were | longs to a philos pla than confound.

have been dust in the balance; if their sins as scarlet, they are now white as snow :" they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime I have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how little is, as it appears-or appears, as it is ; look to your own motives, and julge not, lest ye be judged.

1

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects are experienced unsuse ptible of being referred to them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with its own nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organised than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another's gar

ments.

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have never formed any pertion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.

I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply ; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Mævius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it be

The first part of the petry in its elements been shown, as well as them wouli permit, tha restricted sense, has a other forms of order a which the materials of I of being arranged, and versal sense.

The second part wli

cation of these principl the cultivation of pot attempt to idealize the and opinions, and comp tion to the imaginative the literature of Englan of which has ever prece and free development of as it were from a new thoughted envy which porary merit, our own intellectual achievement philosophers and poets rison any who have app struggle for civil and r unfailing herald, comp awakening of a great p change in opinion or such periods there is an of communicating and passioned conceptions r The persons in whom thi as far as regards many have little apparent corr of good of which the even whilst they deny compelled to serve, the the throne of their own read the compositions writers of the present with the electric life w words. They measure th the depths of human nat and all-penetrating spiri perhaps the most sincer festations; for it is less of the age. Poets are t apprehended inspiration tic shadows which futuri the words which expre not; the trumpets which not what they inspire; th Poets not, but moves. legislators of the world.

ESSAY

ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS.

A Fragment.*

THE period which intervened between the birth
of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubt-
edly, whether considered in itself or with refer-
ence to the effects which it has produced upon the
subsequent destinies of civilised man, the most
memorable in the history of the world. What
was the combination of moral and political circum-
stances which produced so unparalleled a progress
during that period in literature and the arts;-
why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so
soon received a check, and became retrograde,
are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of
posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those
subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine
statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and
perfection of the whole. Their very language-a
type of the understandings of which it was the
creation and the image-in variety, in simplicity,
in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other
language of the western world. Their sculptures
are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be
the models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which
no artist of modern times can produce forms in
any degree comparable. Their paintings, according
to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and
harmony; and some even were powerfully pathe-
tic, so as to awaken, like tender music or tragie
poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We
are accustomed to conceive the painters of the
sixteenth century, as those who have brought their
art to the highest perfection, probably because
none of the ancient paintings have been preserved.
For all the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a
sympathetic connexion between each other, being
no more than various expressions of one internal
power, modified by different circumstances, either
of an individual, or of society; and the paintings
of that period would probably bear the same rela-
tion as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all
succeeding ones. Of their music we know little;
but the effects which it is said to have produced,

*Shelley named this Essay," A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancients, relative to the subject of Love." It was intended to be a commentary on the Symposium, or Banquet of Plato, but it breaks off at the moment when the main subject is about to be discussed.

whether they be attributed to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of his audience, are far more powerful than any which we experience from the music of our own times; and if, indeed, the melody of their compositions were more tender and delicate, and inspiring, than the melodies of some modern European nations, their superiority in this art must have been some. thing wonderful, and wholly beyond conception.

Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison. Perhaps Shakspeare, from the variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be considered, on the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of which we have specimens remaining. Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered in the fragments of the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalric sensibility of Petrarch.-But, as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakspeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images, their exact fitness to the illustration, and to that to which they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have been brought into comparison with these men, bu for those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction.

But, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which can afford no general inference, how superior was the spirit and system of their poetry to that of any other period. So that, had any other genius equal in other respects to the greatest that ever enlightened the world, arisen in that age, he would have been superior to all, from this circumstance alone-that his conceptions would have assumed a more harmonious and perfect form. For it is worthy of observation, that whatever the poets of that age produced is as harmonious and perfect as possible. If a drama, for instance, were the composition of a person of inferior talent, it was still homogeneous and free from inequali ties; it was a whole, consistent with itself. The

compositions of great minds bore throughout the sustained stamp of their greatness. In the poetry of succeeding ages the expectations are often exalted on Icarean wings, and fall, too much disappointed to give a memory and a name to the oblivious pool in which they fell.

In physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophrastus had already-no doubt assisted by the labours of those of their predecessors whom they criticise -made advances worthy of the maturity of science. The astonishing invention of geometry, that series of discoveries which have enabled man to command the elements and foresee future events, before the subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have opened as it were the doors of the mysteries of nature, had already been brought to great perfection. Metaphysics, the science of man's intimate nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary principles of that science, received from the latter philosophers of the Periclean age a firm basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon the labours of these great men, and many of the words which we employ in metaphysical distinctions were invented by them to give accuracy and system to their reasonings. The science of morals, or the voluntary conduct of men in relation to themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doctrines of those great men, in comparison with the timid maxims which prevail in the writings of the most esteemed modern moralists. They were such as Phocion, and Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who formed themselves on their influence, were to the wretched heroes of our own age.

Their political and religious institutions are more difficult to bring into comparison with those of other times. A summary idea may be formed of the worth of any political and religious system, by observing the comparative degree of happiness and of intellect produced under its influence. And whilst many institutions and opinions, which in ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement of the human race, have been abolished among modern nations, how many pernicious superstitions and new contrivances of misrule, and unheard-of complications of public mischief, have not been invented among them by the ever-watchful spirit of avarice and tyranny.

The modern nations of the civilised world owe the progress which they have made as well in those physical sciences in which they have already excelled their masters, as in the moral and intellectual inquiries, in which, with all the advantage of the experience of the latter, it can scarcely be said that they have yet equalled them, to what is called the revival of learning; that is, the study

of the writers of the immediately followed th or of subsequent writers rivers flowing from tho though there seems to b world, which, should those which modelled t the age to which we r proportion, again arise, them, and consign thei extensive, and lasting in of man-though justic human society are, if generally understood; more, and therefore ar principle has never be requires indeed a unif change in the system study of modern hist financiers, statesmen, a ancient Greece is the phers, and poets; it is t with the history of title was a reality, not a p and hope to be, is der influence and inspiratio tions.

Whatever tends to of the manners and op owe so much, and who the most perfect speci we have authentic reco Let us see their erro daily actions, their fam the tone of their socie far the most admirable removed from that p society is impelled by each bosom, to aspire hopes, how resolute ou of the Periclean age w It is to be lamented hitherto dared to sho were. Barthélemi car industry and system; is a Christian and a Fr delightful novels, mak Pagan, but cherishes to and refrains from dim romances by painting European of modern thise. There is no bo precisely as they were children, with the ca sentiment, highly inco manners, should be me

should receive outrage and violation. But there
are many to whom the Greek language is inacces-
sible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery
from possessing an exact and comprehensive con-
ception of the history of man; for there is no
knowledge concerning what man has been and may
be, from partaking of which a person can depart,
without becoming in some degree more philoso-
phical, tolerant, and just.

One of the chief distinctions between the manners
of ancient Greece and modern Europe, consisted
in the regulations and the sentiments respecting
sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises
from some imperfect influence of the doctrines of
Jesus Christ, who alleges the absolute and uncon-
ditional equality of all human beings, or from the
nstitutions of chivalry, or from a certain funda-
mental difference of physical nature existing in the
Celts, or from a combination of all or any of these
causes, acting on each other, is a question worthy
of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that the
modern Europeans have in this circumstance, and
in the abolition of slavery, made an improvement
the most decisive in the regulation of human
society; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the
Periclean age arose under other institutions, in
spite of the diminution which personal slavery and
the inferiority of women, recognised by law and
opinion, must have produced in the delicacy, the
strength, the comprehensiveness, and the accuracy
of their conceptions, in moral, political, and meta-
physical science, and perhaps in every other art
and science.

The women, thus degraded, became such as it was expected they would become. They possessed, except with extraordinary exceptions, the habits and the qualities of slaves. They were probably not extremely beautiful; at least there was no such disproportion in the attractions of the external form between the female and male sex among the Greeks, as exists among the modern Europeans. They were certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual loveliness with which the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with another life of overpowering grace, the lineaments and the gestures of every form which they inhabit. Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind, and could have entangled no heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths.

Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks were deprived of its legitimate object, they were incapable of sentimental love; and that this passion is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of modern times. This object, or its archetype, forever exists in the mind, which selects among those

who resemble it, that which most resembles it; and instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect image, in the same manner as the imagination moulds and completes the shapes in clouds, or in the fire, into the resemblances of whatever form, animal, building, &c., happens to be present to it. Man is in his wildest state a social being: a certain degree of civilisation and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate and complete; and the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought in sexual conuexion. It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive; and which, when individualised, becomes an imperious necessity, only to be satisfied by the complete or partial, actual or supposed, fulfilment of its claims. This want grows more powerful in proportion to the development which our nature receives from civilisation; for man never ceases to be a social being. The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a small part of those claims, serves, from its obvious and external nature, as a kind of type or expres sion of the rest, a common basis, an acknowledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even derives a strength not its own from the accessory circumstances which surround it, and one which our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this, observe the degree of intensity and durability of the love of the male towards the female in animals and savages; and acknowledge all the duration and intensity observable in the love of civilised beings beyond that of savages to be produced from other causes. In the susceptibility of the external senses there is probably no important difference.

Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement; whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the condition of savages. The gradations in the society of man present us with a slow improvement in this respect. The Roman women held a higher consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of domestic economy and the education of their children. The practices and customs of modern Europe are essentially different from and incomparably less pernicious than either, however remote from what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as the future destiny of human beings.

ON THE SYMPOSIUM,

OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLA

a fragment.

THE dialogue entitled "The Banquet," was selected by the translator as the most beautiful and perfect among all the works of Plato. He despairs of having communicated to the English language any portion of the surpassing graces of the composition, or having done more than present an imperfect shadow of the language and the sentiment of this astonishing production.

Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philosophers, and from, or, rather, perhaps through him, his master Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of moral and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of mankind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic, with the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of musical impressions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a breathless career. His language is that of an immortal spirit, rather than a man. Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only writer, who, in these particulars, can be compared with him his imitator, Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape mocking the gestures of a man. His views into the nature

*The Republic, though replete with considerable errors of speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of impor tant truths of all the works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He first, and perhaps last, maintained that a state ought to be governed, not by the wealthiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by the wisest; the method of selecting such rulers, and the laws by which such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement of the people.

of mind and existence cause they are profoun respecting the govern elementary laws of m correct, yet there is s which do not, however contain the most rem that can be the subject excellence consists esp this faculty which raise whose geuins, though v in comparison with the

The dialogue entitled Eparkos, or a Discuss posed to have taken pis at one of a series of 1 on the occasion of tragedy at the Dionys debate on this occasion given by Apollodorus, years after it had taken was curious to hear it. both from the style in this piece, as well as fro to have been a perso enthusiastic disposition the Italian painters, h St. John of the Socratic the lively distinction of and well-wrought circun entitle it to be called) l ing Aristodemus to sup The whole of this intre

| lively conception of refi

[UNFINISHED.]