iv 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



sources capable of infusing more liberal senti- 

 ments. But it is the essential property and 

 pride of literature to blot out every ungenerous 

 distinction, and to raise the tone of thought and 

 feeling throughout all classes of society. Its 

 interest, its glory, lie in the diffusion of refine- 

 ment. It breathes no other atmosphere ; it can 

 exist in no other medium. The results of science, 

 tiie fruits of the most sublime discoveries, may 

 be enjoyed by those whose intellectual faculties 

 are, of themselves, inert or powerless : but the 

 productions of literature have no currency, and 

 its heroes no renown, if there be not in the 

 general mind that degree of taste and elevation, 

 without which the most beautiful displays of 

 genius would be as music to the deaf, or painting 

 to the blind. 



The experience of recent times supplies ad- 

 ditional evidence of the inferiority of science 

 to literature as a criterion of mental culture. 

 Schools have arisen of men, who, while they 

 affect a profound devotion to scientific pursuits, 

 hold literature in very slender estimation. With 

 them science is every thing, literary elegance is 

 nothing : the useful before the ornamental, or 

 rather the useful without the ornamental, receives 

 their exclusive homage. The sublime in poetry, 

 the pathetic in eloquence, the gay, the graceful, 

 or the grand in composition, they not only dis- 

 dain in the abstract, but regard with contempt or 

 abhorrence the ministers of such delights. They 

 would at once trample on the pearls, and rend 

 the hands that scatter them. It would not be 

 difficult to show that these brutal doctrines re- 

 pose upon a false basis, an entire misconception 

 of that usefulness in support of which they are 

 promulgated ; but it is even more evident that 

 the minds of those who entertain them, however 

 energetic and successful in the prosecution of 

 science, still remain unimprinted by the last 

 stamp of genuine refinement. 



Yet, odious and hurtful as the doctrine of 

 utility becomes, when it assumes this shape, it 

 may be traced in the outset to an extension of 

 views arising not unnaturally from the inherent 

 difference between literature and science. This 

 difference lies not in their sources, but in the 

 aims and principles which govern their direction. 

 Both have their common source in the energies 

 of the human intellect ; both call into operation 

 the inventive faculty as well as the judgment ; in 

 both, splendour of achievement results from force 

 and intrepidity of genius. But their aims and 

 tendencies must be regarded as essentially dis- 

 tinct. Of science, the paramount object is truth ; 

 of literature, the object is beauty. The business 

 of science is to instruct ; of literature, the func- 



tions are not duly discharged unless delight ao 

 company instruction. Science seeks to convince 

 the understanding; literature to captivate the 

 heart. Even when the two are so conjoined, by a 

 happy effort of genius, that scientific truths assume 

 the attractions of a literary dress, it is still easy 

 to recognize the separate elements, and assign 

 to each its native province. Thus poetry some- 

 times sings of celestial phenomena ; but it re- 

 quires no great fund of astronomical learning, to 

 detect the results of scientific research and cal- 

 culation beneath the glittering garb flung round 

 them by the muse. Political economy puts on 

 the disguise of fictitious narrative ; but a little 

 attention suffices to remove the mask of the 

 novelist, and reveal the features of the sage. 

 The science of metaphysics owes far the greater 

 part of its fame and popularity to the graces with 

 which literary talent has adorned its speculations ; 

 but the meagre army of truths, which these 

 speculations are enabled to marshal], would 

 command small reverence, were they banished 

 from the realm of fancy, and forced to array 

 themselves under no banner more gorgeous than 

 their own. 



The distinction here pointed out is one of 

 considerable importance in itself, and which 

 must be kept steadily in mind, as a clue to the 

 whole course of the ensuing remarks. It may 

 prove sufficient, if fully comprehended, to show, 

 without resorting to the precarious aid of defini- 

 tion, what that literature is, of which the rise and 

 progress are now to be described. Definitions 

 of literature are commonly too wide and vague 

 to mark out the proper limits of such an inquiry. 

 The definition, for example, suggested by an 

 eloquent writer,* whose name stands high on 

 the list of modern critics, embraces too large a 

 field ; and while it may serve to distinguish be- 

 tween literature and the exact sciences, does not 

 trace the nicer boundaries that divide the art of 

 composition from the subject-matter on which it 

 is exerted, or those naked statements of the 

 subject-matter, of which language, in its simplest 

 usage, is capable. " All those mental exertions 

 which have human life and man himself, for 

 their object, and which, without requiring any 

 corporeal matter on which to operate, display 

 intellect as embodied in written language," 

 belong not to the province of literature, in the 

 light under which it is useful and pleasing to 

 contemplate it, and under which, indeed, it was 

 practically contemplated by the author whose 

 words are here cited. Something higher we 



* Lectures on the History of Literature, ancient and 

 modern, by FREDERICK SCUUGEU 



