at Menander was not a quarter
Aristophanes.

The literature of the Romans was merely a continuation of the literature
of the Greeks. The pupils started from the point at which their masters
had, in the course of many generations arrived. They thus almost wholly
missed the period of original invention. The only Latin poets whose
writings exhibit much vigour of imagination are Lucretius and Catullus.
The Augustan age produced nothing equal to their finer passages.

In France that licensed jester, whose jingling cap and motley coat
concealed more genius than ever mustered in the saloon of Ninon or of
Madame Geoffrin, was succeeded by writers as decorous and as tiresome as
gentlemen ushers.

The poetry of Italy and of Spain has undergone the same change. But
nowhere has the revolution been more complete and violent than in
England. The same person who, when a boy, had clapped his thrilling
hands at the first representation of the Tempest might, without
attaining to a marvellous longevity, have lived to read the earlier
works of Prior and Addison. The change, we believe, must, sooner or
later, have taken place. But its progress was accelerated, and its
character modified, by the political occurrences of the times, and
particularly by two events, the closing of the theatres under the
Commonwealth, and the restoration of the House of Stuart.

We have said that the critical and poetical faculties are not only
distinct, but almost incompatible. The state of our literature during
the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First is a strong confirmation of
this remark. The greatest works of imagination that the world has ever
seen were produced at that period. The national taste, in the meantime,
was to the last degree detestable. Alliterations, puns, antithetical
forms of expression lavishly employed where no corresponding opposition
existed between the thoughts expressed, strained allegories, pedantic
allusions, everything, in short, quaint and affected, in matter and
manner, made up what was then considered as fine writing. The eloquence
of the bar, the pulpit, and the council-board, was deformed by conceits
which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy.
The king quibbled on the throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by
reflecting that his majesty was a fool. But the chancellor quibbled in
concert from the wool-sack: and the chancellor was Francis Bacon. It
is needless to mention Sidney and the whol