OF LITERA TURE BE blish themselves in it. Forty years of continual CHAP. warfare was waged by the Greeks against them; and ·I. ́. this protracted effort of the ambition of the eastern DECLINE empire, as well as subsequent invasions from the Franks, compelled the Lombards for a long time to make war instead of learning their national pursuit. But these same Lombards were the persons who actually began the restoration of learning in the west of Europe, and soon outdid their Grecian contemporaries. So far was the Gothic spirit from being uncongenial with intellectual improvement, or adverse to it, that in Spain, in France, in Italy, and elsewhere, as soon as their barbaric conquerors were settled in their acquisitions, and the pressure of external hostilities against them was relaxed, they began to cultivate literature, in every region. In our own islands their readiness to improve was conspicuous. Ireland, though at that time supposed to be the wildest region of the West, yet was so teachable and so emulous of instruction, that in the seventh and eighth centuries she was an example to all Europe for the literary attainments of her natives, and even assisted, under her Columbanus, to support them in Italy.1 The Anglo-Saxons as eagerly imbibed the lessons of the two monks sent from Rome to preside over their clergy, studied Greek literature under their instrucfions, and furnished a Bede and an Alcuin to be the literary benefactors of Europe! 20 It was not there 19 Bede, 1. 3. c. 28, and Usher, Vet. Ep. Hiber. Sylloge. Dubl. 1632. Columbanus, in 612, obtained permission from the Lombard king to found the celebrated abbey of Bobbio, after having established some in France. 20 See Muratori, Ant. Ital. p. 814. Our Alcuin was the principal instructor of Charlemagne and his age. One of his Irish assistants in the great task of instructing France and Italy, was Claudius Scotus, whose Commentary on the Galatians is printed in 1 Biblioth. Magna Patr. p. 794; and whose work on St. Matthew, is in MS. in the British Museum, FORE THE CONQUEST. NORMAN BOOK fore the mental inaptitude or aversion of our foreVI. fathers to study, which kept them illiterate. LITERARY The classical lite competent But altho the Gothic nations would have eagerly studied literature, if they had found it in a flourishing or valuable state, or if they had enjoyed, like the Romans in Greece, a peaceful occupation of the countries they invaded, yet it was happy for mankind that the intellectual decline of the Roman world was such, as to discourage and prevent their cultivation of that learning, which had lost all its primeval vigor and social utility. The Grecian and Roman literature had become not only ineffective to human improvement, but was in many of its compositions so objectionable, in some of its objects so erroneous, and had been so perverted, as to be deteriorating and impeding the healthful progress of the human mind. I feel that Į am treading on dangerous ground, when I speak of the defects and evil consequences of that classical literature, which we are educated to revere in our youth, and to panegyricise ever afterwards. But the character of this work is meant to be a dispassionate independence of thought; a temperate freedom of inquiry and though I may often fail to convince, and no doubt shall occasionally err, I hope my remarks will be read with that candor with which I will endeavor to express them. We have been indebted to the Greeks and Romans rature had for so large a part of our intellectual attainments, become in- that we rarely allow ourselves to consider their works to improve the world. Bib. Reg. 2. c. 10. and 4. c. 8. Another was Duncant, whose Commentary on Martianus Capella, addressed to his pupils at Rheims, is in MS. in the same library, Bib. Reg. 15. A. 32. And see Heric's letter, in 876, to Charles the Bald, and Joannes Erigena's letter, in 3 Anglo-Sax. p. 392, 4th ed. In an ancient catalogue in the monastery at Pavia, written in the 10th century, is a book in Irish, under the head of Books given by Dungal precipuus Scotorum.' Murat. Ant. Ital. 1. p. 821. I. OF LITERA TURE BE NORMAN in any other light than their utility; and indeed they CHAP. have conduced so much to the mental improvement of mankind, that our gratitude can hardly exagge- DECLINE rate the benefaction. But human genius is usually more adapted to the age in which it appears, than to FORE THE the times that succeed; its effusions create improve- CONQUEST. ments around it, which diminish its own future value. New genius, with new materials and new views, and acting in new directions, is then wanted. This appears, and benefits, and becomes obsolete in its turn, from the good which it has imparted. Thus Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, Socrates, and Plato, successively arose for the advantage of mankind. In some degree the creatures of the age they adorned, they wrote for its necessities, its taste, and its approbation. Each of them left society better for his appearance, and therefore requiring other teachers to carry on its progression.21 But when, from political or moral changes, the manners and spirit of the succeeding ages prove unfavorable to the evolution of fresh talent, the progress of mind becomes stationary, and soon, receiving no impulse to advance by the rise of further benefactors, the cultivation that has been produced begins then to retrograde and decline, from the operation of its own imperfections, and from the adverse circumstances with which it is surrounded. The Grecian and Roman literature was an immense accession to the intellectual world-and allied taste The general cultivation of the Grecian mind, as far as their poets could improve it, may be inferred from the intimation of Seneca, that there were slaves so familiar with the revered poetry of Greece, that one was a master of Homer; another of Hesiod; and nine, of the lyric writers; all purchased by one affluent Roman (Ep. 17.) and retained in his family. (Ep. 27.) Such men could hardly live in any household without diffusing much of their own taste and information around them. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. BOOK and judgment, true history, and moral uses, for ever VI. with it.22 When I read the monstrous productions LITERARY of the Hindu literature; the inflated exaggerations of the Persian, and the absurd dreams of the Chaldean, and other Easterns, and contemplate the confusing obscurity and scanty mind of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, I feel that, with all their imperfections, we can hardly estimate on this comparison, the Greek and Roman classics too highly. But in recollecting their improvements, we must not forget our own. In acknowleging their vast merit, as we ought, with a filial gratitude, we must neither palliate nor deny their visible deficiencies, nor be blind to the justice of their now receiving a subordinate position-always to be studied-always to be remembered frequently to be consulted-but never to be made again the magistra vitæ, or the exclusive acquisition. Both the Grecian and the Roman compositions have, in all their parts, successively benefited the world; but both had some peculiar tendencies, which, though beneficial in their first appearance, yet afterwards became mischievous. These, unfortunately, obtained the ascendency in education and popular favor, as the moral and political state of the empire declined. They increased the degeneracy which fostered them; till literature itself was ruined 22 One of the completest and most favorable instances of a mind formed almost entirely from the Classics, is that of the celebrated Montaigne. His Essays are, usually, ingenious pieces of patchwork, selected and put together by a sound and large intellect; from Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, and Lucretius. He quotes them as often as the pedant in Clarissa, and not only transplants their best thoughts avowedly into his Essays, but where their names are not explicitly referred to, his ideas may be frequently traced to their remains. His general merit shews that of his intellectual education. But he has cropped their flowers, and left their weeds untouched; and yet, in his own deficiencies, makes us feel the vastly superior richness of the intellectual harvests, which both his Countrymen and England have raised since he lived. I. by their operation, and became pernicious to human CHAP. reason, and unworthy of its pursuit. These corrupting agents were, the Grecian sophistry and the DECLINE Roman rhetoric. OF LITERA TURE BE NORMAN of Greece. When Socrates diverted the. Athenian mind from FORE THE the study of astronomy and natural philosophy, to cONQUEST. moral and political disputation, he seemed to be conSophistical ferring a benefit upon his species; and if his authority philosophy and example had only given to ethics and polity a fair proportion of philosophical discussion, the boon which he imparted would have been great. But Socrates loved victory as well as truth; he sought often to confute rather than to instruct; a subtle distinction was as valuable in his eyes, as a sound judgment: he preferred debate to observation, logic to knowledge.23 Hence, without perhaps fully intending it, he excited in the Athenian, and thro that, in the Grecian mind, a love and practice of sophistical ingenuity, which, abandoning the patient study of nature, and the calm decisions of steady judgment, sought only to shine in argument and controversy. His acute method of confuting his adversary, was refined upon with increased effect by Plato; and Aristotle, transcending both in 24 كمة 23 Socrates has been delineated by three contemporaries Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon, and by all dramatically. Each has pursued his own taste in exhibiting the conversation of the philosopher. The satirizing comedian has drawn him a mere sophist; his dialectic disciple, Plato, has exhibited him arguing and refining in a way that approaches much nearer to sophistry than the simpler Xenophon has chosen to pourtray. I doubt if we have the real Socrates from either, unless we take his features from all. Indeed, when we consider that Cicero deduces the Academical Sect, always debating and never deciding, from Socrates-profecta à Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila, confirmata à Carneade (De Nat. Deor. l. 1. p. 14.) I cannot but feel, that if Aristophanes caricatured, yet that he saw justly the tendency of the mental habit which Socrates was practising. Lucian also treats Socrates with disrespect; and Maxim Tyrius, in four discourses, strives hard to justify him. It is impossible to reconcile the 'Atroμvnμoveμara of Xenophon, which |