BOOK VI. THE LITERARY HISTORY OF ENGLAND. СНАР. І. Review of the Causes of the Decline of Literature before the ENGLAND. THE general intellectual superiority of modern LITERARY But to appreciate justly the illumination we enjoy, and to explore satisfactorily its causes, it will be useful to consider the actual state of the literature of the Roman empire, when our Gothic ancestors overwhelmed it, and the failure of the efforts which they made to revive it. In this review, we shall see that when the Roman and Grecian mind ceased to be the ruling mind of the world, its incurable defects, and the very improvements which it had imparted, had made it necessary to the further progress of mankind, that their intellect should be led into new VOL. IV. I IL HISTORYOF ENGLAND. BOOK paths of thought, to new branches of knowlege, to VI. new modes of expression, new feelings, new manLITERARY ners, and new subjects, and therefore that the exclusive sovereignty of the literature of Rome should expire, as well as its political empire. The dark ages of Europe will then appear to have been an awful but salutary period; in which the Gothic mind was prepared to emerge into literary activity under the light and governance of a new and original genius, seeking new regions, appearing in new costumes, exploring new mines of knowlege, exercising itself in new channels of thought, and displaying a sensibility, a strength, a persevering industry, and an universality, which no preceding age had witnessed. England had the distinction of contributing her full proportion to this noble result; and it will be a pleasing subject of our inquiries, to trace the steps and to expose the causes of her intellectual progress. Decline of letters in The middle ages, extending from the fifth century the Roman to the fifteenth, present a gloomy period to our empire. imaginations-an interval of desolation and ignorance-so often mentioned and regretted as to have become almost proverbial in the history of our literature. But our ancestors, as well as the other Gothic tribes, were rather its victims than its cause: they came into the Roman world with minds emulous for personal distinction; they sought this by war, while warfare only would give it, and they would have courted reputation from the pen as zealously as from the sword, if the pen would have conferred it. If the love and cultivation of letters had been as vigorous and as honorable at Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, as they were in Greece. I. TURE BE NORMAN CONQUEST. when the Romans mastered Corinth, we cannot rea- СНАР. sonably doubt that the Gothic barbarians would have been captivated by the charms of literature, and DECLINE have willingly co-operated with the conquered to have OF LITERAcherished and enlarged it. So Greece, uncultured, FORE THE imbibed and improved the literature of Egypt; so the rude conquerors from the Tiber, polished themselves from the improvements of the Grecian mind. But when the Ostro Goths, Heruli and Lombards invaded Italy, and the Anglo-Saxons, England, they found the Roman literature in a wretched and decaying state. Admirable as it once had been, the masterintellects who had adorned it, and whose genius and compositions have given to it those fascinations which still delight our taste, and defy, not our competition, but, perhaps our superiority, had never been very numerous, and had not been replaced. They had created all the cultivation of mind which their labors could impart. They were loved, read, remembered and praised; but no emulation of their works, their genius or their taste, accompanied the study of their immortal remains. They were still solitary stars amid a dreary and vast firmament of life, that was employing itself in unimproving and uncongenial pursuits. Roman literature had not continued its own beauty and utility; it had sunk into inefficiency, frivolity, luxury, and unintellectual habits; and to its degeneracy and decrepitude must be imputed that lamented eclipse of mind and learning, which involved our ancestors in that night of ignorance and vacuity for which they are reproached, But this apparent evil was their misfortune, not their fault. They met with no teachers to inform them; no living examples to imitate; no intellectual merit VI. LITERARY ENGLAND. BOOK around them to respect or to imbibe; and it was not unnatural that they should neglect or despise what no one near them either valued or pursued. The HISTORY OF more we consider all the results which ensued from this neglect, the more abundant reasons we shall perceive to rejoice that it occurred. If it had not taken place, our present treasures and improvements could not have been attained. The period of the literary excellence of the Romans had been as brief as sudden. It came upon them like a flood, from their conquest of Greece;' but it passed as rapidly away. From Ennius to Quintilian, it lasted little more than three centuries, and then declined with greater celerity than it had improved. All that is most valuable in Roman authors, was produced before the middle of the second century of our æra; from that time the empire became more and more barren of intellectual harvests: literature not only degenerated in kind, but fell into a low estimation; and tho its effects were felt in the general education, yet it was peculiarly cultivated by few. So steadily continuous was the decay, that if the Barbarians had not broken up the empire, letters, from the unceasing operation of the debilitating causes that were in action, would have sunk into dotage and inanity: and the great classics whom we now admire and study, would have been the distant beauties of a long-past antiquity to them, as they are now to ourselves. 1 In Cicero's Oration for Archias, and in his dialogues de Senectute and de Amicitia, which are so valuable for the traits they have preserved of some of the great men of Rome, we have his sentiments on the introduction of literature into Rome from Greece. Cato's learning Greek in his old age, shews the eagerness with which the Romans applied to it. But even Cicero's studies and works imply how new and how rare intellectual cultivation was to the Romans in his days, tho they had then achieved the establishment of their military empire over the world. I. OF LITERA- FORE THE CONQUEST. Romans Some of the more intellectual of the Romans them- CHAP. selves perceived, lamented, and pointed out the causes of the decline, in the beginning of the second century. DECLINE In the Dialogue on Oratory, ascribed by some to Tacitus, by others to Quintilian, we find their literary deterioration acknowleged, and traced to their social degeneracy: "Who is ignorant that eloquence and Ascribed the other polite arts have decayed from their ancient by the glory, not from a dearth of men, but from the dissi- to their pation of our youth, the negligence of parents, the moral deignorance of teachers, and the oblivion of ancient manners? These evils, first originating in the capital, spread thro Italy, and now overflow all our provinces. The causes here alluded to are visibly resolvable into the unintellectual taste of the Roman people, which continued unchanged, till the Gothic irruptions and their consequences brought a new mental and literary impulse on the European mind. In the next century, we have the corruption of the Roman genius, and the scarcity of its valuable produce, exposed and regretted by Longinus. He also traces the evil to moral causes; to those which, in all ages, are the great preventers of human improvement in mind as well as in virtue. In addition to the loss of liberty, he says, "AVARICE, that disease of which the whole world is sick beyond a cure, aided by VOLUPTUOUSNESS, holds us fast in chains of thral 2 Dial. de Orat. s. 28. He details the progress of a Roman education in his day. The boy was first committed to a Greek maid-servant, then to some of the vilest of the slaves; and with their tales and errors his young mind was filled. Neither the domestics, nor even his own parents, cared what they did before him, but accustomed him to voluptuousness and licentiousness. Impudence soon followed, and a contempt both of others and of himself; and a passion for players, gladiators, and horses, thus became the prevailing vice of the city and age. Ib. s. 29. The disgusting state of Roman manners, as implied by Petronius, and satirized by Juvenal and Lucian, is an expressive commentary on such an education, generacy. |