OF LITERATURE. 



XXI 



to exclaim, that to purchase the glory of this 

 matchless triumph it would have been worth 

 while to live the life of Demosthenes, and to die 

 his death ! 



When Alexander, after the destruction of 

 Thebes, demanded the surrender of the Athenian 

 orators, he showed at once his hatred of liberty, 

 and his clear perception of the means that had 

 most effectually sustained it This act was far 

 from inconsistent with the spirit in which, amid 

 the horrors of an exterminating conquest, he had 

 spared the dwelling and the descendants of 

 Pindar. He intended a death-blow to Greek 

 oratory ; but he held himself forth as delighted 

 to cherish and reward all less dangerous mani- 

 festations of intellect ; and the declension of 

 literature, which was one of the most signal re- 

 sults of his ambitious career, was at the same 

 time a severe and a felt retribution for his politi- 

 cal crimes. Well might he sigh in vain for a 

 great poet to celebrate his exploits ; he, who by 

 his own deeds had trampled out the fires of 

 genius, and polluted the true sources of fancy 

 and natural emotion. We mark with regret, 

 but without surprise, the change that, from the 

 period of his ascendency, began to affect the 

 various developments of the Grecian mind. 

 Eloquence died away in the sickly languor of 

 Oriental affectation. History, seeming to catch 

 its tone from the extravagant projects and ro- 

 mantic adventures of the conqueror, became 

 a tissue of bombast, compliment, and fable. 

 Science, indeed, flourished in many of its branch- 

 es ; for science does not scorn the patronage of 

 despotism, and often requites its munificence by 

 aiding its designs; but all the charms of the art 

 of composition, whose noblest efforts have ever 

 sprung from the impulse of unfettered minds, 

 fled with the extinction of freedom. 



The victorious sword of Alexander opened a 

 way, however, for the diffusion of Greek litera- 

 ture over half the globe, and can-ied a knowledge 

 of its attractions to the very confines of China. 

 But, though it lingered long in different quarters, 

 it was in Egypt that the principal effort was 

 made, after the death of the Macedonian prince, 

 to form a new focus of letters and mental refine- 

 ment. All influences were brought together, 

 that could contribute to make Alexandria be, 

 what Athens had been, the capital of the intel- 

 lectual world ; all, except the presence of those 

 Muses, who could not be compelled to migrate 

 from the clime of their birth. The liberal dy- 

 nasty of the Ptolemies encouraged learning and 

 learned men ; collected libraries ; founded uni- 

 versities; and was repaid by the too frequent 

 .produce of such institutions. The new Greek 



literature was the literature of courtiers and 

 grammarians. Even the Alexandrian poetry 

 the most favourable side on which that literature 

 can be viewed, is the poetry of art and labour, 

 not of nature. Let APOLLONIUS RHODIDS * be se- 

 lected as perhaps the best specimen of the school 

 to which he belonged. Of him we must say 

 that, if epic poetry required no invention, no 

 fire, no enthusiasm, but only a profound acquaint- 

 ance with mythology, and an elegant and studied 

 diction, he would be a great epic poet ; but that, 

 as it is, he is only an epic compiler of traditions, 

 with here and there a touch of tenderness or 

 passion. One pleasing species of poetry, of 

 which only a faint prelude had been heard in 

 elder times, was certainly brought to perfection 

 during the Alexandrian period: but it arose in 

 another country, and was merely allured from 

 its native seat by the patronage of Ptolemy 

 Philadelphus. It may be a question with some, 

 whether the Idyll, the Greek shape of pastoral 

 song, gained or lost by the nearer view of courts 

 and capitals, which royal favour enabled the 

 Sicilian THEOCRITUS f to take : yet as a tablet of 

 human life and manners, the true function, ac- 

 cording to its name, of this kind of composition, 

 its province was perhaps rightly so extended as 

 to embrace certain features of civic as well as of 

 rural society. On either field Theocritus is 

 equally at home ; but in an especial manner have 

 the force and simplicity of his painting given a 

 warmth and truth to his representations of rustic- 

 characters and incidents, that are scarcely to be 

 found in any later pastorals. It required his 

 strength, his sweetness, and his genuine Doric, 

 to confer real interest on the loves and strifes of 

 shepherds and shepherdesses ; and the difficulty 

 of succeeding in the treatment of such subjects 

 is signally demonstrated by the care with which 

 those writers, who are generally classed with 

 Theocritus under the head of Bucolic poets, the 

 showy Bion, and the delicate Moschus, have in 

 fact avoided the actual scenes of the pastoral 

 world. But these authors, or at least the latter 

 of them,J lived at a time when neatness and 

 smoothness had become the characteristics of 

 Greek poetry, and when its choicest productions 

 were fit only to bloom in an anthology. Symp- 

 lons of recovered manhood, in a 'different 'de- 

 partment of literature, appear at a later period : 

 but, meanwhile, in order to continue our review 

 of the great productions of mind, we must pass to 

 another people, and to the treasures of a sister 

 tongue. 



Inferior to Greece in the genius of its inhabif- 



B. C. 200. t B. 270. tMochu, B. C 154. 



