CHAP. X.

THE NATIONAL ACME.-THE HARMONY BETWEEN FORMS OF LITERATURE AND THE STAGES OF NATIONAL PROGRESS.

BEFORE I part from the subject of the place of literature in national progress, I am desirous to make some distinctions, which may prevent a misapprehension of the proposition which I sought to establish in the preceding chapter. And therefore I would call attention to the fact, that the national acme is the period when various kinds of literature flourish for more subtle and particular reasons than those which I have hitherto adduced, to account for the general prosperity of literature at that period. To go through these in detail would lead us too far from the grand central track which in this study we have to traverse, but one or two may be here usefully mentioned.

Tragedy flourishes as the acme approaches, because there is then, and then only, sufficient liberty to indulge in representations of the misfortunes of the great, a subject alien to the aristocratic feelings of an earlier age*, but the representation is one not wholly hostile, but rather sympathetic, and thus addresses the very classes whose misfortunes are represented, and who have only at that period become sufficiently refined to enjoy the representation. Tragedy in its origin is the general

Shaftesbury, Characteristics, i. 218. On tragedy dying out of France in the 18th century, see Villemain, Cours de Lit. Fr., 18me siècle, i. 67.

representation of beings far raised above the spectators, either by their divine nature, or by their belonging to an age invested in our minds with a character of grandeur. Greek tragedy was at first but an interlude in, or rather a form of worship, a mode of presenting vividly to the minds of devotees the great actions of the gods, the epoch-forming scenes of an elder world. Then it came down to heroes, and recalled to the minds of the spectators with grand simplicity some mighty achievements of their heroic ancestors. Lastly, it put upon the stage scenes of great emotion and great passion, such as might be actually happening in real life at the very time they were represented on the stage; but raised into something of the dignity belonging to the other subjects of tragedy by a certain grandeur of thought, a majestic slowness of action, and a general sculpturesqueness of scene. Horace gave good advice to the tragic poet of his late age, when the equality of the Romans prevented their making good characters for a tragedy, to take his dramatis persona out of the Iliad.*

Comedy is of later growth, for it requires more liberty and more equality; liberty, because those who are derided are not exclusively inferior, for aristocrats would think it mean and vulgar to be employed in laughing at their subjects. There must be liberty, therefore, to laugh at equals, and sometimes perhaps at a superior. Comedy may flourish in a highly refined court, where fashion and etiquette have produced a well-observed equality of manners, because eccentricities from this equality, whether they be of fellow-nobles or of roturiers, are the fair subject of amusing comedies. As equality increases, and eccentricity becomes more remarked and envy more common, the power and popularity of comedy increases, and tragedy, which sympathises with unaccustomed situations,

"Rectius Iliacum carmen diducis in actus, Quam si," &c. ad Pison.

and requires much of the statue-like repose* and sublimity of aristocratic life, is less in favour; but when complete equality is established there can be no tragedy, and scarce any good comedy; for while no one dares to represent scenes of sublimity which do not often occur, and would appear unnatural and tiresome if not ridiculous, and tragedy is therefore out of place; so, on the other hand, comedy loses its subject, for no one dares to depart from the general level of manners and opinions except the humblest and most vulgar domestics. Eccentricity becomes then mere want of common education, and exciting contempt rather than ridicule affords no scope for comedy. For the secret of comedy is its proving to us, in a sudden lively way, our own superiority over persons to whom we were not quite sure before that we were superior. In America every one is so convinced of this superiority, that comedy has no field of action; except, indeed, such comedy as is directed against foreigners; for the Americans, however much they may boast, do not consider it beyond proof, that their country is superior to others, or their countrymen superior to other people.

Thus tragedy has always preceded comedy, and died out before it, and comedy at last has lost its force for want of subject, and the country which I have just named is in a stage later than the existence of either of them. The refined and lofty feelings of tragedy would be dull and tiresome to the Americans. The repose of high tragedy does not consist, of course, in the absence of movement, but in slowness and grandeur of movement. The dramatis personæ are moved from the very depths of their feelings; the movement is grand and deep. They must be aroused by some great emergency, and

* "Tanta solet esse industria (activity) hominum novorum, ut nobiles præ illis tanquam statuæ videantur."-Bacon, Antitheta on Nobility, ed. Whately, p. 120.

when aroused they act with something of that slow and thoughtful majesty so much allied in our minds with repose. On the other hand, comedy is quick and light, bustling, noisy, and continually surprising and amusing by sudden and unexpected turns. Its persons are not so deeply and solemnly roused as in tragedy, but they are always in a state of garrulous commotion. Tragedy wears out when the mere forms are retained, and the state of society is not fertile in the production of tragic sympathies*, whereas comedy changes with the change of society, and lasts so long as there are inequalities and eccentricities, and unaccustomed situations to form a groundwork for it; but where the elements of society have all been shaken together like sand in a bucket, and one smooth level surmounts them all, there are no ambitious freaks to be pointed at and derided, and proved -however lofty they may look-to be hollow inside, and no better than their fellows, whom they try to outtop; and the occupation of comedy is therefore gone.

As too much equality impairs comedy, so too little equality has the same effect. The little states of Italy, having each a different dialect and set of customs, prevented there being as in Athens (which was the only literary place in Greece), or in Paris, or among the courtiers of St. James's, one acknowledged plateau of good manners and breeding, from which to deviate was to incur the attack of comedy. There was no centre from which to be eccentric. The Italian comedies are

therefore rather satires than true comedies.

In the early ages of national life, which are those of happiness and merriment, there is little satire. It may be that a particular class renders itself obnoxious by its

* "To raise and afterwards to calm the passions, to purge the soul from pride, by the examples of human miseries which befal the greatest; in a few words, to expel arrogance, and to introduce compassion are the great effects of tragedy; great, I must confess, if they were altogether as true as they are pompous."-Dryden's Works, xiv. 312.

depravity and exactions, as did the clergy of the prereformation period, when satire is well levelled at them; but satire is not then the prevailing tone of literature. Whereas in the late ages of unrest and envy, when every man is trying to "better" himself, and hating those who are above him and stand in his way, no literature is so frequent, so natural, as the satiric. The poets cannot touch a fine subject, but they burlesque it; they cannot write an epic, they can only produce a mock heroic.*

There are two subsidiary causes for this. First, literature is originally the creation of an aristocracy, and when aristocracy becomes decayed and depraved it delights in satire; the rage and strife of two contending parties in the aristocracy, no longer warring with weapons but with words, contributes much to this; and thus it happens that the tone of satire is infused into the liter ature of a country at a time when the commons are sufficiently refined to take up literature and make it their own. Secondly, the position of the literary man, always an unhappy wretch in proportion to the narrowness of his field of work, is more hateful and unhappy in a commercial than in an aristocratic age: in the latter, he receives fame and place in reward for genius; in a purely commercial age, these are not the coin with which deserving persons are paid. Money is then the object of labour, and the literary man is not paid in due proportion to the harassing nature of his occupation. He sees others getting rich around him with far less toil and with use of far inferior faculties. Cordially, therefore, is he

sarcastic and discontented.

Hence satire and burlesque form the prevailing tone in the literatures of late and restless ages.

The result of such observations as these, and of many others too long to be here enumerated, might be the

* See the romantic poets in Italy after Ariosto. Prescott, Misc.,

p. 461.