success. He inculcates, throughout, the necessity which there is, that literature should have reference to an established centre, namely, to religious faith, and to national history and character, that its main employment should be to nurse and strengthen our associations in relation to these objects, and that, instead of being applied at random as a stimulus to our faculties and emotions, as mere abstract human beings, it should bend all its powers towards tutoring and forming the feelings of men, destined to act a part as citizens of their respective communities. In doing so, literature gains, both by having a determinate purpose, and by being the conservator of associations, which grow more and more valuable as they grow older. As every nation has its own mental character and constitution propagated from generation to generation, no traditions or poetry can be so congenial to it, as those which originated with itself in early ages, constituting tests of its true bias and genius, and continuing, during the course of its history, to strengthen nature itself by reacting upon the same national temperament which at first produced them. He shews that a great national character can only be preserved, by endeavouring as much as possible to cherish and keep alive the characteristic spirit of our ancestors; and that the literature of each nation, instead of embodying all kinds of human ideas indifferently, should aim at rivetting a peculiar set of impressions proper to itself, which would have the advantage of gaining force by every reiteration, and of pervading the whole system both of private and public life. Nothing can, we think, be more beautiful than the manner in which Schlegel calls up in succession the master-spirits of antiquity, and extracts from their merits, and sometimes from their defects, confirmation of the theory which it is his purpose to defend. The power, majesty, and enduring beauty of the Greek, and the comparative poverty of the Roman literature, are both explained upon the same principle and yet the general conclusions to which he would lead us are, throughout, so admirably blended with the interesting and amusing portraiture of individual men and works, that however strong may be the impression of which we are conscious, we cannot easily point out from what particular part, either of narrative or disquisition, it has been derived. There is, for instance, at least as much of art, as of elegance and of feeling, in the view which he gives us of the Homeric writings. "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 have ever since continued to be, the objects which we see them, and rendered, as they of universal attention and regard. "Solon and his successors in the government of Athens, Pisistratus and the Pisistratida, over and above the delight which they must have derived from the composi tions themselves, were probably influenced by views of a nature purely political, to interest themselves in the preservation of the six hundred years before Christ, the indeHomeric poems. About this period, that is pendence 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 the immense empire of Cy rus. As soon, however, as that conqueror had overcome Crasus, 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 Asiflourishing commerce, but also by the comatic Greeks, not only by all the ties of a mon 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 dence. like deeds in the cause of their indepen "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 Atreida, 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 derived its name, was a native of Asia. That the carrying away of a single princess should have been the cause of an universal and long protracted war, is, at least, abundantly consistent with the spirit of the heroic times, and forcibly recalls to our recollection 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 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 Patroc lus, 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, apparent 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 circumstance could have had little influence either on the object which Solon and Pisistratus 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 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 are 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 perhaps no where, 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 recollections of the heroic times are invested with a half mournful and melancholy feeling, a spirit of sorrow, sometimes elegiac, more frequently tragicalwhich 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 accustomed 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 acuteness are equal to his valour, who is alike prepared to suffer with patience every hardship, and to plunge with boldness into every adventure; and who thus affords the most unlimited 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 unacquainted. 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 understanding, 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 developement 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 indebted for the name by which he is known 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-especially a poet who celebrates heroic ages, to possess. To us he to us. is indeed a Homer-a faithful voucher, an unfalsifying witness, of the true shape and fashion of the heroic life. The other ex planation of the word Homeros a blind man-is pointed out in the often repeated and vulgar history which has come down to us of the life of a poet, concerning 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 internal 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 everlasting cloud. It is easy to perceive that the poet himself was in a similar condition. But he who ean 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 re verse. "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 concerns 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, erect ed 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 bringing Homer into that sort of oblivion, out of which he was first recalled by the efforts of Solon and Pisistratus. His account of the Greek dramatists, historians, and philosophers, is equally excellent with regard to the last set of writers, however, we suspect his observations are much better fitted for German than for English readers. With the exception of the unhappy young gentlemen who are drilled into a superficial and mechanical knowledge of some part of Aristotle's writings at Oxford and Cambridge, the whole subject of ancient philosophy is, we verily believe, as little known in England as in Iceland. Even the most distinguished of our philosophical writers, Mr Dugald Stewart, never touches upon it, without betraying ignorance unworthy of his great genius. We hope the day is not far distant, when the example of the Germans, more lately, of the French themselves, may produce an important and happy change, in this particular, among a set of men who are far too good to be thrown away upon the vain work of doing over again things that were as well understood two thousand years ago as they are now. As a specimen of the view which our author takes of the history of the literature of the Romans, we extract the following very original, and, we think, satisfactory account of their drama. "In the drama the Romans were perpetually making attempts, from the time of Ennius downwards. 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 fabulu atellana, was not however entirely laid aside. It still preserved its place as an amusement 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 principal 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 Roman mythology 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 green-house, which is only preserved from death by the daily application of artificial heat and unsatisfying 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 shew 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 ascribed 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 dramatic 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 any 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 VOL. III. borrowed, from these very sources, many subjects of a highly poetical nature, and, at the same time, far from being unsusceptible of dramatic representation, such as the combat of the Horatii, the firmness of Brutus, the internal conflict and changed spirit of Coriolanus,-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 a-kin to the feelings of every Roman audience, to admit of being brought forward upon a stage. The story of Coriolanus 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 Coriolanus upon a Roman stage, reproaching, in his merited indignation, with bitter words and dearbought mockery, the jealous levity of his countrymen at a time when the noblest and most free-spirited of the last Romans, Sertorius, 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 Coriolanus represented as approaching Rome at the head of an 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 Shakspeare 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 these most interesting subjects from our civil tumults-particularly from the thirty years war; but even hers 3 S the case is very different from what it would have been among the Romans. The Germans are indeed countrymen, but they are not all subjects of the same state. And yet with us, the poets who handle such topics at much length, have a very difficult task to perform; they have need of much delicacy to avoid wounding or perhaps 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." After running, in this manner, over the whole of the literature of classical antiquity, he passes into the consideration of that of the Persians, the Indians, and other ancient peoples,-the nature and character of which are to be gathered not from monuments, but from hints. The beautiful lecture on the spirit of the old Indian philosophy must be highly interesting to all readers. It is the first intelligible view which has been given of that subject; indeed Schlegel appears to us to be the first worthy successor that Sir William Jones has had in his most favourite department of learning. ages But by far the more full and interesting part of the work is that which refers to the history of the middle -the rise and developement of the different nations among which Europe is divided-the circumstances which have forwarded in some, and retarded or thrown back in others, the progress of refinement, and the excellence of literature. At the outset of this part of his work, our author has a good deal of rubbish to clear away. We are "We often think of and represent to ourselves the middle age, as a blank in the history of the huntan mind-an empty space between the refinement of antiquity and the illumination of modern times. 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 opin ions, we are at once false, narrow-sighted, and unjust; we give up substance for gaudiness, and sacrifice truth to effect. The fact is, that the substantial part of the knowledge and civilization of antiquity never was forgotten, and that for very many of the best and noblest productions 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 too much reason to suppose that, in the history of the modern nations, we may find many examples 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 middle ages with the fashionable degree of selfsatisfaction and contempt. "If we consider literature in its widest sense, as the voice which gives expression to human intellect-as the aggregate mass of symbols in which the spirit of an age or the character of a nation is shadowed forth, then indeed a great and accomplished li terature is, without all doubt, the most va luable possession of which any nation can boast. But if we allow ourselves to narrow make it suit the limits of our own prejudices, the meaning of the word literature so as to 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 individuals as in species, in small things as in great, the fulness of invention must precede the refinements of art-legend must before history, and poetry before criticism. If the literature of any nation has had no such poetical antiquity before arriv ing at its period of regular and artificial developement, 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 literature of Greece was mainly indebted for the variety, originality, 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 distinguishing characteristic of them both. The long and silent process of vegetation must precede the spring, and the spring must precede the maturity of the fruit. The youth of individuals 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 of unfolding intellect and mental blossoming. The age of crusades, chivalry, romance, and minstrelsy, was an intellectual spring among all the na tions of the west." |