Page images
PDF
EPUB

the senate, or in those scenes of trial of which tragedy consists. But in France aristocracy and monarchy continued to assert political supremacy at a stage when other countries wonld have been constitutional, and this ресиliarity of French society is strongly marked in French literature. Everything was thrown into the shape of personal memoirs. All the events of the nation were clustered into the biographies of their kings, a few prominent courtiers, and a circle of fine ladies. Thus the character of aristocratic literature was, like aristocracy itself, carried to a more extravagant and unnatural pitch in that country than was ever known elsewhere. Voltaire. was the first in France to break the belief that history consisted in the memoirs of the great; and the same achievement in English literature was accomplished by Hume. For both historians were contemporary with the periods in their several countries when aristocratic monarchy was ceasing to be the sole ruling force of the state.

In Roman history the same difference is conspicuous. While Rome was under an aristocratic republic, its history consisted of the records of the achievements of great men. Gradually these prominent figures became less marked by originality of character, and at last, under the empire, there was nothing to be described but the acts of the functionary government on the one hand, and of the governed mass on the other.*

As in the strife of the social elements, in every instance some gain the mastery and distort the national development from that which is its true normal form, so the accompanying forms of literature appear in sympathetic disproportion. In Spain, for instance, which was full of chivalry and of theology, there was a finer Homeric

"The history of the empire will be much briefer in proportion than that of the republic, for in the latter we had to consider all the separate men who acted a prominent part; whereas under the empire we shall have to deal with the government on the one hand and with the masses on the other."-Niebuhr, H. R. v. 137.

literature than in any other nation of modern Europe, but deeply tinctured with fanaticism; there was also a great mass of pure theological literature, polemics and scholasticism, the gloomy offspring of the cloister; there was also no inconsiderable drama, which, like the later Castilian poetry, was the creature of the refined and courtly aristocracy; but for sound democratic common sense, stern, honest, and searching inquiry, physical and theoretical philosophy, or science, our search in Spain were fruitless, because the democracy never arrived at sufficient culture to raise up its appropriate literature, and because the aristocracy and the court were never so far emancipated from, or so equal with, the theocracy as to admit into Spanish literature the boldness of the English, the licence of the Italian, or the gaiety of the French thinkers. To take another instance; the aristocratic element in Lombardy and Tuscany was stunted and of short duration; accordingly in Italian literature there is less of the ballad, narrative, lyric poetry, the true accompaniment of a warrior aristocracy, than in Spain or in Great Britain.

So offshoots from nations which branch off from the parent stem at the time when the old nation is becoming democratic or plutocratic, and have therefore no aristocratic element in them, are in the first place destitute altogether of literature, in the true sense of the term, because it is the contribution of aristocracy to the national acme ; and in the second place such literature as they have consists of matter of fact statistical or satiric, and highly coloured writings. Being without one social element, they are without its appropriate literary concomitant. The true poetic element which comes down from an early feudal age, and to which the poets of an Augustan age in memory revert, had no existence in the Dutch or the Venetian republics, and has none in our transatlantic colonies, or in the United States.

Mr. Justice Haliburton says: "There is no literature in the colonies, because they have no poet, no infancy, no

growth. They have grown up suddenly, have no settled orders, no nobility, no castles which have formerly been strongholds, and told tales of rapine and oppression; their rivers have no names, their streams have no legends; they have no fairies, no superstitions, their people are plain hard matter of fact men. As matter of fact men, poets are not valued among them, for there can be no poets where there are no memories."

Respect for authority in matters of opinion is a characteristic of early literature, produced as it is both by the religious and the aristocratic temper of the age. The latter predisposes men to feel respect for any great name and any revered memory, and the former builds the whole of its system upon respect for authority.

Our older writers, it has been well remarked*, are accustomed to cite authorities, and that most profusely, for matters of opinion; while for facts they often omit to cite any. Every one may trace in our literature the gradual transition to the present exclusive taste for "facts" and proofs; a taste not wholly to be reprobated when it is remembered that it is a form, however uninviting, of the temper of mind that leads to discoveries in science.

Connected with this respect for authority is another characteristic of the literature of modern nations in its most flourishing period,—the arduous and loving study of classical literature. This is in part but an effect of the sympathy which always exists between different nations in the same stage; a sympathy greater than that between the members of the same nation at different stages of its development: as in architecture, the Grecian appears to our imagination less ancient and alien than the Gothict, and partly this love for classical literature arises in a nation at its acme, because to the aristocratic temper of the times is congenial a respect for authority and a lively recollection of the past. That temper of mind

* Whately's Rhetoric, p. 122. † Reynolds' Discourses, ii. 138.

loves to dwell upon the past, when it recalls in ballads and banquet songs the illustrious deeds of noble ancestors, and bids each new heir of a distinguished house bear the banner and the motto of those who first made it famous, and whom it would be a shame upon him to disgrace; and it fosters the same strain of feeling when it studies the great examples of antiquity, whose characters, recorded for our admiration, are all of the aristocratic caste. The scientific mind, as well as the democratic classes, despise and dislike antiquity. Thus, as democracy increases and aristocracy declines, the study of the classical authors engrosses a less proportion of the time of the student, and by the old grammar castle rises the commercial school, to which it best suits the taste of the citizens to send their sons. People long

continue to comment on the classics, but they do not feel them, because the state of society for which the classic authors or rather the best of them wrote, has no representative among those who read them.

Every other social force has its peculiar literature attached to it, whether it be ornate descriptions for a plutocracy, satire or wild theories for incipient democracy, or statistics for both. The course of national progress consists in the elevation and depression of these forces. With them rise and fall their appropriate literature. The acme is the period when all these forces attain a pitch of nearly equal eminence, and by their union give the greatest splendour to the state; and the acme is the period when the several kinds of literature attain nearly equal development. There is in the acme less of the fine heroic tone, the military artlessness, the hurried frankness that belong to an earlier age, for aristocracy is less exclusively prominent; there is less of the minute and accurate knowledge of science than in a later age, for the classes to whom physical knowledge is most congenial are in the acme only yet attaining sufficient strength to begin their literature, so there is less respect

for authority than before, less delight in gorgeous ornament than afterwards. Though, therefore, the literature of the acme is excelled in many individual particulars by the literature of preceding and succeeding periods; as a whole, the literature of a nation is never more perfect than during its acme, and the several excellences which are then reached, are retained in due harmony and proportion by a correctness of style, which, while it removes the rugged inequalities and the wild imagination of earlier ages, keeps free from the minute and spiritless monotony which in the latest ages is only relieved by bombast and fustian. This is why the acme of every country has been likewise the classical age of its literature. For the elements of national greatness, whether literary or other, are like the rays of a parti coloured lamp ;-any one colour would dazzle and distress the beholder, two alone would jar, but three or more of equal brilliancy produce an harmonious and gorgeous effect, upon which the eye rests with pleasure and admiration.

« PreviousContinue »