522 MEMOIR OF 



He began with the great writers of antiquity, — the Poets, 

 the Orators, and the Historians of Greece and Rome, to whose 

 works he now returned with that increase of knowledge, and 

 that improvement of taste, which enabled him more fully 

 to seize and to appretiate their various excellence. He next 

 resumed, (though with more enlightened views), the study of 

 Italian literature, and perused with new admiration the writers 

 of that brilliant period which succeeded the revival of letters 

 in Europe, and who, though formed, in the great principles of 

 composition, upon the models of classic taste, have yet added 

 to them all the splendid courtesy of feudal manners, and all 

 the romantic interest of chivalrous adventure. After the ex- 

 tinction, or (as I trust) only the slumber of Italian genius, he 

 followed the progress of taste into France, and pursued the 

 singular history of composition in that country, from the pe- 

 riod that the genius of Corneille first gave to its imperfect 

 language the dignity of poetry, to the time that the eloquence 

 of Fenelon, of Buffon, and of Rousseau, rose above the level 

 of its poetic diction, and gave to prose composition all the 

 powers and all the pathos of poetry. 



The study of foreign literature led Mr Tytler naturally to 

 that of his own country, and, in comparing the great writers of 

 England with those of the different nations of the Continent, 

 he was enabled to form a more accurate estimate, both of the 

 extent of English genius, and the powers of the English lan- 

 guage. While engaged in this pursuit, his curiosity was led 

 into a field at that time little cultivated in this country, I mean 

 to the study of the ancient writers of England, those original mas- 

 ters of composition, in whose writings the genius of the people 

 and of the language is most strongly displayed, and who con- 

 ducted him (in the language of Spenser) to " tJie pure xvell of 

 " English undefiled" The pursuit not only rewarded him at 



the 



