One part is bright, the other most obscure, On one side black, on th' other white and fair; And there in place held by her proud right hand, In her dread dwelling there doth ever stand What will ye more? This is the sum of all: It may be worth while to observe that many of the Chaucerian words are to be found in Alain Chartier, and that he will sometimes assist us in putting the right signification on them. For instance, the word tretis is explained in Tyrwhitt's Glossary, long and well proportioned, though it is plain, from a passage in the Regrets d'un Amoureux, that the French word from which it is derived cannot bear that meaning. Sa petite bouche et traictise. (Fol. 325.) Alain Chartier was born in 1386, and died in 1458. LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BY THE AUTHOR OF THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. No. IV. On Languages (continued). MY DEAR SIR,-It is my misfortune to have been under the necessity too often of writing rapidly and without opportunities for after-revision. In cases where much composition* is demanded, this is a serious misfortune; and, sometimes irreparable, except at the price of recasting the whole work. But to a subject like the present, little of what is properly called composition is applicable; and somewhat the less from the indeterminate form of letters into which I have purposely thrown my communications. Errors in composition apart, there can be no others of importance, except such as relate to the matter: and those are not at all the more incident to a man because he is in a hurry. Not to be too much at leisure is indeed often an advantage: on no occasion of their lives do men * "Composition." This word I use in a sense, not indeed peculiar to myself, but yet not very common-nor any where, that I know of, sufficiently developed. It is of the highest importance in criticism; and therefore, I shall add a note upon the true construction of the idea-either at the end of this letter or of the next, according to the space left. generally speak better than on the scaffold and with the executioner at their side partly indeed, because they are then most in earnest and unsolicitous about effect; but partly also, because the pressure of the time sharpens and condenses the faculty of abstracting the capital points at issue. On this account, I do not plead haste as an absolute and unmitigated disadvantage. Haste palliates what haste occasions. Now there is no haste which can occasion oversights, as to the matter, to him who has meditated sufficiently upon his subject: all that haste can do in such a case, is to affect the language with respect to accuracy and precision: and thus far I plead it. I shall never plead it as shrinking from the severest responsibility for the thoughts and substance of any thing I say; but often in palliation of expressions careless or ill-chosen. And at no time can I stand more in need of such indulgence than at present, when I write both hastily and under circumstances of but no matter what; believe in general that I write under circumstances as unfavourable for careful selection of words as can well be imagined. In my last letter I declined to speak of the antique literature, as a subject too unwieldy and unmanageable for my limits. I now recur to it for the sake of guarding and restraining that particular sentence in which I have spoken of the Roman literature as inferior to the Greek. In common with all the world, I must of necessity think it so in the drama, and generally in poetry kar' ioynv. Indeed, for some forms of poetry, even of the lower order, it was the misfortune of the Roman literature that they were not cultivated until the æra of fastidious taste, which in every nation takes place at a certain stage of society. They were harshly transplanted as exotics, and never passed through the just degrees of a natural growth on Roman soil. Notwithstanding this, the most exquisite specimens of the lighter lyric which the world has yet seen must be sought for in Horace: and very few writers of any country have approached to Virgil in the art of composition, however low we may be disposed at this day to rank him as a poet, when tried in the unequal contest with the sublimities of the Christian literature. The truth is (and this is worth being attended to) that the peculiar sublimity of the Roman mind does not express itself, nor is it at all to be sought in their poetry. Poetry, according to the Roman ideal of it, was not an adequate organ for the grander movements of the national mind. Roman sublimity must be looked for in Roman acts, and in Roman sayings. For the acts-see their history for a thousand years; the early and fabulous part not excepted, which, for the very reason that it is fabulous, must be taken as so much the purer product of the Roman mind. Even the infancy of Rome was like the cradle of Hercules-glorified by splendid marvels: "English "Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre." For their sayingsfor their anecdotes-their serious bon mots, there are none equal to the Roman in grandeur. man!" said a Frenchman once to me, 66 you that contest our claim to the sublime, and contend that la maniére noble' of our artists wears a falsetto character, what do you think of that saying of a king of ours, That it became not the King of France to avenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans (i. e. of himself * In addition to the arguments lately urged in the Quarterly Review, for bastardizing and degrading the early history of Rome, I may here mention two others, alleged many years ago in conversation by a friend of mine. 1. The immoderate length of time assigned to the reigns of the kings. For though it is possible that one king's reign may cover two entire generations (as that of George III.) or even two and a half (as that of Louis XIV.), yet it is in the highest degree improbable, that a series of seven kings immediately consecutive, should average, in the most favourable cases, more than 24 years for each for the proof of which, see the Collective Chronology of Ancient and Modern Europe. 2. The dramatic and artificial casting of the parts for these kings. Each steps forward as a scenical person to play a distinct part or character. One makes Rome: another makes laws; another makes an army; another religious rites, &c. And last of all comes a gentleman who "enacts the brute part" of destroying in effect what his predecessors had constructed; and thus furnishes a decorous catastrophe for the whole play, and a magnificent birth for the Republican form of government, 2 P MAY, 1823. under that title)?" "Think!" said reinstate himself in his natural prerogatives? By what marvels drawn from heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and his assassin a host of shadowy lictors? By the mere blank supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattle-snake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, "Tune, homo, audes occidere C. Marium?" Dost thou, fellow, presume to kill Caius Marius? Whereat the reptile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground-turned round upon his hands and feet-and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immoveable as the Capitol. In such anecdotes as these it is, in the actions of trying emergencies and their appropriate circumstances, that I find the revelation of the Roman mind under its highest aspect. The Roman mind was great in the presence of man, mean in the presence of nature: impotent to comprehend or to delineate the internal strife of passion, but powerful beyond any other national mind to display the energy of the will victorious over all passion. Hence it is that the true Roman sublime exists no where in such purity as in those works which were not composed with a reference to Grecian models. On this account I wholly dissent from the shallow classification which expresses the relations of merit between the writers of the Augustan period, and that which followed, under the By type of a golden and silver age. As artists, and with reference to com Submonente quodam ut in pristinos inimicos animadverteret, negavit se ita facturum; adjectâ civili voce,-Minime licere Principi Romano, ut quæ privatus agitasset odiaista Imperator exequi. Spartian, in Had.-Vid. Histor. August. Neither let it be objected that it is irrational to oppose what there is no chance of opposing with success. When the Roman Senate kept their seats immoveably upon the entrance of the Gauls reeking from the storm of Rome, they did it not as supposing that this spectacle of senatorial dignity could disarm the wrath of their savage enemy; if they had, their act would have lost all its splendour. The language of their conduct was this: so far as the grandeur of the will is concerned, we have carried our resistance to the last extremity, and have expressed it in the way suitable to our rank. For all beyond we are not answerable; and, having recorded our 'protest' in such an emphatic language, death becomes no dishonour. The stantem mori expresses the same principle; but in a symbolic act. So palpable is this truth, that the most unreflecting critics have hence been led to suspect the pretensions of the Atys to a Roman origin. position, no doubt many of the writers of the latter age were rightly so classed: but an inferiority quoad hoc, argues no uniform and absolute inferiority: and the fact is, that in weight and grandeur of thought, the silver writers were much superior to the golden. Indeed, this might have been looked for on à priori grounds. For the silver writers were more truly Roman writers from two causes: first, because they trusted more to their own native stile of thinking; and looking less anxiously to Grecian archetypes, they wrote more naturally, feelingly, and originally: secondly, because the political circumstances of their times were advantageous, and liberated them from the suspicious caution which cramped the natural movements of a Roman mind on the first establishment of the monarchy. Whatever outrages of despotism occurred in the times of the silver writers, were sudden, transient, capricious, and personal in their origin and in their direction: but in the Augustan age, it was not the temper of Augustus personally, and certainly not the temper of the writers leading them to any excesses of licentious speculation, which created the danger of bold thinking: the danger was in the times which were unquiet and revolutionary: the struggle with the republican party was yet too recent; the wounds and cicatrices of the state too green; the existing order of things too immature and critical: the triumphant party still viewed as a party, and for that cause still feeling itself a party militant. Augustus had that chronic complaint of a "crick in the neck," of which later princes are said to have an acute attack every 30th of January. Hence a servile and timid tone in the literature. The fiercer republicans could not be safely mentioned: even Cicero it was not decorous to praise; and Virgil, as perhaps you know, has by insinuation contrived to insult his memory in the Eneid. But, as the irresponsible power of the emperors grew better secured, their jealousy of republican sentiment abated much of its keen➡ ness. And, considering that republican freedom of thought was the very matrix of Roman sublimity, it ought not to surprise us, that as fast as the national mind was lightened from the pressure which weighed upon the natural style of its sentiment-the literature should recoil into a freer movement with an elasticity proportioned to the intensity and brevity of its depression. Accordingly, in Seneca the philosopher, in Lucan, in Tacitus, even in Pliny the younger, &c., but espe cially in the two first, I affirm that there is a loftiness of thought more eminently and characteristically Roman than in any preceding writers: and in that view to rank them as writers of a silver age, is worthy only of those who are servile to the common-places of unthinking criticism. The style of thought in the silver writers, as a raw material, was generally more valuable than that of their predecessors; however much they fell below them in the art of working up that material. And I shall add further that, when I admit the vast defects of Lucan, for instance, as an artist, I would not be understood as involving in that concession the least toleration of the vulgar doctrine, that the diction of the silver writers is in any respect below the standard of pure latinity as existing in the writers of the Ciceronian age. A better structure of latinity, I will affirm boldly, does not exist than that of Petronius Arbiter: and, taken as a body, the writers of what is denominated the silver age, are for diction no less Roman, and for thought much more intensely Roman, than any other equal number of writers from the preceding ages; and, with a very few exceptions, are the best fitted to take a permanent sta Orabunt alii causas melius. Æn. VI.-an opinion upon the Grecian superiority in this point, which is so doubtful even to us in our perfect impartiality at this day-as a general opinion without discrimination of persons, that we may be sure it could not spontaneously have occurred to a Roman in a burst of patriotic feeling, and must have been deliberately manufactured to meet the malignant wishes of Augustus. More especially because, in whatever relation of opposition or of indifference to the principles of a military government, to the Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, Virgil might view the Fine Arts of painting, statuary, &c., he could not but have viewed the Arts of forensic eloquence as standing in the closest alliance with that principle. This explanation made, and having made that "amende honorable" to the Roman literature which my own gratitude demanded, I come to the remaining part of my business in this letter-viz. the grounds of choice amongst the languages of modern Europe. Reserving to my conclusion any thing I have to say upon these languages, as depositaries of literature properly so called, I shall first speak of them as depositaries of knowledge. Among the four great races of men in Europe, viz. 1. The Celtic, occupying a few of the western extremities of Europe; 2. The Teutonic, occupying the northernt and midland parts; 3. The Latin (blended with Teutonic tribes), occupying the south; and, 4. The Sclavonic, occupying the east ;§ it is evident, that of the first and the last, it is unnecessary to say any thing in this place, because their pretensions to literature do not extend to our present sense of the word. No Celt even, however extravagant, pretends to the possession of a body of Celtic philosophy, and Celtic science of independent growth. The Celtic and Sclavonic languages therefore dismissed, our business at present is with those of the Latin and the Teutonic families. Now three of the Latin family, viz. the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, are at once excluded for the purpose before us: because it is notorious that, from political and religious causes, these three nations have but feebly participated in the general scientific and philosophic labours of the age. Italy, indeed, has cultivated natural philosophy with an exclusive zeal; a direction probably impressed upon the national mind, by patriotic reverence for her great names in that department. But merely for the sake of such knowledge (supposing no other motive) it would be idle to pay the price of learning a language; all the current contributions to science being regularly gathered into the general garner of Europe by the scientific journals both at home and abroad. Of the Latin languages, therefore, which are wholly the languages of Catholic nations, but one Of i. e. the French-can present any sufficient attractions to a student in search of general knowledge. the Teutonic literatures, on the other hand, which are the adequate representative of the Protestant intellectual interest in Europe (no Catholic nation speaking a Teutonic language except the southern states of Germany, and part of the Netherlands), all give way at once to the paramount pretensions of the English and the German. I do not say this with the levity of ignorance-as if presuming as a matter of course that in a small territory, such as Denmark, e. g. the literature must, of necessity, bear a value proportioned to its political rank: on the contrary, I have some acquaintance with the Danish || Viz. 1. in the Cornish, Welch, Manks, Highland Scotch, and Irish provinces of the British empire (in the first and last it is true that the barbarous Celtic blood has been too much improved by Teutonic admixture, to allow of our considering the existing races as purely Celtic: this, however, does not affect the classification of their genuine literary relics): 2. in Biscay: and 3. in Basse Bretagne (Armorica): to say nothing of a Celtic district said to exist in the Alps, &c. Viz. Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, England, and Scotch Lowlands. Viz. Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Viz. in a zone belting Europe from the Frozen Ocean through the Russian empire (including Poland) to the Illyrian provinces on the Adriatic. I take this opportunity of mentioning a curious fact which I ascertained about twelve years ago when studying the Danish. The English and Scotch philologists have generally asserted that the Danish invasions in the ninth and tenth centuries, and their settlements in various parts of the island (as Lincolnshire, Cumberland, &c.) had left little or no traces of themselves in the language. This opinion has been lately re-asserted in Dr. Murray's work on the European languages. It is, however, inaccurate. For the remarkable dialect spoken amongst the lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland, together with the names of the mountains, tarns, &c. most of which resist all attempts to unlock their meaning from the Anglo-Saxon, or any other form of the Teutonic, are pure |