member of the
romantic school: he was also a great master of that sort of "philosophy
of literature," which delights in tracing traditions in it, and the way
in which various phases of thought and sentiment maintain themselves,
through successive modifications, from epoch to epoch. His aim, then,
is to give the word classic a wider and, as he says, a more generous
sense than it commonly bears, to make it expressly grandiose et
flottant; and, in doing this, he develops, in a masterly manner, those
qualities of measure, purity, temperance, of which it is the especial
function of classical art [245] and literature, whatever meaning,
narrower or wider, we attach to the term, to take care.

The charm, therefore, of what is classical, in art or literature, is
that of the well-known tale, to which we can, nevertheless, listen over
and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of
its artistic form, is added the accidental, tranquil, charm of
familiarity. There are times, indeed, at which these charms fail to
work on our spirits at all, because they fail to excite us.
"Romanticism," says Stendhal, "is the art of presenting to people the
literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs,
are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure; classicism,
on the contrary, of presenting them with that which gave the greatest
possible pleasure to their grandfathers." But then, beneath all
changes of habits and beliefs, our love of that mere abstract
proportion--of music--which what is classical in literature possesses,
still maintains itself in the best of us, and what pleased our
grandparents may at least tranquillise us. The "classic" comes to us
out of the cool and quiet of other times; as the measure of what a long
experience has shown will at least never displease us. And in the
classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last
century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in
beauty, which they possess, indeed, [246] in a pre-eminent degree, and
which impresses some minds to the exclusion of everything else in them.

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the
romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed
element in every artistic organisation, it is the addition of curiosity
to this desire of beauty, that constitutes the romantic temper.
Curiosity and the desire of beauty, have each their pla