ode being full of ecstatic joy, and that of Keats evincing sadness and gloom: "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, The same that ofttimes hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam From Hyperion : "As when upon a tranced summer night Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Which comes upon the silence, and dies off § 423. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEA OF THE BEAUTIFUL. There is a difference between the ancient and modern idea of the beautiful which is observable in art and literature. The Greek idea of the beautiful was closely associated with the principle of order, proportion, fitness, and design. In architecture it received its exponent in the Greek temple, the most perfect type of proportion that can be adduced. The leading idea of Greek architecture is above all things symmetry. The same thing may be found in their matchless sculpture, which modern art may imitate, but never rival; and it is also manifest, so far as the few remains will allow of a judgment, in Greek painting. It is impossible to say how far the ancients may have carried this art, but from the remains that have been handed down we can perceive the same love of perfection in form and symmetry. The specimens that survive on vases and Pompeian walls show that the ancient artist loved to portray a temple, a vase, a nymph gracefully poised on nothing, the form of gods or heroes grandly idealized-everywhere a love of order, proportion, elegance, and a determination to depict superhuman beauty. Turning to literature we perceive the same tendency. The beautiful which inspires the writer is the same which inspires the artist. It is the beauty of order, law, proportion-in short, symmetry. The lyric poets, with all their varied metres, were bound to a rigid law in each metre. The epic poets followed rules deduced from the Iliad and the Odyssey, which poems, though originally written in the free ardor of genius, served as the source of laws that were to bind the poets of future ages. But it is in the drama that this principle is most clearly seen. This department of literature had grown up around the lyric poetry of the Chorus. This Chorus had its own part in every performance, they were virtually actors, and always remained visible to the spectators. According to the Greek conception, while the Chorus remained it was impossible to allow of any violent change of scene, or any great lapse of time. Hence the drama followed what was afterwards called the law of the three unities. The three unities are the following: First, the unity of action; which means that the business of a piece be connected with one leading subject, and that the interest be not dispersed among several. Secondly, the unity of place; which means that the action. must be confined to the one place in which it begins. Thirdly, the unity of time; which means that the action be limited in duration to a period not very much greater than the time actually taken up in representing it on the stage. Here, then, in the Greek drama may be seen the same predominance of that idea of symmetry which prevailed in Greek art. In the period of the revival of letters the classical influence was strong both in art and literature. In the one it led to that epoch known as the Renaissance; in the other it led to the attempt at the revival of the laws of the three unities, and an extension throughout literature generally of the Greek principle of symmetry and subordination to law. The style that resulted, both in the drama and in other departments of letters, is known as the classical. The modern idea of the beautiful differs from this. We may see it, in the first place, in art. In sculpture, which depends entirely upon symmetry, there is no comparison between modern works and those of the Greeks. But in the other departments of art it is different. In architecture the modern world finds its chief glory in the Gothic cathedral, which is the best representative of the sum total of the difference between the modern and ancient idea of the beautiful. Here, though there is a dominant law to which all is subordinate, yet that law is hidden by the grandeur of the result. The character of the edifice is infinite, all-embracing, rejecting nothing that can heighten the general effect. The Greek temple is white, pure, clean, symmetrical; the Gothic cathedral is dark, tempest-worn, perhaps overgrown in part with moss or ivy, a mountain-mass of stone, whose proportions, though exquisite, do not readily strike the eye. In this glorious yet apparently disordered mass of building and carving everything is assembled; statues are there-stiff, rigid, rather architecture than sculpture, yet lost in the effect of the whole; saints, angels, devils, all are there; the beautiful, the sublime, the horrible, even the grotesque. Here the dominant idea is not the symmetrical, but something broader; illimitable variety bound together by a real uniformity, which may most fittingly be termed the picturesque. It is the same in modern painting, which is characterized by the same tendency, from the Transfiguration of Raffaelle to the Beggar Boys of Murillo; from the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo to the Blind Fiddler of Wilkie. It is not the pure, cold, clear elegance of the Greek. It is something wider, more comprehensive, embracing everything in its scope, and shunning nothing; seeking and finding the beautiful in forms and guises where the Greek would never have suspected it or understood it—not in the floating nymph, the forms of deities or heroes, the fair, white temple, or other highly idealized subjects, but in the tumble-down bridge, the rustic cottage, the old mill. Painting now seeks after variety. It has been said "to revel in dirt." Its beauty is the picturesque. If now we turn to literature the parallel will be complete. Law exists; it compels uniformity, but this uniformity has an endless variety. The ballad or the metrical romance was the earliest production of modern literature, and this earliest pro duction was characterized by illimitable freedom in subject and in treatment. This word "romance," which first indicated the languages derived from the Roman, i.e., Latin, was afterwards applied to the works of the imagination which arose in the "Romance" languages; and from this usage the term "romantic" was derived, to denote that freedom from the restraint of the classical school which marked this new literature. These two principles have been the great rivals in modern letters; they have formed parties, which have divided epochs and nations, under the names of the classical and romantic schools. Dante, the father of modern poetry, followed this new impulse. He imitated no classical model; he was a law unto himself; and in his sublime poetry he struck the key-note of modern literature. Chaucer, unlike him in everything else, resembled him in this, that he followed no classical model, but wrote from himself for the men of his generation, and became the father of his national poetry. Spenser pursued the same course; and Shakespeare came next to show that the modern world had surpassed the ancient, and that in himself and Dante Homer and Sophocles had been outdone. Henceforth there were other lawgivers and other models than those of Greece, and the modern literature might take its stand, not on the old law of restriction, but on the new law of liberty. Dante and Shakespeare are thus the great names of the romantic school. Wherever this school and its spirit has prevailed, there literature is greatest. In the ages of English literature the spirit of each has been in the ascendency; and the classical spirit dominated in our Augustan age, the age of Anne; but this Augustan age is inferior to the Elizabethan, as the poetry of France is inferior to that of England; Corneille and Racine to Shakespeare and Goethe; or Voltaire's Henriade to Milton's Paradise Lost. CHAPTER II. THE SUBLIME. 424. THE SUBLIME. THE sublime is closely connected with the beautiful. It is apprehended by the same sensibility-the taste. The theory of its origin is the same. It differs from it not in kind, but in degree, as the lofty mountain from the gentle hill; the light flame from a great conflagration; or the love of a mother for a child from the love of the same mother risking her life or laying it down for the sake of her offspring. Thus the one may change insensibly into the other, as the rippling stream grows into the majestic river, or the gentle breeze into the tremendous hurricane. The emotion of the sublime is an internal elevation of mind produced by wonder, awe, or terror. The sublime may be considered, first, in nature; secondly, in morals; and the sources of this emotion may be considered under the head of each. § 425. THE SUBLIME IN NATURE—THE VAST AND BOUNDLESS. In the first place we have to consider the sources of the sublime in nature. The chief of these may be found in the vast and boundless, and may refer to space, duration, power, or sound. In space the sublime arises from the contemplation of height, as a lofty cliff or high mountain, the firmament of heaven; from depth, as a deep abyss, the crater of a volcano; from extent, as a great plain, the expanse of ocean. Finally, when all bounds are removed, there arises the sublime idea of infinitude. In duration the sublime may arise from the thought of the lapse of centuries in human history, the passage of time in the geological ages, or the inconceivable progress of astronomical cycles. Here, too, as with space, if all bounds be removed, |