taste for rhetoric; Homer as well as Virgil were transcribed and
studied on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; and the most liberal
rewards sought out the faintest glimmerings of literary merit. The
sciences of physic and astronomy were successfully cultivated by the
Greeks; the observations of Ptolemy and the writings of Galen are
studied by those who have improved their discoveries and corrected their
errors; but if we except the inimitable Lucian, this age of indolence
passed away without having produced a single writer of original genius,
or who excelled in the arts of elegant composition. ^! The authority of
Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools;
and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation
of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise
the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind. The beauties
of the poets and orators, instead of kindling a fire like their own,
inspired only cold and servile mitations: or if any ventured to deviate
from those models, they deviated at the same time from good sense
and propriety. On the revival of letters, the youthful vigor of the
imagination, after a long repose, national emulation, a new religion,
new languages, and a new world, called forth the genius of Europe.
But the provincials of Rome, trained by a uniform artificial foreign
education, were engaged in a very unequal competition with those bold
ancients, who, by expressing their genuine feelings in their native
tongue, had already occupied every place of honor. The name of Poet was
almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of
critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning,
and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.

The sublime Longinus, who, in somewhat a later period, and in the court
of a Syrian queen, preserved the spirit of ancient Athens, observes
and laments this degeneracy of his contemporaries, which debased their
sentiments, enervated their courage, and depressed their talents. "In
the same manner," says he, "as some children always remain pygmies,
whose infant limbs have been too closely confined, thus our tender
minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude,
are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned
greatness which we admire in the ancients; who, living under a popular
government, wrote with the same