and by rousing our attention and exciting our active powers, they produce an emotion, which nourishes the prevailing affection."* Before his eighth year, a boy should be perfectly well grounded in the rudiments of English-and then if his master be a scholar that deserves the name, he could learn his own language better by having occasion to use it in translations, both prose and metrical, of the ancient languages, than by all the lessons and lectures of a mere English teacher from his birth to his majority. Indeed, it would be difficult, in the present state of our literature to imagine any thing more insipid, spiritless, imperfect, and unprofitable than such a course. But we must break off here.

We were going to appeal to experience, but we know the answer that will be made. It is not sufficient: but this too must be deferred. In the mean time, we earnestly exhort our readers to consider the state of the question as we have put it. Not to have the curiosity to study the learned languages is not to have any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence which is the bane of all improvement for a proof of the highest degree of it. As somebody quoted by Horne Tooke says, qui alios a literarum et linguarum studio absterrent, non antique sapientiæ, sed nova stultitia doctores sunt habendi. Mr. Grimké's speculative opinions we think utterly erroneoushis excellent example cannot be too closely imitated-but it is unfortunately easy for all to repeat the one, while few have the industry and perseverance to follow the other.

*Hume's Essay XXII. of Tragedy.

ROMAN LITERATURE.

History of Roman Literature, from its earliest period to the Augustan Age. By JOHN DUNLOP, Author of the History of Fiction. 2 vols. From the last London Edition. E. Littell. Philadelphia. 1827.

MR. DUNLOP is already known to many of our readers by his interesting and popular History of Fiction. By the accomplishment of the present undertaking he will have greatly added to the obligations which he has already imposed upon the public. He is supplying a very important desideratum in English literature. The execution of the work thus far, is, upon the whole, worthy of the design, and few books can be mentioned in which so much useful knowledge is conveyed in so agreeable a style. There is, however, very little novelty either in the views of our author, or in the learning with which he illustrates and enforces them. The numerous subjects that fall within his comprehensive plan, have been long ago 'bolted to the bran' by many erudite men, and nothing remained for the historian but to collect and arrange the abundant materials that had been prepared for him, and to embellish them with the graces of an elegant and attractive style. If we may be allowed moreover to speak our minds with perfect freedom, we will confess that there is something wanting, after all, in Mr. Dunlop's manner of treating his subject. He does not appear to us to write altogether con amore. At least, there is not that hearty zeal, that captivating and contagious enthusiasm which breathes through the pages of Schlegel and Sismondi, and imparts to them so lively an interest, and such a warm and delightful coloring. In a word, the history of Roman literature, however great an acquisition to the general reader, partakes too much of the character of mere compilation, and though, as compilation, uniformly satisfactory, exact and elegant, is occasionally, withal, rather cold and spiritless.

Perhaps, however, we are imputing to the workman what ought to be considered as, in some degree at least, the defects of his materials. Roman literature, especially the earlier Roman literature, which occupies so large a space in the work before us, is far less calculated to inspire enthusiasm, than that of the Greeks, or even that of the South of Europe, especially about the period of the revival of letters. The reason may be given in a single word-it is altogether exotic and imitative. Greek

literature, on the contrary, was perfectly original. That wonderful people was, in this respect, at least a primitive race-a nation of auroydoves. There is no trace in their poetry and eloquence of any foreign influence or heterogeneous admixture. With them every thing was barbarous that was not Greek. Their genius drew its inspiration from the living fountains of nature-from the scenes in which it actually moved from events which immediately affected its own destinies from opinions that had laid a strong hold on the popular belief-from the exaggerated traditions of an heroic ancestry-from every thing, in short, that is most fitted to excite the imagination, and to come home to the heart, and all its deep and devoted affections. The theme of their matchless Epic was the war which first united them in a great national object, and proved that they were formed to conquer and to subjugate barbarians. The calamities of the Labdacida and the Pelopidæ furnished the scenes of their "gorgeous tragedy." The animated interest of their Olympic contests inspired the muse of Pindar, and the valor of Harmodius and Aristogiton was celebrated in many a festal hymn, and by many a tuneful lyre. Their elegant and poetical mythology peopled all nature with animated and beautiful forms, and consecrated, ennobled, and adorned the most ordinary objects. A local habitation, a temple, a grove, a grotto-was assigned, amidst the scenes of daily toil and the resorts of busy life, to every divinity in their endless calendar. Their Parnassus was no unmeaning common place--no empty name as it is in our modern poetry. It was "haunted, holy ground"-breathing inspiration from its caves, and covered all over with religious awe. Attica, says Strabo, was a creation and a monument of God and godlike ancestors. Not a part of it but is signalized and celebrated by history or fiction. Is it any wonder that objects like these, that scenes so full of religion and poetry should have awakened all the enthusiasm of genius, which, in its turn, was to reflect back on them its own glory, and to hallow them with associations still more awful and affecting? The Edipus Coloneus and the Eumenides, both of them written professedly to honor Athens and the Athenians, are memorable examples of a poetry, which seems to have been inspired by the event and the place, and to have made both more interesting and impressive.

There is reality in all this. The literature of such a people

[* ή μεν Αττική μουσα καὶ ἀρχαία καὶ αυτόχθων.—Dion. Hal. περι ΤΩΝ APX. PHT. μouv. proemium.]

† Isocrates, Ελενής εγκωμιον.

† Ιεροπρεπης δ' ἐςι πᾶς ὁ Παρνασσος ἔχων αντρα τε και άλλα χωρια, τιμωμένα τε και ἁγιστευομένα.—Strabo, B. ix., c. 3.

§ Ibid, c. 1.

VOL II. 4

is an essential part of their history as a nation. Its character stands in intimate relation, both of cause and effect, to their character. Springing out of their most touching interests and associations-out of what would be called, by German critics, their "inward life"-it deserves to be classed among their most important social institutions. Instead of being, as classical learning once was all over Europe, the business of mere pedants and book-worms, producing no effect whatever upon the mass of mankind—the mighty multitude who feel and act-it is inwoven into the very frame and constitution of society-pervades, informs, warms, quickens it throughout. Men of genius, indeed, experience its first and its strongest impulses; but the people too, and even the populace, are very much under its influence. They partake of the enthusiasm that is abroad-they feel, though in a less degree, the same passionate love for that ideal beauty which is the object of the arts, and with somewhat of the same aspirations after excellence, they acquire an instinctive perception, or feeling rather, which enables them to discern and to enjoy it with all the delicacy and the sensibility of refined taste. These are the causes and the characteristics of a national literature; and there is no example in this kind that will bear to be mentioned in comparison with that of Greece.

The early literature of the South of Europe, to which we alluded above, though not so perfectly spontaneous and unmixed, is still distinguished by a striking air of originality. It bears the stamp of the times and the manners. The lay of the Troubadour, full of gallantry and sentimental love, was indebted for none of its charms to the lyrical poetry of antiquity. These simple effusions, the first language, perhaps the first lessons of chivalry, breathed a spirit which had never animated the numbers of Anacreon and Tibullus. It was evident, even from them, that a new order of ages was beginning from a new era. The Divina Comedia, the Decamerone, and the Canzoni of Petrarch, although the productions of men who had read more, and who rank among the most renowned votaries and restorers of classical learning, are certainly not formed upon the ancient models. They exhibit all the freedom, the freshness and originality of a primitive literature. Dante, indeed, avows himself a follower, an humble follower of Virgil, but no two things can be more unlike than the original and the supposed copy. The antique grandeur and simplicity of the Eneid, and the perfect regularity of its proportions are not more strikingly contrasted with the wildness and eccentricities of his fable, than its whole spirit and character with the dark, dismal, and dreadful imaginings of the Inferno, or those dazzling visions of glory and beatitude, which are revealed by Beatrice in the Paradiso. The same thing may be said of Ariosto, and, with all his classic ele

gance and accuracy, of Tasso too. Their subjects alone are full of poetry. They are such as address themselves most powerfully to the feelings of a modern reader. They are connected with all that we have been taught to consider as most venerable and captivating, and imposing in the history of modern society: with the holy land and the holy cross, with the knight and the priest, with palmers and pilgrims, and paladins and peers, with "the fierce wars and the faithful loves," and the thousand other incidents, and consequences and associations, direct or remote, of chivalry and the crusades. There is something like enchantment in the very names of those who are supposed to have figured in this heroic age of the modern world--the heroes and heroines of Turpin's Chronicle. Nor is this altogether due, as some may think, to the elegant fictions into which these rude materials have been wrought up in later times. The simplest old romaunt or fabliau, has, we confess a secret charm for us as an image, however imperfect, of that interesting state of society, the gentis cunabula nostræ. Imagine Dante and Ariosto to have confined themselves to a bare translation of the celebrated poems of antiquity, or to have attempted the same subjects in a close and studied imitation. With what different feelings would they have been regarded by us! and how much less interest would have been excited by the literary history of that period!

Roman literature, especially in its earliest stages, had, of all others, the least originality. It was five whole centuries after the building of the city, before that nation of sages and warriors could boast of a single author. During this long period, there is no vestige of any thing that can be supposed to have been a regular composition in verse, except a sort of Pythagorean poem of Appius Claudius Cæcus, mentioned by Cicero.* The only history which can be given of their literature during all that interval, as Mr. Dunlop forcibly remarks, consists in the progress and improvement of the Latin language. When, at length, it arose, it was not only not indigenous like that of the Greeks, but it bore the stamp of inferiority, and even of servility upon its brow. Livius Andronicus, who first attempted a regular dramatic fable, was a native of Magna Græcia, where he was taken prisoner, according to Tiraboschi, and became the slave and afterwards the freedman of Livius Salinator. Terence was a slave, and what is still more extraordinary, a Carthaginian. Cæcilius also was a slave, and Plautus, if not in the same degraded condition, was yet in such humble circumstances as to be compelled to labor at a mill for his daily bread. These were among the fathers, (if we do not abuse the word) of Roman literature. Their works were servile copies. It is cu

Tuscul. Quæst.-lib. iv. c. 2.