1827.] On Reading New Books 21 



gone before with nearly equal lustre and advantage, though by distance and 

 the intervention of multiplied excellence, this lustre may be dimmed or for- 

 gotten. Had it then no existence ? We might, with the same reason, 

 suppose that the horizon is the last boundary and verge of the round earth. 

 Still, as we advance, it recedes from us; and so time from its store-house 

 pours out an endless succession of the productions of art and genius ; arid 

 the farther we explore the obscurity, other trophies and other land-marks 

 rise up. It is only our ignorance that fixes a limit as the mist gathered 

 round the mountain's brow makes us fancy we are treading the edge of the 

 universe ! Here was Heloiso living at a period when monkish indolence 

 and superstition were at their height in one of those that are emphatically 

 called the dark ages ; and yet, as she is led to the altar to make her last 

 fatal vow, expressing her feelings in language quite natural to her, but 

 from which the most accomplished and heroic of our modern females would 

 shrink back with pretty and affected wonder and affright. The glowing and 

 impetuous lines which she murmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous 

 and rising enthusiasm, were engraven on her heart, familiar to her as her 

 daily thoughts; her mind must have been full of them to overflowing, and 

 at the seme time enriched with other stores and sources of knowledge 

 equally elegant and impressive; and we persist, notwithstanding this and a 

 thousand similar circumstances, in indulging our surprise how people could 

 exist, and see, and feel, in those days, without having access to our opportu- 

 nities and acquirements, and how Shakspeare wrote long after, in a barba- 

 rous age ! The mystery in this case is of our own making. We are struck 

 with astonishment at finding a fine moral sentiment or a noble image ner- 

 vously expressed in an author of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; not con- 

 sidering tiiat, independently of nature and feeling, which are the same in 

 all periods, the writers of that day, who were generally men of education 

 and learning, had such models before them as the one that has been just 

 referred to were thoroughly acquainted with those masters of classic 

 thought and language, compared with whom, in all that relates to the 

 artificial graces of composition, the most studied of the moderns are little 

 better than Goths and Vandals. It is true, we have lost sight of, and neg- 

 lected the former, because the latter have, in a great degree, superseded 

 them, as the elevations nearest to us intercept those farthest off; but our 

 not availing ourselves of this 'vantage-ground is no reason why our fore- 

 fathers should not (who had not our superfluity of choice), and most 

 assuredly they did study and cherish the precious fragments of antiquity, 

 collected together in their time, "like sunken wrack and sumless treasuries;" 

 and while they did this, we need be at no loss to account for any exam- 

 ples of grace, of force, or dignity in their writings, if these must always be 

 traced back to a previous source. One age cannot understand how another 

 could subsist without its lights, as one country thinks every other must be poor 

 for want of its physical productions. This is a narrow and superficial view 

 of the subject: we should by all means rise above it. I am not for devoting 

 the whole of our time to the study of the classics, or of any other set of 

 writers, to the exclusion and neglect of nature; but I think we should 

 turn our thoughts enough that way to convince us of the existence of 

 genius and learning before our time, and to cure us of an overweening con- 

 ceit of ourselves, and of a contemptuous opinion of the world at large. 

 Every civilized age and country (and of these there is not one, but a hun- 

 dred) has its literature, its arts, its comforts, large and ample, though we 

 may know nothing of them; nor is it (except for our own sakes) impor- 

 tant that we should. 



