Anne C. Lynch Botta

“ During the early part of the sixteenth century, all the ardor of the French mind was turned to the study of the dead languages; men of genius had no higher ambition than to excel in them, and many in their declining years went in their gray hairs to the schools where the languages of Homer and Cicero were taught. In civil and political society, the same enthusiasm manifested itself in the imitation of antique manners; people dressed in the Greek and Roman fashions, borrowed from them the usages of life, and made a point of dying like the heroes of Plutarch. ”

“ HEBREW POETRY.—The character of the people and their language, its mission, the pastoral life of the patriarchs, the beautiful and grand scenery of the country, the wonderful history of the nation, the feeling of divine inspiration, the promise of a Messiah who should raise the nation to glory, the imposing solemnities of the divine worship, and finally, the special order of the prophets, gave a strong impulse to the poetical genius of the nation, and concurred in producing a form of poetry which cannot be compared with any other for its simplicity and clearness, for its depth and majesty. ”

“ No subject of human knowledge has been overlooked; many European works have been elucidated by the fresh light of the American mind; a new style of thought has been developed; new scenes have been opened to the world, and Europe is receiving compensation in kind for the intellectual treasures she has heretofore sent to America.
The marvelous growth of the United States, its relations to the past and future, and to the great problem of humanity, render its history one of the most suggestive episodes in the annals of the world, and give to it a universal as well as a special dignity. ”

“ Latin, however, had not the plastic property of the Greek, the faculty of transforming itself into every variety of form and shape conceived by the fancy and imagination; it partook of the spirit of Roman nationality, of the conscious dignity of the Roman citizen, of the indomitable will that led that people to the conquest of the world. In its construction, instead of conforming to the thought, it bends the thought to its own genius. It is a fit language for expressing the thoughts of an active and practical, but not of an imaginative and speculative people. ”

“ Indeed, the Hebrew poets soar far above all others in that energy of feeling, impetuous and irresistible, which penetrates, warms, and moves the very soul. They reveal their anxieties as well as their hopes; they paint with truth and love the actual condition of the human race, with its sorrows and consolations, its hopes and fears, its love and hate. They select their images from the habitual ideas of the people, and personify inanimate objects—the mountains tremble and exult, deep cries unto deep. Another characteristic of Hebrew poetry is the strong feeling of nationality it expresses. ”

“ A sublime poet and a profound scholar, his muse was inspired by a deep sorrow, and his poems pour out a melancholy that is terrible and grand, the most agonizing cry in modern literature uttered with a solemn quietness that elevates and terrifies. The poetry of despair has never had a more powerful voice than his. He is not only the first poet since Dante, but perhaps the most perfect prose writer. ”

“ While the historian describes events and the outward lives of men, the poet penetrates into the inner life, and portrays the spirit that moves them. The historian records facts; the poet records feelings, thoughts, hopes, and desires; the historian keeps in view the actual man; the poet, the ideal man; the historian tells us what man has been; the poet reminds us either in his dreams of the past, or in his visions of the future, what man can be; and the true poet who fulfills such a duty is as necessary to the development and education of mankind as the historian. ”

“ POETRY.—America has as yet produced no great epic poet, although the existence of a high degree of poetical talent cannot be denied. Carrying the same enthusiasm into the world of fancy that he does into the world of fact, the American finds in the cultivation of the poetic faculty a pleasant relief from the absorbing pursuits of daily life; hence, while poetry is sometimes cultivated as an art, it is oftener resorted to as a pastime; the number of writers is more numerous here than in any other country, and the facility of poetical expression more universal. ”

“ The most hopeful symptom of English literature in the last thirty years is to be found in the zeal and success with which its teachings have been extended beyond the accustomed limits. Knowledge has been diffused with a zeal and rapidity never before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that has ever yet pervaded society. ”

“ HISTORY AND ORATORY.—Prose was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation, they had little or no imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, and no acute perception of the sympathy between man and the external world. The favorite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman was statesmanship, and the subjects akin to it, history, jurisprudence, and oratory, the natural language of which was prose, not poetry. And their practical statesmanship gave an early encouragement to oratory, which is peculiarly the literature of active life. ”

“ Of these, the "Prometheus" is beyond all question his greatest work. The genius of Aeschylus inclined rather to the awful and sublime, than to the tender and pathetic. He excels in representing the superhuman, in depicting demigods and heroes, and in tracing the irresistible march of fate. The depth of poetical feeling in him is accompanied with intense and philosophical thought; he does not merely represent individual tragical events, but he recurs to the greater elements of tragedy—the subjection of the gods and Titans, and the original dignity and greatness of nature and of man. ”

“ It was not until 1568, when the reign of Elizabeth was within thirty years of its close, that English literature assumed a character separating it decisively from that of the ages which had gone before, and took its station as the worthy organ of a new epoch in the history of civilization. But the literary poverty of the age of the Reformation was the poverty which the settler in a new country experiences, while he fells the woods and sows his half-tilled fields; a poverty, in the bosom of which lay rich abundance. ”

“ When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as slender as the thread of a famished spider, and as sharp as the edge of a sword, shall be passed by the believer, he will be welcomed into the gardens of delight by black-eyed Houris, beautiful nymphs, not made of common clay, but of pure essence and odors, free from all blemish, and subject to no decay of virtue or of beauty, and who await their destined lovers in rosy bowers, or in pavilions formed of a single hollow pearl. ”

“ He is carried away by an almost passionate rapture when he broods over the grandeur and loveliness of the earth and air; his verse lingers with fond reluctance to depart on the wild flowers, the misty lake, the sound of the wailing blast, or the gleam of sunshine breaking through the passes among the hills, and the thoughts and feelings these objects suggest flow forth with an enthusiasm of expression which in a man less pious and rational might be interpreted as a raising of the inanimate world to a level with human dignity and intelligence. ”

“ Ten years later, Cervantes published the second part of Don Quixote, which is even better than the first. It shows more vigor and freedom, the invention and the style of thought are richer, and the finish more exact. Both Don Quixote and Sancho are brought before us like such living realities, that at this moment the figures of the crazed, gaunt, and dignified knight, and of his round, selfish, and most amusing esquire, dwell bodied forth in the imagination of more, among all conditions of men throughout Christendom, than any other of the creations of human talent. ”

“ There is a great and powerful nature living through these poems. They are pictures of men and women of godlike beauty and endowments, and full of the vigor of simple but impetuous natures. Though fragmentary, they stand in all the essentials of poetry far beyond the German Lied, and, in the tragic force of passion which they portray, they are superior to any remains of ancient poetry except that of Greece. Their greatness lies less in their language than their spirit, which is sublime and colossal. Passion, tenderness, and sorrow are here depicted with the most vivid power ”

“ In the rich and fertile steppes of the Ukraine, where every forest tree seems to harbor a singer, and every blade of grass on the boundless plains seems to whisper the echo of a song, this pensive character of Russian poetry deepens into a melancholy that finds expression in a variety of sweet elegiac melodies. A German writer says of them, "they are the sorrows of whole centuries blended in one everlasting sigh." The spirit of the past indeed breathes through their mournful strains. ”

“ THE MELODRAMA.—The first result of the revival of letters at the close of the seventeenth century was the reform of the theatre. The melodrama, or Italian opera, arose out of the pastoral drama, which it superseded. The astonishing progress of musical science succeeded that of poetry and sculpture, which fell into decline with the decay of literature. Music, rising into excellence and importance at a time when poetry was on the decline, acquired such superiority that verse, instead of being its mistress, became its handmaid. ”

“ In whatever part of the world a Greek settled, he carried with him a love for the great poet, and long after the Greek people had lost their independence, the Iliad and the Odyssey continued to maintain an undiminished hold upon their affections. The peculiar excellence of these poems lies in their sublimity and pathos, in their tenderness and simplicity, and they show in their author an inexhaustible vigor, that seems to revel in an endless display of prodigious energies. The universality of the powers of Homer is their most astonishing attribute. He is not great in any one thing ”

“ In the various regions of gods, giants, dwarfs, and men, in the striking variety of characters, the great and wise Odin, the mighty Thor, the good Balder, the malicious Loke, the queenly Frigga, the genial Freya, the lovely Iduna, the gentle Nanna—in all the magnificent scenery of Midgard, Asgard, and Nifelheim, with the glorious tree Yggdrasil and the rainbow bridge, the poet found inexhaustible scope for poetical embellishment, and he availed himself of it all with a genuine poet's power. ”

“ Lucretius valued the capabilities of the Latin language. He wielded at will its power of embodying the noblest thoughts, and showed how its copious and flexible properties could overcome the hard technicalities of science. The great beauty of his poetry is its variety; his fancy is always lively, his imagination has always free scope. He is sublime, as a philosopher who penetrates the secrets of the natural world, and discloses to the eyes of man the hidden causes of its wonderful phenomena. ”

“ The drama comprehends and develops the events of human life with a force and depth which no other style of poetry can reach.
If we carry ourselves in imagination back to a time when dramatic composition was unknown, we must acknowledge that its creation required great boldness of mind. Hitherto the bard had only sung of gods and heroes; it was, therefore, a great change for the poet himself to come forward all at once in the character of the god or hero, in a nation which, even in its amusements, had always adhered closely to established usages. ”

“ The manners of the Italian peasantry are more truly pastoral than those of any other people, and a bucolic poet in that fair region need not wander to Arcadia. But Sannazzaro, like all the early pastoral poets of Italy, proposed to himself, as the highest excellence, a close imitation of Virgil; he took his shepherds from the fabulous ages of antiquity, borrowed the mythology of the Greeks, and completed the machinery with fauns, nymphs, and satyrs. Like Sannazzaro, Beccari places his shepherds in Arcadia, and invests them with ancient manners; but he goes beyond mere dialogue ”

“ Our affection is not colder, and our compassion is more profound, when we contemplate the agitated and erring life of Robert Burns (1759-1796) , the Scottish peasant, who has given to the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race some of its most precious jewels, although all which this extraordinary man achieved was inadequate to the power and the vast variety of his endowments. It is on his songs that his fame rests most firmly, and no lyrics in any tongue have a more wonderful union of thrilling passion, melting tenderness, concentrated expressiveness of language, and apt and natural poetic fancy. ”

“ Camoëns was familiar with the works of his Italian contemporaries, but the circumstance that essentially distinguishes him from them, and which forms the everlasting monument of his own and his country's glory, is the national love and pride breathing through the whole work. His patriotic spirit, devoting a whole life to raise a monument worthy of his country, seems never to have indulged a thought which was not true to the glory of an ungrateful nation. ”

“ Full of sagacious observation and descriptive power, Tacitus engages the most serious attention of the reader by the gravity of his condensed and comprehensive style, as he does by the wisdom and dignity of his reflections. Living amidst the influences of a corrupt age, he was uncontaminated. By his virtue and integrity, and his chastened political liberality, he commands our admiration as a man, while his love of truth is reflected in his character as a historian. ”

“ The beauty of the Italian landscape and the softness of the Italian climate seem naturally fitted to dispose the poetic soul to the dreams of rural life, and the language seems, by its graceful simplicity, peculiarly adapted to express the feelings of a class of people whom we picture to ourselves as ingenuous and infantine in their natures. ”

“ Literature, in order to flourish, requires the genial sunshine of human sympathy; it needs either the patronage of the great, or the favor of the people. Immediately after the death of Augustus, patronage was withdrawn, and there was no public sympathy to supply its place. In the reign of Nero, literature partially revived; for, though the bloodiest of tyrants, he had a taste for art and poetry, and an ambition to excel in refinement. ”

“ But for this absence of authentic history, Greek literature could never have become what it was. By the purely fictitious character of its poetry, and its freedom from the shackles of particular truths, it acquired that general probability which led Aristotle to consider poetry as more philosophical than history. Greek art, likewise, from the lateness of the period at which it descended from the representation of gods and heroes to the portraits of real men, acquired a nobleness and beauty of form which it could not otherwise have obtained. ”

“ The genius of Europe was roused by the passage of thousands of her sons through Greece into Asia and Egypt, amidst the ancient seats of art, science, and refinement; and the minds of men received a fresh and powerful impulse. It was during the eleventh century that the brilliancy of the Arabian literature reached its culminating point, and, through the intercourse of the Troubadours with the Moors of the peninsula, and of the Crusaders with the Arabs in the East, began to influence the progress of letters in Europe. ”

“ In the prologue, itself a poem of great merit, the poet draws up the curtain from a scene of life and manners which has not been surpassed in subsequent literature, a picture whose figures have been studied with the truest observation, and are outlined with the firmest, yet most delicate pencil. The vein of sentiment in these tales is always unaffected, cheerful, and manly, the most touching seriousness varying with the keenest humor. In some the tone rises to the highest flight of heroic, reflective, and even religious poetry ”

“ Russian lovers are quite inexhaustible in their endearing expressions, and the abundance of diminutives which the language possesses is especially favorable to their affectionate mode of address. With this exquisite tenderness of the love-song is united a pensive feeling, which, indeed, pervades the whole popular poetry of Russia, and which may be characterized as melancholy musical, and in harmony with the Russian national music, the expressive sweetness of which has been the admiration of all foreign composers to whom it has been known. ”

“ Seldom in romance or history is there found a more noble or heroic character than Theodore Körner (1791-1813) . Short as was his existence, he had already struck, with more or less success, almost every chord of the poetic lyre. His dramas, with many faults, abound in scenes glowing with power and passion, and prove what he might have achieved had life been spared to him. But it is his patriotic poems, his "Lyre and Sword," which have invested the name of Körner with the halo of fame and rendered his memory sacred to his countrymen. ”

“ While books have been multiplied beyond precedent, readers have increased in a yet greater proportion, and the diffusion of enlightenment has been aimed at as zealously as the discovery of new truths. While no other time has exhibited so surprising a variety in the kinds of literature, none has been so distinguished for the prevalence of enlightened and philanthropic sentiment.
In point of literary merit, the half century presents two successive and dissimilar stages, of which the first or opening epoch of the century, embraced in its first thirty years, was by far the most brilliant. ”

“ In France itself, long before the close of the eighteenth century, elements were at work destined to produce the most extraordinary changes in the political, social, and literary condition of the world. Even those authors who were most French were most concerned in preparing this astounding revolution. In many countries it was not the French doctrines, but the French events, that startled, dazzled, and excited the human heart and imagination, and produced the greatest effects on literature. ”