of the world of intel
lect, and the animating impression of its existence. The
philosophy of the senses stumbled, in this way, at the very
threshold, and proceeded to become more and more per
plexed in every step of its progress. Berkeley believed that
the external world has no real existence, and that our no
tions and impressions of it are directly communicated to us
by the Deity. From the same doubts Hume fell into a
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 371
totally different system, the sceptical, a philosophy which
humbles itself before its doubts, and denies the possibility
of attaining knowledge. This man, by the penetrating and
convulsive influence of his scepticism, determined the future
condition of English philosophy. Since his time nothing
more has been attempted than to erect all sorts of bulwarks
against the practical influence of this destructive scepticism ;
and to maintain, by various substitutes and aids, the pile of
moral principle uncorrupted and entire. Not only \vith
Adam Smith, but with all their later philosophers, national
welfare is the ruling and central principle of thought, a
principle excellent and praiseworthy in its due situation, but
quite unfitted for being the centre and oracle of all know
ledge and science. The two great substitutes to which I
alludeare neithers cientifically nor practically of a durable
and effective nature. Common sense is poor when com
pared with certain knowledge, and moral feeling is a very
inadequate foundation for a proper system of ethics. Were
the common sense of man even as sound and universal as
these English reasoners maintain, if we should take its
conclusions for the last, and subject them to no higher re
view, we should find it more likely to cut than to unloose
the knot of the great questions in philosophy. The innate
curiosity of man is not to be so satisfied, but however fre
quently we may put it off, returns to the charge with undi-
minished pertinacity. Moral feeling and sympathy are things
too frail and uncertain for a rule of moral action. We must
have, in addition to these, an eternal law of rectitude, derived
not from experience and feeling, but from reason or from
God. A fair and unshaken faith is indispensable for our-
welfare. But the faith which the English philosophers have
established upon the dictates of common sense and moral
feeling, is, like the props upon which it leans, uncertain and
unworthy of our confidence. It is not worthy of the name
of faith : the name applied to the impression made upon us
by reason and external experience, and with equal propriety
to the impressions we receive in a totally different way from
372 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the internal voice of conscience and the revelations of a
superior nature. That which is called faith among these
men is nothing more than weak and self-doubting faith of
necessity, a thing as incapable of standing the test of time,
as the frail faith of custom is to resist the arguments of
unprincipled sophistry. This nation is powerful and free in
its whole being and life. Even in poetry it regards the
profound and internal rather than the outward and orna
mental, but by means of its own errors it is cramped and
confined in its philosophy. In regard to this mighty depart
ment of human intellect and exertion, the English of later
times are neither original nor great ; they even appear to be
fundamentally inferior to some of the best writers among
the French. If a few authors in England have pursued an
intellectual path of their own, quite different from the com
mon one, they have exerted no powerful, or at least no
extensive, influence over their fellow-countrymen. The
attempts with which I myself am acquainted do not indeed
display genius such as might entitle them to much consider
ation.
We may compare the mode of philosophical thought in
England, to a man who bears every external mark of health
and vigour, but who is by nature prone to a dangerous dis
temper. He has repressed the first eruptions of the disease
by means of palliatives, but the evil has on that very ac
count had the more leisure to entwine itself with the roots
of his constitution. The disease of philosophical error and
unbelief can never be got the better of, unless by a thorough
and radical cure. I think for this reason that it is ex
tremely probable, nay, that it is almost certain, England has
yet to undergo a mighty crisis in her philosophy, and of
necessity, in her morality and her religion.
If we regard not so much the immediate practical conse
quences, but rather the internal progress of intellect itself,
we shall be almost compelled to think error is less dangerous
when open and complete, than when half-formed and dis
guised. In the midst of moderate errors our self-love keeps
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 373
us ignorant of our danger. But when error has reached its
height, it is the nature of the human mind to promote a
reaction, and to rise with new strength and power out
of the abyss into which at last it perceives itself to have
fallen.
Such a return, and certainly a most remarkable one, to
the truth and true philosophy, has occurred of late years in
France. After that altar, upon which, shortly before, rea
son, the goddess of the age, was worshipped, more appro
priately than her devotees suspected, under the shape of an
actress or a harlot, after this altar had been purified, and
religion restored, after a church without a creed and the
chimera of Theophilanthropy had been reduced to their
original nothingness, the voice of oppressed and persecuted
truth began on every side to make itself heard. I do not
mean to refer in any particular way to that one celebrated
writer who has consecrated his powerful eloquence entirely
to the service of his religion. For however useful Chateau
briand may have been by representing Christianity in her
most amiable form and her beneficial consequences, nay,
however necessary such a writer as he is may have been to
break the ice of infidelity in France, he has attached far too
much to the sensible and external part of religion, and I
suspect, indeed, has never penetrated into the deep and
proper essence of our Christianity.
Many attempts have been made in a quite different way,
to enlarge the mode of thinking, and establish a higher spe
cies of philosophy in France. Even the eiforts which have
been made to introduce and naturalise the spirit of our Ger
man philosophers are worthy of much attention. They
have been supported by the genius and erudition of several
of the first and most celebrated Frenchmen of the age. The
attempt, indeed, is still opposed by many serious and almost
insurmountable obstacles. Perhaps the Germanising French
scholars have plunged too widely into the whole of our
literature, instead of thoroughly mastering, in the first
instance, the principles and essence of our philosophical
374 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
systems. A still more important difficulty is presented by
the lingering tone of infidel thought, with which the general
body of the nation is still, I fear, infected. The political
establishment and external observances of religion are not
sufficient for the purpose. Philosophy must proceed from,"
and return to, a sincere, and unalterable, and undoubting
faith.
What I view as the most essential and important change
in French literature of these last years, is the return to a
higher morality, and that united system of Platonic and
Christian philosophy, which stands exactly in the opposite
extreme from the atheism of the preceding age. In some
measure, even before the Revolution, and even in the period
of the most entire corruption, this return had been begun.
But it was not till after the whole system of thought had
undergone a convulsion, that it began to manifest its perfect
influence. A few philosophers, cut off from their age, and
superior to it, France at all times possessed. I may refer
in the first place, to Hemsterhuys, who, although not a
Frenchman by birth, wrote entirely in this language ; and
that, too, with so much grace and harmony, that even in
this point of view his Socratic dialogues are worthy of the
noble spirit of Platonism and Christianity which they ex
press. The return has, however, been most of all promoted
by two very remarkable philosophers, men in all their views
and principles thoroughly Christian. Of the one of these,
St Martin, many writings were known even before the
Revolution, and he was spoken of by the name of the un
known philosopher ; the other, Bonald, has since that time
become the best and most profound champion of the old
French monarchical constitution. Both, along with their
good and excellent qualities, have many great and essential
errors. They are full of French prejudices, and although
despisers of the spirit of their own age, they have so much
partaken in it as to be very unfit judges of ages and nations
different from their own. Even the most essential parts of
their philosophy bear witness at what period they wrote,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 375
and have a share of the spirit of the eighteenth century.
The chief error of St Martin consists in this, that he viewed
religion entirely as a matter of individual revelation, and as
having no connexion whatever with forms and the external
church of God. For this, in the situation of things imme
diately before or during the Revolution, there might, indeed,
be some apology ; but the error is in itself a dangerous one,
and has prevented, in a great measure, the powerful genius
of St Martin from producing the effect which might other
wise have been expected to follow its exertions. He belongs
to the adherents of that oriental and Christian philosophy,
which, as I have already said, although despised and ridi
culed by doctors and universities, has, ever since the Revo
lution, been making silent but sure progress in the spirit of
the age. However little of the praise of invention may be
due to St Martin, and however much of error may be
mingled with all his ideas, it still must remain a very re
markable circumstance, that at the period when France was
most filled with atheism, an unknown and solitary philo
sopher should have arisen, who devoted the whole of his
talents to destroy the atheistical philosophy of the time, and
substitute in its place the doctrines of divine revelation and
ancient tradition a Mosaic and Christian system of philo
sophy. It is no less remarkable, that at the very commence
ment of our century, while others were restoring religion
merely for political purposes, and with a view to maintain
the faith of the ignorant, a learned jurist and political philo
sopher like Bonald should have seriously made the attempt
to found the theory of justice upon God alone, and that of
government on the doctrines of the Bible. In a philosophi
cal point of view, we may blame him for having too much
confounded and identified revelation with reason. But we
must remember that he wrote in a country where these had
been treated as not only distinct but irreconcilable means
of knowledge. Many champions of Christianity have in
jured themselves by their too mdiscriminating rejection of
all philosophy. Bonald goes into the other extreme; he
376 HISTORY OP LITERATURE.
errs by making Christianity too rational, and almost resolv
ing it into reason. Truth itself, when waging war with
error, is apt to go to the opposite extremity, and to regard
the arguments of its adversaries in too narrow a point of
view. After such errors and principles as those of the last
century were, it is no wonder that the human mind should
have received a shock sufficient to render it incapable of
moving at once firmly and independently even in a better
way. Such appears to have been the case with these illus
trious Frenchmen, Bonald and St Martin.
Such a radical change in philosophy cannot easily occur
in England. The great incidents of external life, commerce,
and the British constitution, India and the Continent, en
gross the active intellect of this most active of all countries.
There remains no talent or time for those pursuits of deeper
thought and philosophy, in which, for these very reasons,
the English are inferior at this moment to the French.-
Even in our own days, however, there has been no want of
illustrious writers, of men alike distinguished by research
and eloquence, in England these stand alone as tokens of
the changing spirit of our time. William Jones has as yet
had no rivals in the department which he selected ; no one
appears to have comprehended, as he did, the antiquities of
Asia, and, above all, of India, with the acuteness of a philo
sopher, or to have seen the mode of reconciling every thing
with the doctrine and history of the Scriptures. Were such
paths pursued with spirit and power, the usual prejudices
and fetters of British thought might be easily got rid of.
But if we are to praise a man in proportion to his useful
ness, I am persuaded that no task could be more difficult
than that of doing justice to another Englishman, his con
temporary, the statesman and orator Burke. This man
has been to his own country, and to all Europe in a very
particular manner to Germany a new light of political
wisdom and moral experience. He corrected his age when
it was at the height of its revolutionary frenzy ; and without
maintaining any system of philosophy, he seems to have
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 377
seen further into the true nature of society, and to have
more clearly comprehended the effect of religion in con
necting individual security with national welfare, than any
philosopher, or any system of philosophy of any preceding
age.
LECTUKE XV.
RETROSPECT GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SPINOSA AND LEIBNITZ GERMAN LANGUAGE
AND POETRY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES LUTHER, HANS
SACHS, JACOB BOHME OPITZ, THE SILESIAN SCHOOL CORRUPTION OP TASTE
AFTER THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA ; OCCASIONAL POETRY GERMAN POETS OF
THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FREDERICK THE SECOND ;
KLOPSTOCK; THE MESSIAD AND NORTHERN MYTHOLOGY THE CHIVALROUS
POEMS OF WIELAND INTRODUCTION OF THE ANCIENT METRES OF QUANTITY
INTO THE GERMAN LANGUAGE; DEFENCE OF RHYME ADELUNG, GOTTSCHED,
AND " THE (SO CALLED) GOLDEN AGE "FIRST GENERATION OF THE LATER
GERMAN LITERATURE, OR " THE PERIOD OF THE FOUNDERS."
To some of my hearers it may appear as idle and super
fluous to write against the philosophy of the eighteenth cen
tury, as it would be to fight with the shadow of a departed
enemy. In truth, however, the cases are not at all parallel
ones, although I can easily suppose they may seem so to such
as form their judgments entirely from the external appear
ances of things. The evil is by no means annihilated,
although it has become less visible. In England the dis
ease of the age never broke out openly, and for that very
reason has never been radically cured. In that country as
in France, there are a few illustrious exceptions and sym
bols of a self-regenerating age ; symptoms of a gradual re
turn from error, and the invincible power and majesty of
truth. But I fear those who are best able to judge will
agree with me in suspecting that the general tone of thought,
particularly among those who have the empire of literature
in their hands, is not yet altered. Among the latest writers
378 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
of France, the prevalence of the old system is still manifest ;
the world and all its phenomena are still explained upon the
old principles of the atoniical and material philosophy. Of
all the foolish hypotheses which have ever cheated the
human intellect with the empty show of explanation, that
of materialism is the most unsatisfactory. In a scientific
point of view, it is void of foundation, and fantastic ; in
regard to morality, national welfare, and religion, its influ
ences are utterly unworthy and pernicious. Although this
system is now seldom pursued to its consequences, and
although experience has convinced all men how dangerous
these inevitably are, yet we have still before our eyes the
miserable spectacle of men entitled to every respect as na
tural philosophers, and justly occupying a high place in the
intellectual scale of our age, who disgrace all their know
ledge by the most lamentable and childish ignorance respect
ing whatever is most truly worthy of the name of philoso
phy. The cause of truth is gaining strength every day, but
these men are not ashamed to advocate, at least by insinu
ations and calumnies, the cause of her adversary. Such is
the situation of affairs abroad. Here, in Germany, the
common disease of the century, the false philosophy, and
the mania for reason, assumed quite a different appearance
a form of more temperance, and perhaps of less practical
danger. We should err very much, nevertheless, if we
should imagine that the evil does not exist, or flatter our
selves that our disease is entirely vanquished, merely be
cause the symptoms have undergone a change.
If the German philosophy did not fall into such violent
extremes as the French, it was not guarded by the same
strong feelings of nationality, whose influence I have already
described upon the English. The sentiment of national
union had before this time become quite extinct among the
subjects of our innumerable petty states. But perhaps the
very smallness of our states was in some measure the cause
of our security. Every thing was conducted upon so small
a scale, and was so much in the view of men, that no open
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 379
or audacious adoption of any pernicious systems of injustice,
such as those of Hobbes or Machiavelli, could be ventured
upon. Still, however, in private life, manners certainly
were becoming more relaxed, and so paving the most easy
way for vicious theory. But the circumstance which pre
served the German philosophy, at its commencement, from
falling into the extreme of error, was, I imagine, the erudi
tion of the German writers. These were in general full of
recollections and ideas of that philosophy of antiquity which
had become entirely forgotten in France and England.
Leibnitz was, in this point of view, a great blessing to his
country. It is very true that he was a physician who made
use of palliatives, but was incapable or unambitious of effect
ing a radical cure ; yet even this was much if we consider
the wants of the time. He was a scholar as well as a philo
sopher, and his works contain innumerable points which
call us back to those who preceded him. It is perhaps the
chief fault of Leibnitz that he is too fond of reviving ex
ploded difficulties ; but even by this defect of his, he has
been the most admirable harbinger of men who felt within
them the spirit, the call, and the passion to plunge more
deeply into all the labyrinths of thought, and all the secrets
of knowledge. He marks the point of transition from the
philosophy of the seventeenth to the new mode of thinking
of the eighteenth century one of the most remarkable eras
in the whole history of mankind. As he and his philosophy
have never exerted much influence out of Germany, and
have been little studied in France, and not at all in Eng
land, I have thought fit to pass him over in silence while
treating of foreign philosophers, and reserved him for a place
by himself. The same conduct has been adopted in respect
to his adversary Spinosa, because he too has had a similar
fate, has been little heard of either in his own country or in
England, and not at all in France, but been zealously de
fended and attacked by Germans alone. Spinosa s greatest
error, that of making no distinction between God and the
world, is one of the most pernicious nature. He denied to
380 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
individual beings independence and self-direction, and saw
in them all only various manifestations of one eternal and
all comprehending existence ; he thus took personality from
the Deitjr, and freedom from man, and by representing all
that is immoral, untrue, and impious, as appearances, not
realities, he went far to destroy all distinctions between good
and evil. This error is so intimately connected with the
doctrines of unassisted reason, that it is probably the very
oldest of all the falsities which sprung up in the room of the
truth originally communicated to mankind by his Maker.
But Spinosa threw pantheism into a more scientific shape
than it ever possessed before his time. The error itself is
one so natural to scientific and self-confident reason, that
Descartes, from whose system that of Spinosa immediately
sprung, was prevented only by the want of depth and deci
sion in his spirit, from falling into the abyss upon the brink
of which he stood. In this, as in many other cases, we
must be careful to separate the error from the person. It
frequently happens that he who first opens up a new path
of error, who even thoroughly prepares it, and points it out
in the most decided and fearless manner, is nevertheless far
less dangerous than his followers who pursue the same track
without the same confidence. The morality of Spinosa is
not indeed that of the Bible, for he himself was no Chris
tian, but it is still a pure and noble morality, resembling that
of the ancient Stoics, perhaps possessing considerable ad
vantages over that system. That which makes him strong
when opposed to adversaries who do not understand or feel
his depth, or who, unconsciously, have fallen into errors not
much different from his, is not merely the scientific clearness
and decision of his intellect, but in a much higher degree
the open-heartedness, strong feeling, and conviction with
which all that he says seems to gush from his heart and
soul. We cannot call this a natural inspiration, such as
that which animates the poet, the artist, or the naturalist,
still less the inspiration of the supernatural world ; for where
can this find a place when there is no faith in an effective
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 381
Deity? But it is a thorough and penetrating impression
and feeling of the eternal which accompanies him in all the
ranges of his thought, and lifts him above the world of the
senses. The remarkable error which lies at the root of all
his philosophy is indeed a pernicious and detestable one, and
it might appear as if nothing could be worse. Yet if we
compare the error of Spinosa with the atheism of the eight
eenth century, we shall be at no loss to discover a mighty
difference between them. That material philosophy, if we
must give it such a name, which explains every thing by
matter, and gives the first place to sense, is an error which
seems almost to lie lower than the region of humanity.
Rarely, among particular individuals who have embraced
such a system, can there be much reason to hope for a re
turn to truth ; although there can be no difficulty in con
ceiving that an age or nation, which has seen its pernicious
moral consequences openly displayed, should throw it off with
abhorrence. The high spirituality, on the contrary, of that
other error into which Spinosa fell, may well appear to leave
greater means and more open paths for reformation. But, after
all, an error is surely so much the more pernicious, that it is
fitted to seize on noble and intellectual disciples ; the imme
diate consequences are then not so practically dangerous,
but the evil principle has by this means time to fasten itself
more deeply, and sooner or later is sure to manifest the
power of its corruption upon the whole either of an age or
of a nation ; as that disease is the most fatal to the human
body which makes its slow but steady attacks upon the very
vitals of our frame.
The philosophy of Liebnitz is almost entirely fastened
upon that of Spinosa. It is almost throughout a polemic
philosophy ; and even when it does not assume the external
form of controversy, its object is always to pull down the
common philosophy of his age, to answer it, resolve its
doubts, and supply its deficiencies ; it is entirely devoted to
the spirit and necessities of his time, and never comes for
ward in the independence and confidence of its own original
382 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
power. The literary sceptic Bayle, and Locke, the founder
of the sensation system, were the principal adversaries of
Liebnitz, to say nothing of a few more personal opponents.
But the most prominent of them all is Spinosa, with whom
he frequently, nay, almost perpetually contends, even where
he does not name him, as if with an invisible and dreadful
enemy. Of the philosophers with whom he agrees, and of
the sources from which he derived a great part of his argu
ments, he says very little. It was no part of his character
to recognise the existence of an eternal and spiritual world,
whereof the sensible world is only the external vehicle and
veil. His hypothesis, on the contrary, (according to which
sensible objects are merely a perplexed chaos of solitary
spiritual principles or monads in a state of slumber or im
perfection,) coincides with, or at least stands at no very
remote distance from, the atomical doctrine of Epicurus and
the modern atheists, and is at the best only a sort of inter
mediate system between that and the proper belief in a
spiritual world. His attempt to solve the difficulties of the
contemporary philosophy concerning the connexion of the
mind and the body, by saying that the common Creator of
both made them originally to go together, as a watchmaker
might make two watches, is only a piece of ingenious sophis
try, and tends to give a degrading view of the nobler part of
our nature. His celebrated Theodicee, or justification of God
on account of the existence of moral evil, answers that ques
tion which so perpetually recurs to the natural reason, with
the bold dexterity of a practised diplomatist, who conceives
it to be his duty to promote by every means, good, bad, or
indifferent, the cause of his master, and to conceal as much
as possible from the eyes of his opponent any thing that
seems favourable to the other side of the question. It is
impossible for the philosophy of reason to answer the ques
tion concerning the existence of evil in the world, without
either denying the existence of evil, in contradiction to our
daily experience, or ascribing its creation to the Deity, in
contradiction to our own feeling and the voice of conscience.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 383
The solution of Liebnitz (that of optimism) which gave so
much room for the wit of Voltaire, has more lately found a
counterpart in the theory of a celebrated philosopher, who
explains every thing upon a principle of which Leibnitz had
no idea, who thinks that the only end for which the external
world was created, was to afford the spirit room to exercise
and develop itself, and maintains that the worse the world
is, the better is it adapted to serve this purpose. Neither
this Spartan, nor that elaborate solution, is satisfactory
either to feeling or to philosophy.
In the Leibnitzian ideas concerning space and time, we
have a remarkable evidence how entirely the views of the
truest and highest philosophy were at that period forgotten.
The philosophy of antiquity recognised in time and place an
endless theatre for the display of the eternal, and of the
living pulsation of eternal love. By the contemplation of
such things, however imperfect and inadequate, the natural,
even the merely sensible man, was affected with a stupen
dous feeling of admiration well calculated to prepare the
way for religious thoughts. It extended and ennobled his
soul to regard, in such a manner as this, the past, the pre
sent, and the future. But Leibnitz saw in time and space
nothing but the arrangement of contemporary or consecu
tive incidents. So apt are deadening and insignificant ideas
to creep into the place of living and just feeling, in all that
is most fitted to elevate man above the world of the senses.
The philosophy of Leibnitz was brought into fashion in
Germany, and established in the schools, chiefly by means
of Wolf; this circumstance is sufficient to characterise
it. A sect which lays hold of active life, is judged by the
direction which it pursues, and the consequences which it
produces. But the spirit of a sect confined to schools soon
becomes a mere being of formality : Aristotle, Descartes,
Leibnitz, or Kant is called the master, and the ideas are
said to be his, but in truth they are no longer ideas as they
were in him ; they are mere formulas. Germany, neverthe
less, has to thank this scholastic system for preventing, or
384 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
at least checking, the introduction of the yet more danger- -
ous sectarian spirit of the atheistical philosophy of the senses ;
and after all the pedantry was not of long duration. Leib
nitz himself, although he wrote mostly in Latin and French,
gave quite a new spring to the study of the German language,
history, and antiquities ; and even Wolf s German writings
were of considerable service to the language. They were
followed by some who, although belonging to their school,
had both originality of thought and power of writing ; and
these, along with a few better poets than had lately appeared,
first brought our language out of the state of barbarism into
which it had fallen. They prepared the way for Klopstock,
who arose in the middle of the last century, and became the
founder of a new epoch, the master and father of the present
literature of Germany.
But before I proceed to depict Klopstock, I must direct
your eyes to a short review of the period which intervened
between the old and the new literature of our country. The
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries produced indeed few
great German writers, but these few are, on account of the
rarity, the more worthy of our attention. I have already
explained in what way the chivalrous poetry and art of the
middle age were lost during the controversies of the six
teenth, and how our language itself became corrupted dur
ing the long continued civil wars by which the internal peace
of our country was so cruelly agitated and convulsed. There
was one instrument by which the influx of barbarism was
opposed, and one treasure which made up for what had been
l os t__I mean the German translation of the Bible. It is
well known to you that all true philologists regard this as
the standard and model of classical expression in the High
Dutch language ; and that not only Klopstock, but many
other writers of the first rank, have fashioned their style,
and selected their phrases according to the rules of this ver
sion. It is worthy of your notice, that in no other modern
language have so many Biblical words and phrases come
into the use of common life, as in ours. I perfectly agree
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 385
with these writers who consider this circumstance as a for
tunate one ; and I believe, that from it has been derived
not a little of that power, life, and simplicity, by which I
think the best German writers are distinguished from all
other moderns. The Catholic as well as the modern Pro
testant scholar .have many things to find fault with in this
translation ; but these, after all, regard only individual pas
sages wherein Luther erred, either by writing in the spirit
of his own sect, and contrary to the old doctrines of the
Christian church, or from a want of knowledge in history,
physics, or geography. In these later times we have wit
nessed an attempt to render a new and rational translation
of the Bible an instrument of propagating the doctrines of
the illuminati; and we have seen this too much in the
hands even of Catholics themselves. But the instant this
folly had blown over, we returned with increased affection
to the excellent old version of Luther. Luther himself has
not indeed the whole merit of producing it. He only se
lected the best parts of translations existing before his time,
and he was assisted in this labour by several of his friends,
in particular by the indefatigable Melancthon. We owe to
him, nevertheless, the highest gratitude for placing in our
hands this most noble and manly model of German expres
sion. Even in his own writings he displays a most original
eloquence, surpassed by few names that occur in the whole
history of literature. He had, indeed, all those properties
which render a man fit to be a revolutionary orator. This
revolutionary eloquence is manifest, not only in his half-
political and business writings, such as the Address to the
Nobility of the German Nation, but in all the works whici-
he has left behind him. In almost the whole of them we
perceive the marks of mighty internal conflict. Two worlds
appear to be contending for the mastery over the mighty
soul of this man so favoured by God and nature. Through
out all his writings there prevails a struggle between light
and darkness, faith and passion, God and himself. The
choice which he made the use to which he devoted his ma-
2s
386 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
jestic genius these are subjects upon which it is even now
quite impossible for me to speak so as to please you all. For
myself I am free to acknowledge, that I can never regard
either his writings or his life, except with some portion of
that compassion which is due to a great nature led astray
by over-confidence in its own vigour. As to the intellec
tual power and greatness of Luther, abstracted from all
consideration of the uses to which he applied them, I think
there are few even of his own disciples who appreciate him
highly enough. His coadjutors were mostly mere scholars,
indolent and enlightened men of the common order. It was
upon him and his soul that the fate of Europe depended.
He was the man of his age and his nation.
Luther was thoroughly a popular writer. No country in
Europe can boast of so many remarkable, comprehensive,
powerful, and extraordinary writers for the common people,
as Germany. However much the higher orders of Germany
were inferior, or however lately they came up to those of
France, England, and Italy, it is certain that the common
people of none of these countries has displayed so much
profoundness of intellect, and natural power of mind, as
that of our own nation. It is an old saying, that the power
of kings is given by God ; it is an equally old one, and one
quite as much worthy of being kept in mind, that the voice
of the people is the voice of God. Both are clear, perfect,
and true ; wo to those that disregard, or would mislead this
oracle of the Deity ! They are much to be pitied who con
ceive that they are capable, by the tricks of empty and vain
politics, of leading the people entirely according to their own
selfish and unworthy purposes and desires. The people is
wiser than they imagine, and far wiser than themselves.
The people sees through their tricks, and will not easily be
deceived. But of all men they surely are guilty of the
greatest crime who would make use of the natural power of
our people for the purposes of destruction and convulsion.
This strength must indeed be appalling, should it ever be
directed by any other guides than those it has as yet
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 387
obeyed, obedience to the precepts, and faith in the doc
trines of religion. Narrow must their judgment be who
conceive that this power is extinct, because it is seldom
visible. It is the inheritance of our ancestors, and can
never be thrown away ; but like many of the other hidden
powers of nature, it is too great to be often manifested.
The popular writing of northern Germany was by no means
confined to religious subjects, (as in Luther s works,) but
embraced also poetry and philosophy. I shall for the pre
sent mention only two of the most remarkable authors, the
celebrated Meistersanger of Xurnberg, and that Christian
visionary who was so much celebrated throughout Europe,
about the time of the thirty years war, under the name of
the Teutonic philosopher.
In popular songs and poems the possessions of Germany
are abundant. The popular poetry is generally of two kinds :
it consists in part of songs, solitary fragments of a departed
age of heroism and chivalry, whose recollections have been
disturbed and broken by the revolutions of external events,
or have become exploded in consequence of the gradual
change in the modes of our social life and ideas ; in part
of the productions of the vulgur themselves, and this is the
most striking division of the popular poetry of Germany.
The master of Nurnberg was an artificer in poetry as well as
in common life. He is, however, a writer full of power and
fancy ; he possesses abundance of wit and shrewdness, and
if we are to compare him with the early writers of other lan
guages, he is I think more inventive than Chaucer, more
rich than Marot, and more poetical than either. In regard
to our language, his works form a treasure, of which no pro
per use has yet been made.
The same remark may be applied to Jacob Bohme, that
Teutonic philosopher who is so much ridiculed by the
general race of literary men. These are themselves sen
sible that they understand neither the good nor the bad that
is in his writings ; but they are ignorant that they know
absolutely nothing either respecting the man himself or the
388 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
relation in which he stood to his contemporaries. I have,
on a former occasion, shown you what my opinion is re
specting the effects of philosophy being cultivated by the
common people, and neglected by the higher orders of a
nation. Such, however, was actually the case at that pe
riod, both in Protestant Germany and in England. Jacob
Bohrne is commonly called a dreamer, and it is very true
that in his writings there may be more marks of an ardent
imagination than of a sound judgment. But we cannot at
least deny this strange man the praise of a very poetical
fancy. If we should consider him merely as a poet, and
compare him with those other Christian poets who have
handled subjects connected with the supernatural world
with Klopstock, with Milton, or even with Dante, we shall
find that he rivals the best of them in fulness of fancy and
depth of feeling ; and that he falls little below them, even
in regard to individual beauties and poetical expression.
Whatever defects may be found in the philosophy of Jacob
Bohme, the historian of German literature can never pass
over his name in silence. In few works of any period have
the strength and richness of our language been better dis
played than in his. His language possesses indeed a charm
of nature, simplicity, and unsought vigour, which we should
look for in vain in the tongue which we now speak, en
riched as it is by the immense importation of foreign terms,
and the invented phraseologies of our late philosophers.
The permanent effects produced by the thirty years war
upon our literature were extremely hurtful ; but there is no
doubt that, while it actually raged, it operated as an
awakener and animator of German intellect. The Silesian
Opitz arose in the midst of it, and gave to our language and
poetry a direction which has since found many imitators.
His immediate models were sought from Holland a country
which at that time possessed a Hugo Grotius which was
not only the most learned and enlightened of all Pro
testant states, but also rich and cultivated in its poetry,
and abounding in vernacular tragedies composed after the
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 389
antique model, a considerable time before the great French
tragedians were fostered in the court of Lewis XIV. Yet
the excellence of Opitz is quite independent of what he
boiTowed from any foreign literature, from the Dutch tra
gedies, and the pastoral romances of the Spaniards. Even
his dramatic attempts, free translations, or imitations of the
Greek and Italian theatres, have not produced any effect.
The truth is, that in the very best and most original of his
lyrical, miscellaneous, and didactic poems, we should always
regard more what he was fitted by nature to be, what he
desired, and felt, and aspired to, than what he really was.
He is commonly called the father of German poetry. It
appears to me that, at least since Klopstock, few of the sons
have been grateful enough to cultivate much acquaintance
with this parent. If any man was ever formed by nature
to be a heroic poet, this was Opitz. He felt this, and wished
to be the heroic poet of the German nation. But his life
was spent amidst the perplexities and agitations of a tumul
tuous period, and he died in early manhood before he had
time to complete either his purposes or his poetry. Through
out all his works, imperfect as they are, there break forth
flashes and emanations of that course of thought and great
ness of soul which create a heroic poet ; and even in regard
to language, those noble sentiments and strong thoughts of
Opitz are in general expressed with an artless simplicity
and naivete, which, I think, have not since been equalled.
His style is superior to that of Klopstock.
Next to Opitz, the most distinguished of the Silesian
poets of this period is Flemming. Plis poetry is intensely
personal ; it is filled with the inspiration of his own friend
ships, passions, and loves. His life was worthy of his being
so celebrated ; he travelled through the then unknown in
terior of Russia into Persia, and has described all that he
saw or experienced during this interesting journey, with the
most glowing feeling, and a truly oriental splendour of
fancy. In style, however, he is quite inferior to Opitz. It
is much to be regretted, that both of these men were, after
390 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
all, or were at least held to be, not national, but provincial
poets not Germans, but Silesians. After the unfortunate
civil war, whose flames, fed by the participation or policy
of the half of Europe, wasted and devoured our country for
thirty years after the still more miserable peace of 1648,
the strength of the German nation was broken, and German
poetry shared in the general decline. Its substance and
life were fled, and it soon degenerated into a mere artificial
and fantastic display of insignificant thoughts upon worth
less subjects. The first introducer of the false taste was
Hoffmanswaldau, but it was rendered general by the more
powerful talents of Lohenstein. This period, from 1648 to
the middle of last century, was our proper age of barbarism,
a sort of division and chaotic interregnum in the history of
German literature. Our language hesitated between a spe
cies of would-be French and wavering German, and was,
with all this weakness, full of affectation and artifice. Even
in a political point of view, the most degraded and unfor
tunate period of our history is that immediately subsequent
to the peace of Westphalia. With the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the power of Germany began again to
revive. Austria again attained the summit of strength and
glory ; some of the first thrones in Europe were ascended by
princes of the German houses, and one of them founded in
Germany itself a new and splendid monarchy. All these
circumstances, particularly when taken together, could
scarcely fail to produce a reviving and quickening effect on
the intellect, language, and manners of our country. Many
princes were compelled, even by considerations of mere
political interest, to become the patrons of science. These
causes did operate, but not speedily ; they were opposed by
many serious obstacles ; above all, by the deep-rooted cor
ruption which had extended itself through all the German
notions of art and style. The first in thought and language
of the better lyrical poets of the eighteenth century, resem
bled in a great measure their predecessors of the seventeenth,
and devoted themselves entirely to the occasional poetry of
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 391
gallantry, court, festival, and panegyric. Those of them
who paid the greatest attention to style, Hagedorn, and
after him Utz, were more addicted to imitation, and cer
tainly very happy imitation, of French and English poets,
than to the open expression of their own feelings and pas
sions. Those who, by a higher tone of inspiration, like
Haller, or by a more graceful and elegant fertility, like
Gleim, are most deserving of the name of poets, are, in
respect of language, always careless, frequently corrupt.
At the same time, they must be regarded, even in respect
to language and its construction alone, as great and merito
rious, when compared with the state of barbarism into
which the taste and judgment of the time immediately pre
ceding them had fallen. They must receive still greater
admiration, when we reflect on the unfavourable circum
stances of some of their lives. Several of these first revisers
of the German language and poetry died in very early life ,-
such was the fate of Kleist, who was perhaps the greatest
genius of them all, of Kronenk, and of Elias Schlegel ; others
devoted their chief attention to the bustle of active life, or
passed into foreign countries and forgot their destiny. They
all felt the want of a point of union, and looked for it in vaiir"
from the youthful hands of Frederick the Second. It is
common of late to justify the conduct of this monarch, by
asserting that at the time when he arose, the language and
poetry of his country were really in such a state that they
could not possibly be viewed with any thing but contempt
and aversion by one of so much talent as he possessed.
There is, however, no foundation in fact for such a plea :
what might not have been done for German literature by .1
prince, in whose time (and some of them too in whose own
dominions) there arose and flourished such men as Klop-
stock, Winkelmann, Kant, and Lessing? Where, in any
age, could better materials have been found, and what were
the foreign favourites of Frederick (Voltaire alone excepted)
when placed by the side of these great resuscitators of science
and art ? What was a Maupertuis, or a La Metric ? the
392 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
mere mob of French literati. "We may well excuse Klop*
stock for expressing, with somewhat of the keenness of
personal resentment, his indignation for the unmerited con
tempt poured upon the language and literature of his coun
try. He felt and expressed this with bitter severity, when
he instituted a comparison between Frederick and Caesar.
In the time of Julius, more Greek, good, bad, or indifferent,
was written at Rome, than French in Germany during the
whole of the eighteenth century. The Koman language
possessed at that period as few classical works as the Ger
man did before 1750. And yet Csesar thought it well worth
his while to devote the most careful attention to his mother-
tongue, nay, to be himself a Roman philologer and gram
marian. And it was thus that he made himself oue of the
first of orators and of writers, distinctions which no man ever
can reach who makes use of a foreign dialect. But upon
the whole, we should perhaps scarcely regret the want of
such an union of German writers as Frederick had it in his
power to effect. Individuals would indeed have written
better and more easily, but it may be that the literature as
a whole might have suffered, that it might have been nar
rowed in its spirit and comprehension, and become the affair
of a province rather than of the whole German people. We
should have paid dearly for a somewhat more rapid develop
ment, by sacrificing what constitute at this moment the
chief excellence of our writers riches and freedom. But
the whole of the argument in defence of Frederick proceeds
upon a wrong view of the subject. If kings are to defer
their patronage of national literature till such time as there
are in the country abundance of elegant and perfect writers,
the utmost which it can be in their power to effect, must be
the establishment of some tame and unprofitable academy.
The monarch who is ambitious to befriend and guide the
intellect of his people, must foster and cherish talents not
yet completely developed, and furnish young men with the
instruments and opportunities of distinction. We may par
don the zeal of Klopstock, for he had in his own person
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 393
abundant experience of the neglect of princes. He was
conscious to himself of a genius capable of diffusing new
spirit and life, not over poetry alone, but over all the de
partments of literature. The evil influence of Voltaire over
France was not more extensive than the good influence of
Klopstock might have been over Germany, had he been
supplied with room, occasion, means, and instruments wor
thy of his genius.
Klopstock stood conspicuous, and almost alo ie in the
German literature of his time, in respect of his intensely
national feelings, feelings with which few of his contempo
raries sympathised, and which still fewer could understand.
It was his ambition to transfer these German feelings into
poetry. With the Messiad, the new literature of our coun
try may be said to begin ; so immeasurable have been the
benefits derived from it, particularly in respect to style and
expression, although the poem is now admired chiefly upon
trust, or has not at least become a work of true power and
living feeling in our hands. The plan labours under the
same disadvantages which I have described as inseparable
from all poems of this species. Klopstock s most successful
poetry is that conceived in the spirit of elegy. Every gra
dation, blending, and depth of elegiac feeling, is handled by
him with the power and ease of a master ; however far he
pursues the stream of his melancholy reflections, he never
doubts, nor needs to doubt, that his readers will willingly
follow him, and deliver up their spirits to his control. He
calls forth the most melting of our sympathies even for a
fallen spirit Abbadona. There is another element which
enters as largely, but far less happily, into the composition
of his poetry. In prose, he is a writer who errs by being
too sententious, brief, and epigrammatic ; but in poetry, he
indulges in a verbose and elaborate species of rhetoric, which
often destroys, in a great measure, the effect of his feeling.
Both Milton and Virgil are chargeable with the same defect,
but Klopstock has earned it much further than either of
them. We may allow him to assume that his heavenly per-
394 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
sonages make use of human, nay, of German language, but
we can with difficulty suppose that beings of so elevated
a nature can waste their time in such frivolous and long-
winded conversations as occur in the Messiad.
That neither the nation nor the poet himself was satisfied
with the Messiad as a whole, is sufficiently proved by the
very great dissimilarity of the first and second halves of the
poem.
There lay in the spirit of Klopstock a lofty idea of a new
and eminently German poetry. His mighty hand put an
end to the greatest reproach of our literature : he demon
strated that Christianity on the one hand, and Gothic my
thology and antiquity on the other, must be the main ele
ments of all new European poetry and inspiration. In his
time, the scholars of Denmark were zealously employed in
bringing into notice the northern mythology and the Edda ;
and Klopstock himself was willing to take a part in their
labours. But the small lyrical poems and odes by which he
attempted to promote their views were not the proper means
for accomplishing it. The Danish poets were wiser in adopt
ing the department of narrative and descriptive poetry.
To the Hermann of Klopstock, next to the Messiad, his
most considerable poem, the same general remarks may be
applied which I have already made concerning the elegiac
spirit of all his poetry, and the abuse of rhetorical acuteness.
As a drama, it is calculated for a future and ideal theatre,
not for that actual theatre either of his time or of ours,
which seems to regard with a favourable eye all manner of
pleasure and purpose rather than the poetical. Klopstock
seized and felt only the two extreme points of German
poetry ; he overlooked all that lies in the middle between
the Christian and the northern, and all that is produced by
the blending of these two elements the whole middle age,
the thousand or twelve hundred years which intervened
between Attila and that peace of Westphalia, of which, so
much against our wishes, we are compelled to make an
epoch both in literature and in history. He omitted, there-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 395
fore, to survey the region of all others most fruitful and
most obvious, the only one upon which poetry ever can
be established so as to become a matter of historical and
national influence in our eyes. This great blank which
Klopstock left, many subsequent writers have attempted to
fill up ; particularly Bodmer as a scholar, and Wieland as a
poet. Bodmer was passionately fond of the old romantic
chivalrous poetry, and was the first who brought the riches
of Germany in that department into light ; although he
adopted a method which was ill calculated to hasten the
effects he wished to produce. The poetry of Wieland was
entirely devoted to the romantic, which had been left un
touched by Klopstock. It is true, that a historical romantic
poem, after the manner of Tasso, not perhaps founded on
the Crusades, but on some other of the rich poetical mate
rials of the middle age, might have been a better and more
effectual instrument, than an entirely fanciful and playful
subject, such as that of Oberon. But notwithstanding all
this, and in spite of many absurd modern things which he
has interwoven, the services of Wieland have been emi
nently useful in recovering romantic feelings. It is a shame
and a pity that one who had recreated in so glorious a man
ner the minstrelsy of the Provencial period, should have so
soon laid poetry aside. This is the greatest reproach which
can be made to the poet of Oberon, that he who, had he
acted wisely, might have become the German Ariosto, or
the rival of the Italian one, should ha 76 stooped to be the
imitator of such a prose writer as Crebillon. In prose, it is
quite evident that his style and expressions are vastly infe
rior to what they appear in his verses. I believe that when
all his Greek romances are forgotten, the fame of Wieland
will still be supported by his Oberon.
Of the other poets of the first generation, the most original
is Gessner. But he deals in a species of poetry too remote
from actual life, and too devoid of any precise species of
mythology. He wanders, therefore, in a world of shades,
and every thing assumes in his hands the appearance of a,
396 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
tame uniformity. A contempt of rhyme and metre may
harmonise well enough with such a sort of poetry, but it
also promotes and cherishes its most characteristic errors
and defects.
In one respect alone, the doctrine and example of Klop-
stock operated unfavourably upon the German language.
In order to recall a language out of a situation of entire
corruption, few better means can be selected than the intro
duction of severe, elaborate, and foreign forms of writing.
These, at first indeed, produce the appearance of restraint
and difficulty, but they destroy the prevalent absurdities of
carelessness. The ancient hexameter measure accords well
with our language, and ours is the only modern language in
which it is tolerable. But with whatever excellent effects
the introduction of foreign forms may be attended, they
should still be regarded merely as exercises. He who would
create a truly national poem must choose a national and
familiar measure. The accents of a foreign metre do not
come upon the ear with the effect of domestic influence, or
fasten themselves in the memory and heart of the readers.
The hexameter, when carelessly executed, displeases scho
lars, and when written with accuracy, appears monotonous
and wearisome to ordinary readers. The Messiad is pre
vented by its import from becoming an universal favourite.
But for this, I should consider the measure in which it is
written as the great cause of its unpopularity.
It was a great error in an illustrious poet, such as Klop-
stock, to hate and banish rhyme. It is well that he has
not succeeded in all that he wished to effect. It was a most
absurd thing to suppose that rhyme, a custom which has
been familiarised to German ears by nine hundred or a thou
sand years, and which has become entwisted among the very
roots of our language, could be thrown off with so much
ease. Besides, rhyme is not merely an adventitious habit,
it is founded on the very nature of Teutonic speech. Klop-
stock conceived that the most ancient German songs and
poems were rhythmical, but without rhyme : but he was
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 397
mistaken. It is true that they are without that regular
rhyme at the end of lines which we now use, but they all
possess that species of repetition of sound, which is alike
observable in the Islandic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, old
English, and old Saxon poets, which goes by the name of
alliteration, and of which, even in the latest poetry of Ger
many and England, the traces are abundantly manifest.
The transition from this kind of rhyme to ours was a very
easy one. Rhyme is not indeed so necessary in our lan
guage as in the unmusical one of France, but it is inter
mingled with the very foundation of our speech, and has
entered long since into our pronunciation. Wieland de
serves much praise for restoring rhyme, and putting an end
to that mania for blank endings and unsatisfactory metres,
which was introduced by Klopstock, which was tolerated in
him, but utterly disgusting in the hands of his imitators.
Wieland s love of philological pursuits led him sometimes
into bigoted paradox, and the same thing may be said of a
much greater philologer than he was Adelung. I am far
from wishing to deny the merits and talents of this great
etymologist ; but in our time it is no longer easy to over
look such monstrous absurdities as some of those into which
he fell ; that, for instance, of confining the pure High Dutch
language entirely to the limits of the old Margravate of
Meissen, and of despising Klopstock, who was the first
writer among his own contemporaries, nay, the first master
of the German language which had then appeared.
How relative the idea of a golden period must always be,
at least in respect to our literature, we have now had many
examples ; Gottsched fixed it in the age of Frederick the
first king of Prussia, and talked of Besser, Neukirch, and
Pietch, as if they were to be in German literature what
Virgil is in the Roman, and Comeille and Racine in the
French. These writers are now, however, regarded with
out any of the enthusiastic admiration of Gottsched. So
convinced was he that human intellect and German poetry
had at that time reached their summit, that he persuaded
398 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
himself he could see all around him the marks of a de
cline, and he wrote in such terms as these in the year 1751,
the very year in which the first part of the Messiad was
published. The poets whom he praised so highly produced
only odes and small pieces ; but a literature can never reach
its perfection till it can boast of a great epic poem and a
great history. We must be grateful to those earlier writers
for the care with which they purified our language, but they
were only preparing the way for the more stately march of
those who came after them. The rapid and yet gradual
improvement which occurred in our last century is indeed a
subject which cannot be considered by us with too much
satisfaction. There is no privileged period in which the
great change took place. The earliest works of Lessing can
scarcely be said to be written in the same language of which
he lived to make use. From 1750 till 1800, a constant suc
cession of works appeared in Germany, of which, although
few are perfect, there are none that have not added both
strength and elegance to the language in which they are
composed.
Although the whole of this period has been distinguished
by unintermitted fertility, there is no difficulty in classing
our writers into their different generations. Each of these
generations has its own characteristic excellencies and de
fects, derived in general from the situation or circumstances
of the time, rather than from the genius of the individuals.
In the first generation I class those writers whose develop
ment and first exertions occurred between the years 1750
and 1760. My limits do not permit me to enumerate the
whole even of those who are entitled to great respect. I
have already touched on the most celebrated. But I can
not pass over in silence the learned Jesuit Denis, who should
be remembered with peculiar honour by my audience, be
cause it was he who first introduced into the literature of
Austria that pure taste which had been created in the north
by Klopstock.
Of prose writers, many of those philosophers whom I
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 399
shall mention hereafter belong to the first generation ; even
Kant himself, if we consider the period of his birth, and the
nature of his earliest writings. The most distinguished were
Lessing and Winkelmann.
The writers of this period exhibit many traces of the un
fortunate state into which German literature had fallen in
the age immediately preceding their own. With what diffi
culties Winkelmann had to contend before he succeeded in
forming his rich and exquisite style, we may learn from the
perusal of his youthful letters. Kant s mode of writing
bears innumerable marks of long, hard, and severe labour.
The juvenile works, in particular the poems, of Lessing
should be considered merely as a tribute paid by a man of
genius to the spirit of his age. Even Klopstock, however
much he is to be admired, would, without doubt, have
been far better had he been preceded by writers of great
eminence.
Such were the injurious consequences produced on the
writers of the first generation, by the miserable state of
German literature at the period when they made their ap
pearance. We must not forget, however, that the difficul
ties with which they had to contend stimulated them to ex
ertions of power and greatness to which they might not
otherwise have aspired. They were obliged to concentrate
all their powers upon one point; this was the case with
Klopstock, Wiukelmann, and, in another way, with Kant.
More lately, our literature, and above all our poetry, has lost
that tone of severe simplicity and dignity which distinguish
ed the best authors of the first generation. The admirable
works of Winkelmann may perhaps have been very instru
mental in producing this effect. The beautiful and taste
ful have become too exclusively the object and passion of
our writers. We must return to the still more exalted in
spiration of national feeling and religion.
400 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
LECTURE XVI.
GENERAL REVIEW SECOND GENERATION GERMAN CRITICISM LESSING ANO
HERDER LESSING AS A PHILOSOPHER FREE-THINKING AND THE ILLDMINATI
THE EMPEROR JOSEPH THE SECOND CHARACTER OF THE THIRD GENERA
TION THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT GoETHE AND SCHILLER ANTICIPATION
FICHTE AND TIECK TRUE CHARACTER OF GERMAN LITERATURE CONCLUSION.
THOSE who are best able to form an opinion concerning
the modern literature of Germany, are sensible that its
principal defect is its want of harmony. To point out in a
general way where this harmony should be sought, and
wherein alone it may be found, might seem perhaps to be
no very difficult task. But I know not that it could be pro
ductive of much good to point out the remote termination,
unless we could accompany this with some directions as to
the way which must lead to it, some warnings concerning
the by-paths which deflect from it, the obstacles which in
terrupt, and the dangers which surround it. Before we
think of solving the problem, we must first thoroughly com
prehend it in all its extent and all its difficulty ; we must
discover the extremities of the several cords, and follow
them through all the mazes of their intertexture, ere we
need hope to loosen the Gordiau knot of our literature.
The nearer we come to our own time, the more am I
obliged to contract the extent of my researches, arid to
dwell less upon the characters of individuals, and confine
myself to the universal progress and ruling spirit of intellect
and letters. The time is not yet come for a complete his
tory of German literature. Many things will not appear in
their just light, till the nature of their consequences has been
more fully developed. It is impossible to raise the struc
ture till the materials be at our disposal.
I have already attempted to depict, in a general manner,
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 401
the most illustrious poets of the first generation. In order
that I may adhere as closely as may be to the order of chro
nology, I shall defer for a little my view of the philosophers,
and other prose writers, their contemporaries, because neither
of the most celebrated of them, Lessing and Kant, began to
exert an effectual influence upon the general mind till some
what later.
After the long feuds between Austria and Prussia had at last
terminated in a durable peace, Germany enjoyed a number
of years of repose alike salutary to her states, her sciences,
and her intellect. At one time, indeed, it seemed as if this
quiet was about to be broken ; but the danger was a transi
tory one, and Germany continued to flourish in the enjoy
ment of peace and her own power, without being conscious
at the time, to what causes she was indebted for the happi
ness of her condition.
The first establishers of our literature, and purifiers of our
language and poetry, who either immediately preceded or
immediately followed Klopstock, and devoted their lives to
the same purposes which he always kept in view, were placed
in a situation of no ordinary difficult}^. Many of the ob
stacles which were opposed to them they overcame ; their
honourable toils prepared and smoothed the path ; even the
errors and defects which may be remarked in them have
warned and guided their successors, and are deserving of
the respect of posterity.
It need not surprise us to find, that the second generation
of German poets and writers, whose genius was first devel
oped about the year 1770, have an appearance of boldness
and facility to which their predecessors were strangers. They
used and inherited what the labours of the first generation
had founded and created. The most distinguished poets of
this epoch, are Goethe, Stolberg, Voss, Burger ; to these I
might add the names of a few other individuals who were
nearly or exactly their contemporaries, and who, by their
genius, are well entitled to stand beside them, although,
either from the character of their works, or from the inci-
2c
402 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
dents of their own lives, they have not been able to obtain
an equally splendid portion of celebrity. It is very true,
that along with these there arose, at that period, a band of
popular writers, very inferior to them, whose writings have
almost brought the time of their production into some con
tempt. But that this epoch was in itself one of the most
brilliant and fruitful in the whole course of our literary his
tory, it is not possible to doubt. We need only remember, that
in addition to those I have named, Jacobi, Lavater, Herder,
and John Mliller, both by the date and character of their
works, belong to this epoch ; men whose fame is not con
fined to Germany, but has, in part at least, been echoed by
every country in Europe. The writers of the second gene
ration are, both in spirit and in style, entirely different from
those who went before them. Their method of writing is
full of soul, fire, and life ; abundant in animation and wit,
original, new, and in many respects, exquisite. They want,
however, uniformity, regularity, and a standard ; and are
often chargeable with a neglect of the necessary purity of
language. This is true even of Herder and John Midler,
the most erudite, as well as the most comprehensive, spirits
of their day. It might almost seem as if the adherents of
the first generation were right in asserting, that purity of
language is, if not exclusively, at least principally, the por
tion of those whom they admire. But this must not be taken
in its fullest extent ; in some writers, and particularly, some
poets of the second epoch, in Voss, in Stolberg, and in many
of the works of Goethe, the purity of language is found in all
its strictness and perfection ; more so than perhaps in any
writers or poets of the first generation. The carefulness of
Voss, in respect to language, is such as to render his style,
on some occasions, painful and hard ; and if it be true, that
in many of the minor works, both early and late, of Goethe,
there occur many carelessnesses, yet in his noblest poems
the language is as beautiful as German can be, and pos
sesses, indeed, an artless elegance and grace to which Klop-
stock never could attain.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 403
The language was not only enriched by the genius of these
writers and poets who followed out with greater freedom of
step the path opened by their predecessors, but individual
works were produced more perfect in their kind than Ger
many had even yet possessed. Poetry at that time took -i
totally new direction. Somewhat earlier it had been sepa
rated into two parties, the imitators of Wieland, and those
of Klopstock. The first set thought of nothing but muses,
graces, love, roses, zephyrs, nymphs, and hamadryads ; the
second re-echoed the old minstrelsy of the bards, the ice-
dance, or the bear-hunt among rocks and wildernesses ;
they wandered among the clouds with Eloah, and trod
heavenly paths strewed with suns and stars ; or if they
stooped to earth, it was in thunder, storm, and whirlwind,
like the trumpet of the judgment. Between these two
extremes of monotonous and uninteresting elevation, and
luscious half- Greek, half-modern, effeminacy, the new poets "
endeavoured to establish something possessed of greater
power, and more akin to nature. They made Homer, as
the great poet of living nature, the chief subject of these
eulogies, and translated him with much success into the
German language. Or they revived the faded recollections
of ancient German history, art, and poetry, although they
were, in some instances, little qualified, in point of erudi-
tion, to do what they had undertaken. Their attempts were
in general mere echoes ; but some were both admirable in
themselves, and have been productive of important results.
The single work, " Gotz of Beiiichingen with the iron
hand," was the parent of a numerous progeny of steel-clad
knights and brotherhoods, who preserve alive, even do.vn
to our own time, the memory of old German freedom and
heroism, at least upon the stage. The poem itself is a ju
venile one, and has many errors and imperfections, and the
history and manners represented in it are very far from being
the true ones ; but it must always retain its value as a poeti
cal picture of great energy, and be honoured as the best of
all the youthful poems of its author.
404 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
/
Upon the whole, perhaps, this new turn of things carried
poetry somewhat too far from that lofty idea which Klop-
stock conceived of it ; it was separated too much into indi
vidual points, and brought too soon, and too exclusively, to
the service of the stage. It seems to me, at least, quite cer
tain, that a national theatre is never the better of being an
early one. The Greek theatre itself owes much of its excel
lence to the period of its development. A theatre cannot
possibly assume an air of exquisite perfection, unless it has
been preceded by a literature and poetry cultivated with
high success. Above all, the more lofty and serious species
of poetry are its best harbingers, because these imply a na
tional intellect and spirit in a state of development most
fitted to receive it. The criticism of Lessing had the effect
of drawing our attention too much to the stage. With all
his acuteness and erudition, of which none can be a greater
admirer than myself, it may, I think, be doubted whether
Lessing produced a favourable effect on the German theatre.
The translations of Corneille and Voltaire soon gave place
to that species of moral domestic pictures introduced into
France by Diderot, and prose was even supposed, for a con
siderable time, to be necessary for a truly natural dialogue.
This pernicious error, however, at last passed away. The
enthusiasm for Shakespeare, to which Lessing greatly con
tributed, was more permanent ; and from him we derived
notions both of nature and of poetry, far more profound and
exquisite than were ever entertained by any of the school of
Diderot.
As a critical writer, Lessing was better adapted for dis
covering and destroying particular errors in taste than for
assigning to any one work, author, or species of writing, a
true and just place in the scale of literary merit. He had
not leisure nor patience to study the perfections of any one
great work, as Winkelmann did ; and without such mature
consideration and quiet enthusiasm, no man can become an
universal critic. We must learn to comprehend the essence-"
of art from admiration of excellence, rather than from de-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 405
tection of error. Lessing is too much a philosopher, and too.-"
little an artist in his criticism. He wants that energy of-""
fancy by which Herder was enabled to transport himself
into the spirit and poetry of every age and people. It is
this very perception and feeling of the poetical, in the char
acter of natural legends, which forms the most distinguish
ing feature in the genius of Herder. The poetry of the
Hebrews was that which most delighted him. He may be
called the mythologist of German literature, on account of
this gift, this universal feeling of the spirit of antiquity.
His power of entering into all the shapes and manifesta
tions of fancy, implies in himself a very high degree of ima
gination. His mind seems to have been cast in so univer
sal a mould, that he might have attained to equal eminence
either as a poet, or as a philosopher.
Since Winkelmann wrote, the taste and feeling for art
has been perpetually on the increase among the Germans.
This has been promoted, not only by the natural love which
we have for poetry, but by the removal of almost all Ger
man talents from the affairs of external life. The German
intellect has been left only two fields in which to exert itself,
taste and philosophy. The first of these was at first cul
tivated to a degree which injured the second; for many
German writers, who spent their lives in discoursing of sub
jects of mere art and taste, were evidently formed by nature
for the higher species of philosophy. Such a natural predi
lection is apparent enough, even in Winkelmann ; the whole
of his high ideas of art are established upon the ground of a
Platonic inspiration, which he had cultivated in the best
manner, and which was the ruling principle of all his
thoughts. Of all kinds of philosophy, there is none which
harmonises so well with a love of art as this ; but in him
the Platonism was so strong, that it lifted him not unfre-
quently very far above the subjects of which he treated.
In particular, his later writings are full of manifestations of
this philosophical propensity, and I know not but it might
406 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
have been very fortunate for German philosophy, had it set
out in the hands of such a Platonist as Winkelmann.
Lessing, so soon as his spirit had reached the height of its
manly maturity, laid aside, as follies of his youth, the whole
of his antiquarian, dramatic, and critical pursuits. The
philosophical inquiry after truth was the object of all his
later exertions, and he devoted himself to this noble pursuit
with an earnestness of enthusiasm to which even his ardent
mind had as yet been a stranger. In his earlier pursuits,
he seems to have written rather by way of exercising his
genius, and from the wish of overthrowing his adversaries,
than from any profound love of his own cause. However
much nature had fitted him to be a critic, his highest desti
nation was for philosophy. He was too far above his age
to be understood by it ; and, moreover, he did not live to
fill up the outline of the system which he embraced.
Of the philosophers of the elder school, Sultzer devoted
his thoughts and researches to art, with the views and
habits of his time ; Mendelsohn s ambition was to establish
the universal truths of religion upon philosophical princi
ples ; Garve was no adherent of the school of Leibnitz, but
his whole character shows that he should be classed with
the elder period. He devoted himself principally to the
moral philosophy of the ancients and the English. He
seems to have partaken in the errors of his masters, and to
have viewed ethics as founded rather on the principles of
elegance and the agreeable, than on those true and more
profound principles with which German feelings have
greater sympathy. The philosophical romances of Wieland
had a still more dangerous tendency to promote a merely
Epicurean system of morality. These men were not well
fitted to be the guides of a nation and age placed on the
brink of such conflicts and difficulties as were then about to
agitate the world.
Kant was not as yet known. Lavater pursued a path of
his own quite remote from all the rest. The world has
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 407
become well acquainted with the follies of his physiogno
mical reveries, and have considered him as a mere dreamer.
The profoundness of his philosophical views, and the best
of his works, are equally unknown. Of all the inquirers
of the last century I know of none, who, next to Lessing.
laboured more to pursue the traces of forgotten truth than
Lavater.
The writings of Eeimarus concerning natural religion
contain nothing but what is quite commonplace. Lessing
laid hold of the very same subject with very different views,
and with very superior genius. The then prevalent doubts,
produced by the philosophy of Locke and Descartes, had no
interest for him. In all his controversial writings, (and in
none more than his Education of the Human Race and his
Freemason Dialogues,} we may discover things more inti
mately connected with the principal subjects of the higher
philosophy, than any contemporary inquirer seems ever to
have contemplated. Leibnitz was the only philosopher,
near his own time, of whom he thought much, and him he
considered as standing at a very great distance from those
who at that time conceived themselves to be of the Leib-
nitzian school. He understood him better than any of
them, because he studied Spinosa whom they neglected.
The metaphysics of Lessing are, indeed, imperfect, and, in
some respects, he seems not only not to have overcome, but
even not to have understood that greatest of all his adver
saries ; but I must confess that I think he saw further than
Kant, although not with so systematic an eye, into the deep
places of philosophy. Had he lived longer, and husbanded
his strength, his influence and fame might have become
very superior to what they are. The freedom and boldness
of his spirit might have given a better direction to German
philosophy than it received from Kant and his adherents.
He is sometimes said to have been a Spinosist ; but of this
reproach he is by no means deserving. One of his most
favourite notions was that of the metempsychosis a doc
trine obviously quite irreconcilable with the genius of a
408 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
philosophy that denied the personal duration of the soul.
Lessing s leaning was rather to the old oriental philosophy,
and of this he himself makes no secret. I perfectly agree
with those who maintain that enthusiasm cannot be guarded
against with too much care and anxiety ; for it is clear,
that all the masterly learning of Leibnitz, and all the sound
judgment of Lessing, could not preserve these great men
from mistakes which are very easily discovered and ridiculed
by their inferiors.
The enthusiasm and dreams of Lessing did not pass into
the spirit of the age, along with the example of his boldness,
and the inheritance of his doubts. He has become an in
strument in the hands of his most inveterate enemies. In a
certain sense he may be said to have completed the work
which was begun by Luther. It was he who established
Protestantism in the most enlightened part of Germany, or
at least who annihilated there the cause of Catholicism. It
is lamentable indeed to see with what perversity of ingeni
ous mischief the principles of this deep and philosophical
believer were converted into the weapons of illumination
and infidelity by Basedow, Nicolai, and Weisshaupt. Un
belief and contempt of religion did not, indeed, make the
same bold and rapid strides as in France, or as among cer
tain individuals of England, but the undecided and fantas
tic shape they have assumed have rendered them more
dangerous to such a people as the Germans ; and it may
be that we have not as yet seen the worst of their conse
quences.
Even the repose of universal peace, and the flourishing
condition of Germany, must have been favourable to the
rise of a new mode of thinking, quite as much as to the
development of the arts and sciences. Although these did
not indeed receive any very open patronage, yet the internal
satisfaction of a powerful and thriving nation must have had
a very considerable effect even in this respect. Germany in
the middle of last century, and in the period immediately
subsequent, possessed the two most imposing rulers in
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 409
Europe. Frederick and Maria Theresa were, in different
ways, the pride of their people, and expectations even of a
still higher nature were excited by the youth of the Emperor
Joseph II. His active reign satisfied the hopes of his sub
jects; but so far as science and art were concerned, the
prophecies of the patriotic Klopstock were not fulfilled. As
the sovereign of so many countries out of Germany, this
emperor might rather have been expected to found a great
scientific institute for the whole of Europe, than for Ger
many by itself; and in another work I have expressed my
conviction of the important nature of those services which,
by so doing, he might have rendered to the spirit and mind
of the age in which he appeared. He regarded too exclu
sively the practical side of the sciences. He was so far,
however, from having any contempt of them, that he
entered with even too much keenness into many of those
theories of law, finance, and police which were started
during his time. It is fit and natural that a great monarch
should be a practical man, even in regard to science ; but
they who are the best politicians, are aware that physical
power and external splendour are not the only component
parts of the greatness of a nation.
I now proceed to the third generation in German lite
rature a period remarkably different from either of the
foregoing. By fixing our eyes distinctly and closely upon
the general character of these different epochs and genera
tions, we shall adopt the surest means of solving many
otherwise dangerous contradictions, of reconciling many
apparently opposite opinions, taken up either from total
misunderstanding, or from looking at things in a partial, noi
a general point of view. The whole external circumstances
and ruling spirit of that epoch in which the first education
and development of a writer occur, determine very fre
quently the character of his genius, and in all cases exert a
very decisive influence over his choice of the subject to
which he applies it.
I account those to belong to the third generation who
410 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
mostly formed their taste and habits of thinking during the
last fifteen years of the eighteenth century. The external
events and prevalent spirit of the time had a mighty influ
ence upon the German literature ; not only on the writers,
but on the public. The public for which the German writers
and poets laboured, consisted at the period before this, of a
few particular Mends and patrons of the arts, a few scat
tered dilettanti. Such was the public of Klopstock and his
contemporaries, and it was long before the small band be
came increased. The revolution promoted reading and
writing, and soon extended its influence over literature and
philosophy quite as widely as over politics. However in
jurious in many instances its influence may have been, there
is no question that it roused to an unexampled degree the
public interest for all things, and that even the violence o~- >
party rage, like most other species of conflict, was advan
tageous to the development of human intellect. If I should
characterise this epoch by a single word, I would call it the
revolutionary one protesting, however, against mistakes,
and using the term in a sense not a little different from the
common one. It is true, indeed, that to the honour of the
German writers, the most distinguished of them at least,
remained entirely free and pure from the democratic frenzy
of the first years of the revolution. There is only one ex
ception, and he, we must all allow, was not one of the de
ceivers, but one of the deceived. It was difficult at that
period to resist the treacherous hopes which were every
where held forth for acceptance, but such of our better
writers as had been so deceived, soon returned to their
right judgment, and did all they could to atone for their
errors. I make use of the term rather in the same sense
with that in the admirable saying, " Burke wrote a revolu
tionary book against the revolution." .The meaning of this
is, that Burke painted with such a terrible eloquence the
convulsions of the age, and so perfectly felt and understood
the danger and the greatness of the existing struggle, that
he himself was thrown into a state of agitation and con-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 411
tagious violence when he composed his book. It is this
state of an internal rather than of an external struggle, that
I consider as the distinguishing mark and characteristic of
the third generation. In order to make my meaning per
fectly understood, I need only name one great poet and
writer of this period, whose splendid career has already
been brought to its close. Schiller, in the first enthusiastic
writings of his youth, exhibits all the most striking symp
toms of internal conflict, and breathes the full confidence of
all those visionaiy hopes and violent opposition to existing
institutions, which were the immediate harbingers of the
revolution. In some of his early works he expresses a pas
sionate and painful scepticism an unbelief, which is ac
companied in his young spirit with so much sublime ear
nestness and fire of energy, that we contemplate it not with
aversion but with compassion, and with the hope that a soul
so fearfully agitated and so panting for the truth, would, in
its period of manhood and maturity, attain the repose of
faith. What a mighty change do we observe in the subse
quent progress of his career ! what a dignified struggle with
himself, the world, the philosophy of the age, and his own
art ! Restless in himself, and perpetually tossed about in
unquietness, he comprehends and compassionates the uni
versal convulsions of the time. It is this which I mean to
express by the word I have adopted, for, in a greater or in
a less degree, the remark I have made concerning Schiller
applies to all the illustrious writers of his epoch.
The poets and other authors of the second generation
lived in a state of carelessness, which appears to us very
remarkable, accustomed as we are to trace in the events
which occurred during their time, the seeds of all the subse
quent agitations. In political events they took no sort of
concern, and lived in a total contempt of the whole external
world, existing only for themselves and the enjoyment of
their own art. John Miiller alone forms an exception ; his
spirit was entirely devoted to historical events, and looking
down from the solitary elevation of his Alps, he saw further
412 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
into the gathering tempests of the political world than any
of his brethren, inhabitants of the peaceful valley or the
tumultuous capital. Instead of this artist-like and happy
unconcern, the whole of the writers of the late generation,
who appeared between the year 1780 and the year 1800,
appear to be thoroughly penetrated with the spirit and feel
ings of their age ; they either coincide in, or oppose, with
the violence of partisans, the prevalent system of opinions.
One of our writers, the most fertile of his age, creates the
greater part of his interest by taking possession of the mer
ciful and tolerant side of the time ; and another much greater
genius, going to the totally opposite extreme, thinks that in
his favourite I he has discovered the IIov 2r<y of Archimedes.
A third writer, who is the favourite of his age and nation,
is so, because he has seized upon the whole wealth of this
variously developed epoch, and represented all its disso
nances and complaints with wit, sympathy, and a peculiar
species of humour, in a style, the remarkable nature of
which is of itself a sufficient proof that the period in which
it was formed was a revolutionary one. Other authors,
disgusted with the chaotic situation of actual aifairs, betook
themselves to the regions of mere fancy, or of pure science.
A few made a wiser use of their experience, and returned
with a sense of humility and submission to the aids of reli
gion, and the long neglected sublimities of the Bible.
I cannot pretend to bring my history any further down,
for I am sensible how impossible it must be for a man to
depict a period to which he himself belongs. When an ex
ternal struggle becomes universal in any department of
human activity, the social as well as the intellectual, it is
impossible that either party should be entirely in the right.
Even they who have espoused the right cause will mingle
something wrong in the feelings of their triumph. The
creative influence of a period of convulsion may be suffi
ciently proved by a reference to the history of Schiller
what mighty spaces intervene between the Robbers, the
Don Carlos, and the Wallenstein ! Invention is certainly
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 413
more favoured by such a period than perfect finishing ; but
many German works produced during these years exhibit
both in a beauty which they can manifest only when they
are united.
During this period the philosophy of Kant was at the
height of its power in Germany. That its effects were inju
rious in respect to religion, I cannot upon the whole believe,
for that had already been attacked in its more fundamental
principles by adversaries much more fitted to produce a
popular effect. If, in some respects, it fostered doubts,
these doubts were of the more profound and serious nature,
and earned their own antidote along with them. I do not
mean to say any thing in favour of the mere faith of reason,
but I maintain, that if the truth had been entirely lost,
there are to be found in the writings of Kant many hints,
by means of which a serious inquirer might have been
greatly assisted in its recovery. If we reflect how generally
a degrading infidelity had been received among the Ger
mans, we shall easily admit that a more dignified system of
infidelity must have been advantageous rather than per
nicious. It is, no doubt, to be regretted, that the philo
sophy of Kant so soon became a sect. But even this was,
like his corruption of our language, only a transitory evil.
Kant s own style has the stamp of his character ; it is per
fectly original, and displays much philosophical acumen,
spirit, and wit. But, upon the whole, and particularly in
his method of constructing periods, we can see evident
marks of a soul toiling painfully after truth, and undergoing
perpetual concussions from its doubts. Hence arose the
unfortunate Terminology. But that barbarism, the cipher
language of philosophy, has now in a great measure disap
peared ; only a few of our better writers still make some
use of it, and that from slovenliness. The best philosophi
cal writings of later years are quite pure in respect of
language.
In Kant s philosophy are to be found many of the defects
of his predecessors in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
414 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
turies. He sets out with ideas of time and space quite as
dead as those of Leibnitz ; like almost all other philosophers
since Descartes, he wavers between the principle of personal
consciousness and the external world of the senses, and he
at last lands in the system of experience, like Locke. As
this, however, is quite silent respecting all moral and divine
things, he formed, in a manner not very consistent either
with the spirit of the English philosopher, or with his own
principles, a system of rational faith out of the scattered
fragments of rational knowledge. This found no believers
or followers. The Kantian doctrines of morality and law
are indeed valuable, because they show exactly how far
reason does enter into the formation of true morality and
true law ; but they furnish an example even more striking
than that of the Stoics, how inadequate, nay, in some in
stances, how pernicious, any system of ethics must be which
rests upon no higher foundation than reason can afford.
The chief merit of Kant, in regard to this subject is, that
he demonstrated the incapacity of pure reason to decide
any thing at all respecting such subjects that she can
acquire some knowledge of God and divine things only by
her power of gathering facts out of the experience of human
life. Instead, however, of placing reason where he should,
in the second place, he erroneously assigned her the first,
and the ill-used name of faith, which he bestowed on her,
was a very insufficient mask. Had he avoided this ancient
error, and laid open the path to true knowledge, with that
accuracy of which his genius was capable, he might have
attained the great object of his ambition, and become to
philosophy what Bacon has been to physics. He might
have put an end for ever to verbal difficulties, and estab
lished religion upon the foundation of experience and
science.
To explain at greater length the two main errors which
have sprung from the philosophy of Kant, and to give you
a general picture of the present philosophy of Germany,
would carry me very far beyond the limits which I have for
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 415
the present prescribed to myself. Living poets who havo>
already composed a series of great works, and finished their
career before our eyes, may be taken into the historical pic
ture of the latest period. Not so philosophers ; their ideas
may yet assume a different form of development, their sys
tem is as yet infuturo. I shall only make this one general
remark, that our country has been distinguished since Kant
by a spirit of profound and patient investigation ; and that
our philosophers have formed their own speculations with
the advantages of a more extensive learning than has as yet
been equalled in any other country of modern Europe.
These are the best preparations and symptoms of a return
from error to truth. Some have already made great pro
gress in the removal of the errors which were bequeathed
by Kant. I may be pardoned for mentioning the name of
my own departed friend Novalis ;* not that he was the first
who returned to the right path, or that he has carried his
views further than many others, but because the fragments
which he has bequeathed to us are a sufficient proof that, had
he lived, he would have done more for true philosophy than
any of those whom he has left behind him. With a dignified
simplicity and clearness, Slottberg expresses the loftiness of
that faith, which not only gave repose to his feelings, but
energy to his genius. Many approximations have been
made, and are now making, to the truth. I hope that ere
long the return will be universal, and the philosophy of
Germany assume a shape in which she will be no longer the
enemy and darkener, but the champion and torch-bearer, of
the truth. At all times we should separate persons from
opinions ; but, above all, we should beware of hating or dis
trusting philosophy in general, merely on account of the
individual errors into which her adherents may have been
betrayed. False philosophy can only be supplanted by the
true. This consideration should quicken the energy and
sustain the confidence of the age.
* Heinrich von Hardenberg.
416 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
I now turn to the poets but I must confine myself to a
very few remarks even concerning them. During this period
the more mature works of Goethe first became known and
admired, as they deserved to be, and many of them belong
to it even by the date of their compositions. The best of
them are now very generally admitted to be, both in respect
to poetical art and beauty of language, the most excellent
of which the German language can boast. This poet pos
sesses, in an unequalled degree, that power and ease by
which the writers of the second generation are distinguished.
In some particular pieces his example might indeed be a
misleading one ; for even in his maturer years he has too
often brought down his poetry to the present ; and there is,
indeed, perhaps no other poet who has bestowed so much
art upon subjects entirely modern. But nothing can enable
us to judge better of the difficulty of this whole undertaking
than the simple comparison of his writings of modern repre
sentation with those poems of which the subjects are taken
from periods more remote. How inferior is Eugenie to
Egmont, considering both as poetical representations of the
mode in which civil disorder and revolution are fostered and
extended in the vulgar and in the cabinet. Or if we may
be allowed to class together works externally of different
species, on account of the kindred nature of their internal
import, how superior is the Tasso to the Affinities of Choice,
as a picture of the development of passion in the higher
orders of society. If we look upon the last named work
merely as a representation of the mind struggling with the
world, (like the Faustus,) and compare it in that point of
view with the William Meister, how greatly must it appear
its inferior, both in respect to thought and style. If we
look to the poetry alone, I imagine that these works, Faus-
tus, Iphigenia, Egmont, and Tasso, will maintain in future
ages the fame of this author, along with the most beautiful
of his songs. In that mode of composition he has, in every
period of his life, been alike admirable.
Many doubt whether Goethe was meant by nature for a
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 417
dramatic poet, and think that even in such of his pieces as
are best adapted for the stage, as for instance in Egmont,
the repose of his descriptive representations points out a
poet whose tendency is rather to the epic. His attempts,
however, in the epic, or in those species most nearly allied
to it, have never been eminently successful. It seems as if
he had never been able to light upon either a subject or form
of epic composition exactly to his mind. His feelings led
him more to the romantic than the proper heroic ; the
romantic, in the widest sense of the word, when it affords
play alike for fancy, wit, feeling, and observation, seems to
be indeed the proper sphere of this great poet.
The influence which he exerted over his age was two
fold, and such also appears to be his nature. In respect of
his art, many have called him with justice the Shakespeare
of our age an age, namely, which leans more to riches of
ideas and variety of cultivation, than to high perfection of
art in any one department of poetry. In respect to his
mode of thinking, as he has applied it to the concerns of
actual life, our poet deserves his other appellation of the
German Voltaire. A German he is in every thing ; and
even his mockeries, ironies, and unbelief, are expressed with
a tone of goodheartedness, seriousness, and eloquence to
which the French Voltaire was an utter stranger. The
want of settled principle is indeed the defect which most
frequently strikes us in the midst of all the polished elegance,
exquisite irony, and profuse wit which this great poet has
lavished over all the creations of his genius.
The unhappy relation of the German poetry to the Ger
man stage, is apparent from this circumstance, that both
Klopstock and Goethe have written many dramas which
they never meant for representation ; although some of the
pieces of Goethe, so composed, have, at a subsequent period
been brought upon the stage. The same circumstance
occurred with respect to the Don Carlos of Schiller ; and
after he had resisted all the seductive influence of his first
success, he has not been able to produce so much effect by
418 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
the more dignified exertions of his art. But even although
there remains some want of harmony between his poetry
and our stage, still he was the true founder of our drama.
He gave it its proper sphere, and its most happy form. He
was thoroughly a dramatic poet ; even the passionate rhe
toric which he possessed along with his poetry, belonged
exactly to this character. His historical and philosophical
works and attempts are only to be considered as the studies
and preparations of a dramatic artist. Yet his philosophical
tracts are very valuable, from the light which they afford us
into his internal spirit, and the proof they give of his want
of mental harmony. A doubting, sceptical, unsatisfied dis
position seems to accompany his spirit in all its inquiries.
He himself appears to have remained always at the very
threshold of doubt, and even in the noblest and most ani
mated of his works we are chilled by the breath of an inter
nal coldness.
Some have been of the opinion, that Schiller s philosophi
cal pursuits were injurious to him, even in respect to his
own art. But, in truth, his infidelity had its origin at an
earlier period, and the satisfying of a spirit such as his was
a matter of greater moment than any thing which regards
the mere finishing of an art. And even with a view to the
drama, I think that the historical and philosophical turn
which Schiller has given to some of his tragedies, is by no
means deserving of censure. Our theatre is not to flourish
by means of voluminous authors ; but, like those of Greece,
England, and Spain, by means of profound thought and his
torical import. At one period of his life, Schiller seems
indeed to have entertained some false notions respecting the
essence of the ancient tragedy, but this we must consider
merely as a proof that he had not at that time brought the
studies which he pursued so earnestly to their proper ter
mination.
The same lofty ideas of tragedy which Schiller entertained
were also held by Henry Collin. So intensely was his
spirit imbued with the inspiration of patriotism, that even
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 419
when he treats of subjects of antiquity, he is always a
national poet.
I feel that I have now reached the termination of the pic
ture which I undertook to unfold. The multitude of circum
stances which pressed upon me, and the interest which J
took in the representation of the middle age, have abridged
me in the latter part of my labours. I have done little
more in these last lectures but point out the names of men
upon whose works I should have dilated with much more ful
ness, both for your sake and for my own. In regard to Ger
man literature, if I had not confined myself to very narrow
limits, each several province or department might easily
have occupied a space as considerable as that which I have
devoted to the whole.
I see plainly that a new generation are arising and fashion
ing themselves, and that the nineteenth century will be no
less distinguished in the history of German letters than the
eighteenth has been. But the spirit and tendency of this
young generation are not yet so much developed that I can
venture to give any certain opinion as to its character.
Much will be expected from them, for great things have
been done to prepare the way for them. If we are to speak
of the whole body of German literature, I do not hesitate
for a moment to say, that I expect all our most sanguine
expectations will, at no very distant period, be fulfilled.
At present, I see much both of false taste and affectation in
our art and poetry. The imitation of the antique, and of
the great men of the preceding age, is conducted on narrow
principles. Even in philosophy we have not borrowed the
best part of those who have gone before us. But I hope
that ere long all these things will exist only in remembrance.
If the times proceed as they have lately done, literature will
soon become much less the concern of individuals than of
the public, and the influence of readers upon authors will at
least be as great as that of authors upon readers. Since the
middle of last century, literary works and literary men have
assumed a totally new character in Germany, more so than
420 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
in any other country of Europe. The greater the number
of spectators is, the more is the interest in the spectacle ;
and I know not that any literature can be inspired more
favourably than by the constant contemplation of such a
spirit and nation as our own.
Even the spirit of sectarianism, however deeply it has
been implanted among us, has of late years been visibly on
the decline. Of those sects which in the last half of the
eighteenth century had most influence in Germany, and on
that account, if on no other, are historically of some im
portance, the illuminati sunk into the background, at the
first appearance of the more profound philosophy ; the Kan-
tians have now begun to be as weary of their own system
as the world was before them, and even the natural philo
sophers have become split into so many parties that they
can scarcely be said to form any longer a particular sect. I
am far from flattering myself that the errors of any one of
these systems no longer exist, but they do not show them
selves in the same imposing form as before. The spirit of
sect has become milder ; scholastic forms have sunk into
comparative contempt, and all parties prepare to labour in
unison on the great work of developing the intellect of Ger
many.
It is scarcely necessary for me to recall to your recollec
tion that our literature, even from the first epoch of its de
velopment, has been in a state of perpetual contest and
struggle. At first the conflict lay between the Swiss, who
admired exclusively the poetry and criticism of England
and antiquity, and the Saxons, who were the professed wor
shippers of the literature and taste of France ; then between
the serious and playful poets, the followers of Klopstock
and those of Wieland ; and in another department, between
the orthodox party, and the new sect of illuminati. The
contest assumed a more serious appearance in the time of
the Kantian philosophy, as a regular struggle between ideal
ism and empiricism. Both of these last combatants have in
a certain sense gained the victory. Empiricism has with
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 421
justice become the ruling system in all that regards practi
cal life, physics, and pure science. Idealism, taking it in
the highest acceptation of the word, as the system of those
who recognise ideas as superior to sensation, has exerted a
powerful and an abiding influence upon our art, our criti
cism, and our higher philosophy. We often hear men speak
of the new school, and the golden age. I have already said
that our literature has no proper golden age, and I acknow
ledge I can as yet observe nothing that is deserving to be
called a new school. We should be ambitious to perfect
what has been begun, not to show our invention at the ex
pense of our judgment. Another foolish enmity which has
become forgotten, is that which subsisted between the lite
rary men of the North and of the South of Germany. We
were never so sensible of our national identity as now.
If we consider the remarkable struggles of intellect which
occurred during the last century, in a more general point of
view as they developed themselves, not in Germany alone
but in England, in France, and in the whole of Europe
and ask for a merely historical solution of this great pheno
menon, the following is probably the conclusion at which
we should arrive. This struggle has had its seat not in
those persons and events alone wherein it has been mani
fested to us, but rather in a great internal awakening
throughout the whole intellect of man.
The wild wanderings of reason and power of thought, set
free from all control, and then the reviving of imagination,
which had so long slept beneath the pressure of a formal
and (apparently only) a scientific system, were probably
the moving causes of all these manifold convulsions and
conflicts. In France despotic and contemptuous reason
renounced all the bonds of faith and love, and displayed its
destructive influence upon the external life and manners of
a nation, in a way which has furnished us and our posterity
with a warning and a terrible example. In Germany, from
the different character of the nation, the spirit of the time
manifested itself not in bloody revolutions, but in the en-
422 HISTORY OF LITERATURE.
tangled warfares of metaphysicians. The regeneration of
fancy has in more countries than one shown itself in the
revived love of old traditions and romantic poetry. To the
extent and depth, however, wherein this love has been
kindled among the Germans, no other nation of Europe can
furnish a parallel. They have had their time, it is fit that
we should now have ours.
Were I called upon to select one example of the prevalent
power and freedom of reason, of the endless rapidity with
which strong spirits weaken, destroy, and recreate the
structure of thought, I should fix upon none more readily
than Fichte ; not merely on account of power of invention
and masterly management of thought, which are in so high
a degree peculiar to him, but also because he takes the ma
terials of his thoughts entirely from himself, trusts ever}*
thing to nature, and depends in nothing upon those who
have gone before him. The corresponding energy in the
exertions of imagination the resurrection, as I might call
it, of fancy in Germany cannot be more strongly exempli
fied than in Tieck, a poet who is so perfectly master of all
the depths, and observations, and wonders, and mysteries of
his art.
So far have reason, and imagination, and the century ad
vanced ; but as yet no further. We must not, however, for
get, that unless we retrograde, we must of necessity proceed.
To this profoundness of reason which we have attained, and
this fulness and majesty of fancy which have been restored to
us, there must yet be added that stableness of will and pur
pose which brings the seeds of good to maturity, and guards
them from the first encroachments of corruption. The clear
ness of an enlightened judgment must watch over those
mighty energies of reason and of fancy. True judgment
depends in all things upon universality of observation, and
discernment of that which is right, in the midst of much
more that is wrong.
I have endeavoured in these lectures, to lead you to a
point of view from which all our literature and all the ope-
HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 423
rations of our intellect should be surveyed ; as in all my
more early attempts, my object has been to discriminate
between the good and the evil, without any ambition to dis
play those arts of rhetoric which might have pleased your
ears, but could not have aided your judgment.
THE END.
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