o did not carry this affectation so far
looked on Greece as the only fount of knowledge. From Greece they
derived the measures of their poetry, and, indeed, all of poetry that
can be imported. From Greece they borrowed the principles and the
vocabulary of their philosophy. To the literature of other nations they
do not seem to have paid the slightest attention. The sacred books
of the Hebrews, for example, books which, considered merely as human
compositions, are invaluable to the critic, the antiquarian, and
the philosopher, seem to have been utterly unnoticed by them. The
peculiarities of Judaism, and the rapid growth of Christianity,
attracted their notice. They made war against the Jews. They made
laws against the Christians. But they never opened the books of Moses.
Juvenal quotes the Pentateuch with censure. The author of the treatise
on "the Sublime" quotes it with praise: but both of them quote it
erroneously. When we consider what sublime poetry, what curious history,
what striking and peculiar views of the Divine nature and of the
social duties of men, are to be found in the Jewish scriptures, when
we consider that two sects on which the attention of the government was
constantly fixed appealed to those scriptures as the rule of their faith
and practice, this indifference is astonishing. The fact seems to be,
that the Greeks admired only themselves, and that the Romans admired
only themselves and the Greeks. Literary men turned away with disgust
from modes of thought and expression so widely different from all
that they had been accustomed to admire. The effect was narrowness and
sameness of thought. Their minds, if we may so express ourselves, bred
in and in, and were accordingly cursed with barrenness and degeneracy.
No extraneous beauty or vigour was engrafted on the decaying stock. By
an exclusive attention to one class of phenomena, by an exclusive
taste for one species of excellence, the human intellect was stunted.
Occasional coincidences were turned into general rules. Prejudices were
confounded with instincts. On man, as he was found in a particular state
of society--on government, as it had existed in a particular corner
of the world, many just observations were made; but of man as man,
or government as government, little was known. Philosophy remained
stationary. Slight changes, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for
the better, were made in the superstructure. But nobody thought of
examining the