as a whole have been honoured with the appellation of works of a golden age, resemble the mimic gardens of children: impatient to witness the work of their hands they break off here and there branches and flowers, and plant them in the earth; everything at I first assumes a noble appearance; the childish gardener struts proudly up and down among his elegant beds, till the rootless plants begin to droop, and hang down their withered leaves and flowers, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs, while the dark forest, on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe.

Let us now think of applying the idea which we have been developing, of the universality of true criticism, to the history of poetry and the fine arts. We generally limit it, (although there may be much which deserves to be known beyond this circle) as we limit what we call universal history to whatever has had a nearer or more remote influence on the present cultivation of Europe: consequently to the works of the Greeks and Romans, and of those of the modern European nations, who first and chiefly distinguished themselves in art and literature. It is well known that, three centuries and a half ago, the study of ancient literature, by the diffusion of the Grecian language, (for the Latin was never extinct,) received a new life: the classical authors were sought after with avidity, and made accessible by means of the press; and the monuments of ancient art were carefully dug up and preserved. All this excited the human mind in a powerful manner, and formed a decided epoch in the history of our cultivation; the fruits have extended to our times, and will extend to a period beyond the power of our calculation. But the study of the ancients was immediately carried to a most pernicious extent. The learned, who were chiefly in the possession of this knowledge, and who were incapable of distinguishing themselves by their own productions, yielded an unlimited deference to the ancients, and with great appearance of reason, as they are models in their kind. They maintained that nothing could be hoped for the human mind but in the imitation of the ancients; and they only esteemed in the works of the moderns whatever resembled, or seemed to bear a resemblance to, those of antiquity. Everything else was rejected by them as barbarous and unnatural. was quite otherwise with the great poets and artists. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and however determined their purpose of entering into competition with them, they were compelled by the characteristic peculiarity of their minds, to

proceed in a track of their own, and to impress upon their productions the stamp of their o vn genius. Such was the case with Dante among the Italians, the father of modern poetry; he acknowledged Virgil for his instructer, but produced a work which, of all others, differs the most from the Eneid, and far excels it in our opinion, in strength, truth, depth, and comprehension. It was the same afterwards with Ariosto, who has most unaccountably been compared to Homer; for nothing can be more unlike. It was the same in the fine arts with Michael Angelo and Raphael, who were without doubt well acquainted with the antique. When we ground our judgment of modern painters merely on their resemblance of the ancients, we must necessarily be unjust towards them; and hence Winkelmann has undoubtedly been guilty of injustice to Raphael. As the poets for the most part acquiesced in the doctrines of the learned, we may observe a curious struggle in them between their natural inclination and their imagined duty. When they sacrificed to the latter they were praised by the learned; but by yielding to their own inclinations they became the favourites of the people. What preserves the heroic poems of a Tasso and a Camoëns to this day alive, in the hearts and on the lips of their countrymen, is by no means their imperfect resemblance to Virgil, or even to Homer, but in Tasso the tender feeling of chivalrous love and honour, and in Camoëns the glowing inspiration of patriotic heroism.

Those very ages, nations, and classes, that were least in want of a poetry of their own, were the most assiduous in their imitation of the ancients. Hence the dull scholastic exercises which could at most excite a cold admiration. But, in the fine arts, mere imitation is always fruitless; what we borrow from others must be again as it were born in us, to produce a poetical effect. Of what avail is all foreign imitation? Art cannot exist without nature, and man can give nothing to his fellow men but himself.

The genuine followers of the ancients, those who attempted to rival them, who from a similarity of disposition and cultivation proceeded in their track, and acted in their spirit, were at all times as few as their mechanical spiritless imitators were numerous. The great body of critics, seduced by external appearance, have been always but too indulgent even to these imitators. They held them up as correct modern classics, while those animated poets, who had become the favourites of their respective nations, and to whose sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at most but tolerated by them as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified separation of genius and

taste which they assume is altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of excellence, and consequently it is taste in its greatest perfection.

In this state, nearly, matters continued till a period not far back, when several inquiring minds, chiefly Germans, endeavoured to clear up the misconception, and to hold the ancients in proper estimation, without being insensible to the merits of the moderns of a totally different description. The apparent contradiction did not intimidate them.-The groundwork of human nature is no doubt everywhere the same; but in all our investigations we may observe that there is no fundamental power y throughout the whole range of nature so simple, but that it is capable of dividing and diverging into opposite directions. The whole play of living motion hinges on harmony and contrast. Why then should not this phenomenon be repeated in the history of man? This idea led, perhaps, to the discovery of the true key to the ancient and modern history of poetry and the fine arts. Those who adopted it gave to the peculiar spirit of modern art, as opposed to the antique or classical, the name of romantic. The appellation is certainly not unsuitable: the word is derived from romance, the name of the language of the people which was formed from the mixture of Latin and Teutonic, in the same manner as modern cultivation is the fruit of the union of the peculiarities of the northern nations with the fragments of antiquity. Hence the cultivation of the ancients was much more of a piece than ours.

The distinction which we have just stated can hardly fail to appear well founded, if it can be shown that the same contrast in the labours of the ancients and moderns runs symmetrically, I might almost say systematically, throughout every branch of art, as far as our knowledge of antiquity extends; that it is as evident in music and the plastic arts as in poetry. This proposition still remains to be demonstrated in its full extent, though we have many excellent observations on different parts of the subject.

Among the foreign authors who wrote before this school can be said to have been formed in Germany, we may mention Rousseau, who acknowledged the contrast in music, and demonstrated that rhythmus and melody constituted the prevailing principle of the ancients, and harmony that of the moderns. In his prejudices against harmony, however, we altogether differ from him. On the subject of the plastic arts an ingenious observation was made by Hemsterhuys, that the ancient painters were probably too much sculptors, and that the modern sculptors are too much painters. This is the exact point of difference; for I shall dis

tinctly show, in the sequel, that the spirit of ancient art and poetry is plastic, and that of the moderns picturesque.

By an example taken from another art, that of architecture, I shall endeavour to illustrate what I mean by this contrast. In the middle ages there prevailed a style of architecture, which, in the last centuries especially, was carried to the utmost degree of perfection; and which, whether justly or unjustly, has been called Gothic architecture. When, on the general revival of classical antiquity, the imitation of Grecian architecture became prevalent, and but too frequently without a due regard to the difference of climate and manners and the destination of the structure, the zealots of this new taste passed a sweeping sentence of condemnation on the Gothic, which they reprobated as tasteless, gloomy, and barbarous. This was in some degree pardonable in the Italians, among whom a love for ancient architecture, from the remains of classical edifices which they inherited, and the similarity of their climate to that of the Greeks, might in some sort be said to be innate. But with us, inhabitants of the North, the first powerful impression on entering a Gothic cathedral is not so easily eradicated. We feel, on the contrary, a strong desire to investigate and to justify the source of this impression. A very slight attention will convince us, that the Gothic architecture not only displays an extraordinary degree of mechanical dexterity, but also an astonishing power of invention; and, on a closer examination, we become impressed with the strongest conviction of its profound character, and of its constituting a full and perfect system in itself, as well as the Grecian.

To the application!-The Pantheon is not more different from Westminster Abbey or the church of St. Stephen at Vienna, than the structure of a tragedy of Sophocles from a drama of Shakspeare. The comparison between these wonderful productions of poetry and architecture might be carried still farther. But does our admiration of the one compel us to depreciate the other? May we not admit that each is great and admirable in its kind, although the one is, and ought to be, different from the other? The experiment is worth attempting. We will quarrel with no man for his predilection either for the Grecian or the Gothic. The world is wide, and affords room for a great diversity of objects. Narrow and exclusive prepossessions will never constitute a genuine critic or connoisseur, who ought, on the contrary, to possess the power of elevating himself above all partial views, and of subduing all personal inclinations.

For the justification of our object, namely, the grand division which we lay down in the history of art, and according to which

we conceive ourselves equally warranted in establishing the same division in dramatic literature, it might be sufficient merely to have stated this contrast between the ancient, or classical, and the romantic. But as there are exclusive admirers of the ancients, who never cease asserting that all deviation from them is merely the whim of recent critics, who express themselves on the subject in a language full of mystery, but cautiously avoid conveying their sentiments in a tangible shape, I shall endeavour to explain the origin and spirit of the romantic, and then leave the world to judge if the use of the word, and of the idea which it is intended to convey, are sufficiently justified.

The formation* of the Greeks was a natural education in its utmost perfection. Of a beautiful and noble race, endowed with susceptible senses and a clear understanding, placed beneath a mild heaven, they lived and bloomed in the full health of existence; and, under a singular coincidence of favourable circumstances, performed all of which our circumscribed nature is capable. The whole of their art and their poetry is expressive of the consciousness of this harmony of all their faculties. They have invented the poetry of gladness.

Their religion was the deification of the powers of nature and of the earthly life: but this worship, which, among other nations, clouded the imagination with images of horror, and filled the heart with unrelenting cruelty, assumed, among the Greeks, a mild, a grand, and a dignified form. Superstition, too often the tyrant of the human faculties, seemed to have here contributed to their freest developement. It cherished the arts by which it was ornamented, and the idols became models of ideal beauty.

But however far the Greeks may have carried beauty, and even morality, we cannot allow any higher character to their formation than that of a refined and ennobled sensuality. Let it not be understood that I assert this to be true in every instance. The conjectures of a few philosophers, and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an exception. Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from infinity, and some obscure recollections will always remind him of his original home; but we are now speaking of the principal object towards which his endeavours are directed.

Religion is the root of human existence. Were it possible for man to renounce all religion, including that of which he is unconscious, and over which he has no control, he would become a mere surface without any internal substance. When this cen

Bildung in the original. Formation is hardly used in this sense in English; but I know no single English word which approaches nearer to it. Bilden in German is synonymous with the Greek

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