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ART. IV. —1. Rhymed Plea for Tolerance. In Two Dialogues. With a Prefatory Dialogue. London. 1833.

16mo.

2. Poems; for the most part Occasional. By JOHN KenYON, formerly of St. Peter's College, Cambridge. London. 1838. 8vo.

Ir is a familiar remark of Hume, that, "when the arts and sciences come to perfection in a state, they necessarily decline; and seldom or never revive there." If "perfection " means here a high degree of excellence, which is the only fair interpretation, since there can be nothing really perfect in this world, the remark appears to us, like many others of its acute author, rather specious than sound. At all events, it does not apply to literature, which Hume evidently means to comprehend under the word "arts"; at least, not in those nations endowed with poetic imagination and sensibility, whose literature, the breathing of nature, as it were, will be found to reflect most faithfully the many-colored hues of the times through which it passes. It may be true, however, of a people like the ancient Romans, or like the French among the moderns; for both these nations have been remarkably deficient in the poetic temperament. It is singular, that the French, the most prosaic of modern nations, should, in their primitive period, in the infancy of civilization, have furnished the seeds, which, under more refined culture, have produced the most beautiful and exuberant flowers of fancy on a foreign soil; while their own land, so far from ripening them, has been cursed, in later times, with comparative poetic sterility. Thus the fabliaux and Norman tales of chivalry were the coarse web, from which the romantic Muse of Italy wove her cloth of gold and rich embroidery.

The defect of such nations as the Roman and the French seems to be, that, wanting genuine poetic feeling, their literature does not easily respond to the peculiarities of their own condition. It does not reflect the age. They do not derive their ideas of beauty from the objects around them, but from an antique, or at all events a foreign model. Their worship of the Muse is without enthusiasm. They have never been filled with the god. They feel no

"Divinity within them, breeding wings
Wherewith to spurn the earth.

What did freedom, "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise," do for Rome, in the earlier ages of her history, in the higher arts of civilization? Where were the poets, like Chaucer, struggling for expression amidst the barbarous discordances of a rude and unformed dialect? Or like Petrarch, building up the elegant fabric of his native language, by the sounds of music? Or like Dante, calling up spirits of power and beauty from the darkness of chaos? Neither Rome nor France had those master-spirits who could throw the light of their own genius in advance, to direct the march of civilization. Literature was not, with them, the spontaneous, irrepressible growth of an untamed soil. It was not the hardy mountain plant, sending forth its branches and its mild native fragrance to heaven; but a hot-house flower, beautiful to the eye, but delicate and feeble, such as could expand only in the sheltered, sunny atmosphere of a court. How could such a delicate exotic resist the shock of tempests, or even the fitful changes of the seasons ?

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The Roman literature, to abandon our metaphor, which will be likely to halt if we ride it too long, — did not survive the political troubles of the country; and Hume's remark may find a pertinent illustration in its subsequent decline. The truth is, the principle of vitality was wanting. It was grafted on a foreign stock. Its best productions were closely modelled on the Greek. Its forms, its rules, were all accommodated to this model, not to the existing relations of the nation itself. The same, to some extent, may be said of the French, who professed to form their higher poetry, at least, on the same models of the antique, and under even greater disadvantages; for there was obviously much less violence done to nature by a nation moulding itself on a contemporary, than by a modern nation forming itself on an ancient. The effects on the Roman and the French have been somewhat analogous. Abandoning natural impulse, they have conformed to rules. Instead of nature they have fashioned themselves on a model, and therefore, instead of originals, have produced copies. In such a system, the merit of the work consisted not so much in free, natural movement, as in artificial refinement of taste; not so much in spontaneous and vigorous impulses, as in outward and superficial beauty of form; in exemption from faults, in fact, rather than positive beauty. One beauty it could not well have, that of vari

ety; for all was nicely modelled after the strictest code of courtly criticism. All this, though compatible with the minor and superficial elegances, was fatal to bold originality, and to that versatile spirit of accommodation to the passing lights and shadows of the times, which can only exist in a free and unfettered literature. With such a people there is one golden Augustan age, the period of meridian splendor, to which all after times are to be referred, as the exclusive standard of excellence; up to which there was a painful, gradual ascent; since which there has been as gradual a decline. Such was the age of Augustus in Rome, and of Louis the Fourteenth in France.

Where shall we find such an age of authority in nations of deep poetic feeling, the English, or Italians, for example? Not in Queen Anne's day, when, indeed, the leading writers, partly from the direct influence of France, and partly from the circumstance of their own local situation, in the precincts of a court, formed themselves on a similar artificial model. But who would defer to that day exclusively, as the day of great things, in comparison with the age of Shakspeare and Spenser? Who would set up Pope above Milton, or cast down the statues of Scott and of Byron, though now raw from the sculptor's hand, to make room for those of Swift, or even Addison? Fortunately, the votary of letters is not called on to overturn the altars raised to genius in any age of British literature, but may offer his homage at any shrine. For all are great in their way, and their ways are as various as the range of human genius. Strange, if Nature, so infinitely diversified in all her other operations, should be limited to one narrow standard of excellence in the creations of mind!

Nor shall we find this exclusive model, among the Italians, in the vaunted age of Leo the Tenth; a term, by the by, which, if intended to convey the idea of a literature indebted for its growth to the discriminating patronage of that pontiff, is as great a misnomer as any in history. The great poets of that day, Ariosto, Tasso, Sannazaro, and the like, if the like were to be found, composed their immortal works far from Rome. Even such writers as were warmed by his encouragement, Berni, Bembo, and others, did not produce their greatest works under his eye, but after his death, or at a distance from his court. He had, indeed, a munificent spirit;

but it showed itself quite as much in the fostering of the elegant arts which could minister more directly to the senses, as of literature. At all events, his own native literature (for he affected to relish the ancient) stands but slightly indebted to the merry pontiff, who could suffer the glory of his reign, Machiavelli, to languish in poverty, while he feasted and flattered the profligate buffoon, Aretino. His age, however, was distinguished above all others for purity and refinement of composition, and those polished beauties, which are the growth of a mature civilization. Yet, notwithstanding its classic pretensions, the Italians, at least those of our day, would not turn to this age as presenting the only, or even the best, models on which to form themselves. They would go back to the fourteenth century, rather, the glorious period of the trecentisti.

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It is one of the characteristics of a highly poetic temperament in a people, that its first masters, though rude, should yet be of the race of the giants; that their works, penetrated with the spirit of a period when the full influences of the modern, as distinguished from the antique, are first felt, should surpass in originality and strength those of later ages, when the mind has grown familiar with these influences; as the first wild products of a virgin soil tower above the later ones of more refined and elaborate culture. Thus, the writings of Dante and Petrarch, filled to their very depths with the magnificence and beauty of the new religion, which had broken on the benighted world, exhibited for the first time the superiority of Christianity over Paganism, as a source of inspiration; showing that, however beautiful the outward forms of poetry, the spirit, which gives it life and immortality, had not till then been fully manifested. In the subsequent ages, we find Italian literature displaying other forms of beauty, accommodated to the changing character of the times.

In the fifteenth century, the Italian withered under the cold touch of a dead language; but revived, in the following age, in all the healthful bloom of grace and beauty. This was the period of competition among the polished courts of Italy; and the literature was embellished with all those Epicurean charms, which could render it attractive to a fastidious taste. But as moral and political corruption advanced, in the succeeding age, letters became infected by them, and the age of the seicentisti is still a term of obloquy, indicating the

greatest perversion of talent, and deplorable affectation. At the close of the last, and the commencement of the present century, another epoch has arisen, distinguished by a masculine taste, and bolder range of thought and diction. The Muse has been again inspired with the generous spirit of freedom, which warmed her earlier days. Some of the best writers of our own time, as Alfieri, Parini, Foscolo, glowing with a kindred enthusiasm, have formed their thoughts, if we may so say, on those of the great fathers of Italian song; while others, as Monti, for example, have no less sedulously copied their vigorous diction. Thus, the aspirations after freedom in the present age have given a tone to literature, not dissimilar to that which the actual possession of freedom imparted in an earlier age. And thus Italian literature, instead of fading away, after its glorious dawn had been overcast, has reappeared at intervals, with fresh splendor, surviving the decay of morals, of public credit, of liberty itself, — and, when these were lost, still renewing and rekindling the fire of genius by the vivid recollections of the past. Such are the triumphs of a people gifted with poetic imagination and genuine sensibility.

In like manner, we might trace the mutations of English literature, had we room, from the brilliant, picturesque pageant, and bustling movements of the Elizabethan age, so well illustrated in the contemporary dramatic and epic compositions, down to our own times, when Scott has carried us back again to the age of feudal daring and of Border minstrelsy, thus reproducing in English literature the same primitive taste, which has led the modern Italian states back to the hardy pioneers of their native poetry.

Byron, however, has been the representative of this epoch, more truly than Scott. The fierce, tumultuous passion, the desolating misanthropy, seeking refuge from the shocks of fortune in solitary communion with nature, the haughty spirit of independence, and the selfishness of egotism, are all characteristic of an age of revolution, when ancient dynasties have crumbled at a touch, and empires have passed away like a dream; when the destinies of the world have been committed to the men of yesterday; when one man has had to build up his own fortunes on the ruins of another; and society has been shaken to its foundations. The influence of Byron, of course, has been widely and perniciously felt, as evinced by No. 103.

VOL. XLVIII.

52

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