verses from Daphne, the Sibyl priestess of Apollo, in the temple of Delphi, and to have enriched his own poems with them. I have endeavoured to shew the fountains whence the lovers of chivalry may draw refreshment, and to mark the track and the journeys, not as being myself a guide, but that I may only indicate the direction, and, as it were, point towards the living springs. It is a great advantage attending all the stages of this high quest, that there is no need of a voice to direct those who undertake it; for here things, which cannot lie, have a voice which is audible to men, unlike the treacherous accents of the tongue, deceiving and deceived. Here, it is hoped, that the analogy of nature may be discernible in the arrangement of forms, regarded under the light of faith. There is no cutting off and dividing into separate departments the scenes and acts of human life, which can only be enjoyed fully when viewed as parts of the whole. In this I have only followed the plan of the romantic writers of chivalry. Observe those passages in the heroic poems of antiquity, says Frederick Schlegel, "or in the chivalrous romances of the middle age, which afford glimpses of the simplicity and repose of rural manners. simplicity appears still more innocent, and their repose still more peaceful, from the situation in which they are placed in the midst of the tumult of wars and the fierce passions of heroes. Every thing appears in its true and natural connexion, and the poetry is as varied as the world."3

Their

VII. A modern French writer, who endeavours to keep alive the spirit which belonged to the literature of his country at the close of the eighteenth century, says on one occasion, that under certain points of view the history of the past possesses some degree of the interest which belongs to the present. "Behold," he says, "its real and great attraction; that which sweetens these severe and dry studies."4 I need hardly observe, that it is with a very different feeling the lovers of chivalry look back upon times gone by. With them, perhaps, the converse of the

1 Diodorus Sicul. lib. iv. 66.

2 Valckenær. Diatrib. in Euripid. p. 265.

3 Hist. of Lit. i. 104.

4 Thierry, Hist. de la Conquête, iv. 142.

Frenchman's proposition is sometimes true, that the present is only to be endured by means of those studies which appeared to him so severe and dry. The Greeks called the Muses the daughters of memory; for "it is the nature of the imagination to be retrospective much rather than prospective.' The habit of preferring oneself and the present to whatever is ancient, degrades the nature of man, and, as Laurentie justly says, "leaves the genius without development and without enthusiasm."2 "With what discourses should we feed our souls ?" asks the Platonic philosopher. "With those that lead the mind έrì ròv Tρóσ0εv Xpóvov, and which can give it a view of the deeds of past ages.

13

Isocrates, in his discourse on peace, contrasts the ancients with his contemporaries, to inspire the latter, not with confidence, but with emulation. Demosthenes does the same in his Philippics, where he alludes to the simplicity of the ancient heroes, Aristides and Miltiades; and above all, in his immortal speech on the crown, where he begins, τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ἀγάσαιτο τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐκείνων τῆς ἀρετῆς; Isocrates, indeed, draws a delightful portrait of the ancients in his panegyric; but the wise critic of antiquity does not condemn him for exaggerating the praise of past times, but shews the proper inference, saying, "Who does not burn with love for his country after reading this discourse, which describes the virtues of the ancient Greeks who defended their country against the barbarians ?" 4 Livy deemed it an ample reward for his labours that they enabled him to lose sight of the evils of his own age, in keeping before his mind the manners and events of the olden times of Rome. Cicero wrote many things, not so much with the hope of benefiting his own age, of which he could only despair, as of delivering himself from the misery of conversing with it; escaping from the present, it was his endeavour that he might live and converse with the men of former times.5 Perhaps it might be stated, as the general fortune which attends upon all heroic spirits, that in consequence of the character of the age to which

1 Guesses at Truth.

2 De l'Etude et de l'Enseignement des Lettres.

3 Max. Tyr. Dissert. xxviii. 5.

4 Dion. Halicarnass.

De Reb. Fam. Epist. vi. 4.

C

they fall, they are obliged to take shelter in the shadows of the majestic past, and to live and converse with them; that they feel constrained to fly from the presence of a world which oppresses them with the sense of intolerable wrong, their soul responding to the cry of nature, being sick of man's unkindness. Tasso published his Jerusalem Delivered so late as in 1581. He then stood alone, as a fine writer says, "like an image of ancient times in the midst of a fallen generation." Nothing is more worthy of astonishment in Shakspeare than the power which his genius must have exerted to escape from the influence of the calamitous age in which he lived, which was possessed with so insane an enmity to all former things, that he speaks of his country at that time as being the reputed land of madmen.' He fed his soul with the lofty thoughts which belonged to times gone by, disdaining to taste "those subtilties of the Isle which would not have let him believe things certain."

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I shall pass over the observations which might be made on the metaphysical causes which dispose great and good minds in every age to reverence antiquity; and I shall pause awhile to remark how far those who form part of the present race of men have particular motives to give their studies and minds this direction. I am not ignorant that there are some who say, with a French writer of the day, we hesitate not to repeat the boast of Sthenelus, and apply it to ourselves: thank heaven, we are infinitely better than our forefathers."2 Though Plutarch would have reminded them that Sthenelus was an ignoble fellow, and that this very sentence is an instance of Homer's profound knowledge of men, who ascribed it to him as suitable to his character, and that it is, therefore, an evidence of the benefit which youth may derive from his poetry, by shewing how he distinguishes base and vile persons from those of a generous and noble nature.3 But it must be confessed that such an opinion of present superiority not only upon general principles, as indicating the absence of those qualities which belong to intellectual greatness, but also with reference to the particular ground on which it is now advanced, can have no place among the sentiments 1 Hamlet, act v. s. 1. 2 Guizot, Cours d'Hist. Mod. p. 32.

3 De Audiendis Poetis.

which belong to chivalry in our age. To accuse and conIdemn is at all times an office most at variance with the disposition of wisdom; it knows well that " perpetual sober Heaven has often to forgive our general and exceptless rashness;" but, at the same time, although it is fond to wail inevitable strokes, wisdom does not diminish susceptibility, nor confine the judgment. The Christian philosophy opens a new field for thought to range when moved by the pressure of events, and affords a light to those who seem like belated wanderers in the human course, who then behold the rugged scenes and fierce aspects of men around them softened by the mild influence of its gentle beam. Livy relates, that upon one occasion a certain measure was approved of by a majority of the senate, and adds, "Nevertheless the old men, and those who remembered the ancient discipline, denied that they could trace the Roman arts in that legation; the new wisdom did not please them: however, the other part of the senate prevailed, who had more regard to utility than to honour."" This seems to describe a period which has occurred in various stages of the world's history. Hereafter the system and character of later ages with respect to the great lines which separate them from Christian antiquity will be pressed upon our attention; at present it may be only necessary to notice some of the more general and outward obstacles which the innovation effected by them in the moral world will offer to our proposed course.

In the first place, the religion and philosophy of many men having been moulded upon new principles, their whole disposition of mind and rule of conduct are at variance with the sentiments and actions of that class of mankind which naturally belongs to chivalry according to the theory which shall be shortly laid down. The moderns have learned to spell honour in a new way, if they do not know how to practise it; and they can appeal to its laws, when they do outrage to its spirit: they can quote honour to sanction their performing a deed of foul dishonour, of which I shall not give a recent instance, lest I should reveal mysteries: they can write with as much ease upon the philosophy of Plato as upon fireworks and

1 Lib. xlii. 47.

harlequin. To make no mention of those guides who, as the Roman moralist said of flagitious persons, are not to be fatigued with words and the disputation of philosophers, but with chains and imprisonment, let us confine our attention to instances of outrage to the more delicate sentiments of the heroic soul, which, from their being rather symbolical than exemplifications of the evil which we fear to name, are more within the compass of our present argument. Who has not heard of those old Greek mounds or monuments which were, according to universal tradition, pointed out as the graves of Achilles and Patroclus, over one of which Alexander wept, envying the fate of the hero who had found a Homer to celebrate him? It was high diversion for the men of our age to ransack these tombs, and violate the sacred repose of the ashes and arms of heroes which were found within their recesses.' The same spirit was more recently employed in breaking open the vaults of an ancient church, where the shrine of a great Saxon saint was piously visited by those of the family of Christ who occasionally appeared on their passage there. From the mere desire to wound the feelings of Catholics, or to disprove what was supposed to be their faith, it was resolved that his canonised bones, hearsed in death, should burst their cerements; that the sepulchre wherein we believed him quietly inurned should be forced to open its ponderous and marble jaws to cast him up again. Perhaps, indeed, while the great infectious wounds of the moral world are exposed before us on every side, it may seem trifling to expend thoughts upon these acts, of which we can only say that they have no relish of ancient piety in them; but if the lesser evils are fraught with such sorrow, who can find courage to unfold the greater? And, after all, it is only to the superficial eye that these things appear rather contrary to the ornament than to the health and life of the soul.

There are men, and in some countries they form no small portion of society, who seem destitute of all spiritual elevation, who neither conceive good themselves nor consent to those who can; men of earthly tempers, uncon

1 Fr. Schlegel, Hist. of Lit. i. 32.