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 literature 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.

conclusion, that to each phase of national life is attached, by a natural harmony, a particular form of literature. And this happens as a result from the law that to the several social forces are attached particular forms of literature; and the commingling in different proportions of the social forces of a nation, produces a like commingling of these particular forms of literature; and the general result is that as to each phase of national progress belongs a peculiar adjustment of the social elements, so to it also belongs a peculiar literature.

Now the literature of a pure unmixed aristocracy is the Homeric, in which the deeds of a few magnificent chieftains are transacted before the spectator with the rude and noble simplicity of nature. Such ballads form the literature which has belonged to the early age of every known nation, the age of its warrior aristocracy. The literature of Grecian, Roman, Gothic, Norman, and Spanish civilisation begins with such compositions and such alone.* The heroes stand out in bold relief, with the naked energy of Michael Angelo's figures, and need none of the tinsel appendages of plutocratic nor the minute detail of democratic depictors.

One other social element is invariably dominant during the age of early aristocracy, and this is the theocratic. But the literature of theoracy is necessarily very various in different countries, according to the nature and complexion of the religion in vogue. Most religions have a secret lore of their own, whether it be the augury of Etruria, the astrology of the Chaldees, the mysteries of the Druids, or the true and false legends of Christianity; but it is only as affecting practical life that religion becomes important in moulding the true literature of the early ages.

Throughout the heroic ballad literature of every nation

*Excepting, of course, family annals and genealogies like those of Spain, which are, in fact, only the prosaic materials of the ballads.

this religious feature is conspicuous. With chivalry, practical religion goes hand in hand. The man who is proud and haughty to other men, humbles himself before God; and, like the heroes of antiquity, traces his descent from divine beings, or, like the Castilians, the Crusaders, and the Moslems, devotes his chivalry to the cause of faith. The ballads of Spain and the crusading nations are deeply imbued with the spirit of doctrinal heroism, but it never overcomes the chief characteristic in the early warrior aristocratic literature, which loves to narrate to the warriors and their subjects the motives and bold struggles, both mental and bodily, of a few great men, the masters of those ages.

Let this be the acknowledged characteristic of aristocratic literature, and then it is curious to trace it through the whole progress of a nation changing with the changes of the aristocratical element. Sparta, which never progressed beyond the aristocratic stage, never had any other literature than this. In progressive nations, when history succeeds to ballad-tales, if there is a strong and active aristocracy, history consists of the record of the acts and words of these aristocrats and their monarchs. The proceedings of the populace remain almost as insignificant as those of the masses who fought behind Homer's chieftains. They glimmer sometimes, through an opening in the front rank, but history as a whole consists of a series of great men's portraits. Of this nature is the history of our own country as written by contemporary writers down to the middle of the last century. Lord Clarendon's work of the Rebellion, is a fine example of this sort of aristocratic histories.

Now aristocracy generally descends from its exclusive eminence, or rather other social forces come into competition with it at the epoch which marks the national acme, and thus the literature of the acme, though produced mainly by aristocratic influence, ceases to concern itself exclusively with the acts of the aristocrats, either in war or in