680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



soul. When the sacerdotal castes, aristocracies, and despotic mon- 

 archies have been instituted, when power and wealth are concen- 

 trated in the hands of a minority of privileged persons, the great 

 revolution has an influence at once useful and injurious upon lit- 

 erature. Encouraged, corrupted, and exploited by the directing 

 classes, by the worldly fortunate, poetry gains much in form and 

 technics ; meter ceases to be simple ; the gross assonances of the 

 past no longer suffice to charm more refined audiences ; exact 

 rhymes are required, and a skillful adaptation of syllables to a 

 rigorously determined quantity. At the same time, poetical com- 

 positions cease to be only oral. They are written, and prosody 

 must at once satisfy the eye and the ear. 



The substance is modified along with the form, and becomes 

 aristocratic like it. Certain gross features, which formerly shocked 

 no one, are expunged ; but with this the poem suffers a loss of its 

 naive grandeur, its sincerity of standard, its epic charm. When 

 they undertook to protect and reward poets, the powerful classes 

 ruled them always, even without desiring it ; whether they knew 

 it or not, they took them away from some subjects and imposed 

 others upon them. On the whole, the final result of this high 

 patronage is usually lamentable ; and by the single fact of its ex- 

 istence, sincere, elevated, independent literature, the only kind 

 that is of value, languished and expired under the rule of the 

 " grand monarch," Louis XIV. What was left was only a shadow, 

 an attenuated poetry, which chiseled out the form without caring 

 for the material ; which, having no ideas to express, juggled with 

 the words, and saw nothing but the melodic side in the verse ; in 

 short, an inferior poetry, which tended to confound itself anew 

 with its twin sister, music, which it had previously had to quit in 

 order to think better. 



The evolution of the dramatic art was effected in a nearly 

 parallel line with that of lyric' poetry. Even more rigorously 

 than that, dramatic literature is the slave of the social state, be- 

 cause it has necessarily a collective character. In the course of 

 our studies we have found the general opinion, according to which 

 the theater is the literary expression of an advanced civilization, 

 to be false. On the contrary, the dramatic species goes back to 

 the very origin of literary aesthetics, for choral and mimic dances 

 constitute nearly all the literature of primitive peoples, and a 

 rudiment of scenic art has been found, even in Tasmania, among 

 an extremely inferior race. In reality scenic poetry preceded all 

 other kinds, and most frequently constituted their mold. By the 

 simultaneous employment of mimicry, song, speech, and instru- 

 mental music, the opera-ballet of the early ages was the form of 

 aesthetics most fitted strongly to impress spectators and actors, 

 and at the same time to satisfy a very lively psychical want, that 



