Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 34, August, 1860 | Page 4

into beauty the pagan clear-cut conceptions. The Christian mind awoke under a fascination, and, for a time, could only ejaculate its meanings in fragments, or hint them in vast disproportions, could only sing snatches of new tunes. Its first signs were gasps, rather than clear-toned notes, after the long perturbations and preparations of history. The North and the South, the East and the West had been mingled together; the heated and heaving mass had been tempered by the leaven of Christianity:--and had all this been done only to produce an octo-syllabic metre in praise of fantastic and semi- barbaric sentiments and exploits? Had there been such commotions of the universe only for a song? Surely these first creations of art, these first attempts at literature, these first carvings of a rude spiritual intensity, were only such as the Greeks may have forgotten any quantity of before Homer came, their first glory and their oldest reminiscence.
One reason, perhaps, why medi?val literature assumed so light and unartistic a form was, that by necessity it could not be full-orbed. Religion could not enter into it as a plastic element, but was fixed, a veiled, external figure, radiating indeed color and fragrance, but not making one of the struggling, independent vitals of the heart. Literature could play about this figure, but could not grasp it, and take it in among the materials to be fashioned. The Church, through its clergy, held jealous command of divine knowledge, beneath divine guidance, and left no developments of it possible to the lay mind, which culminated in minstrels and romancers. The Greeks, on the contrary, whose religion was an apotheosis of the earth, framed upwards and only by fiction of fancy handed downwards, derived all their theology from the poets. Prophecy and taste were combined in Homer,--Isaiah and the king's jester in Pindar. The care of the highest, not less than the lowest departments of thought, fell upon the creative author, and a happy suggestion became a new article in the Hellenic creed. His composition thus bore the burden and was hallowed by the sanctity of piety, the key to every human perfect thing. But the Proven?al celebrators of love and chivalry had no such dignity in their task. The solemnities of thought and life were cared for and hedged about by the Church as its own peculiar treasure, and to them there remained only the lighter office of amusing. The age was eminently religious, but the poet could not aid in erecting and adorning its temples. Every fair work of art must have a central idea; but the proper principle of unity for all grand artistic efforts not being within the reach of authors, it followed that their productions were not symmetrical, did not have an even outline nor cosmical meaning, did not consist of balanced parts, were poorly framed and articulated, and were charming only by their flavor, and not by their form. The cultured intellect will not seriously work short of a final principle; and if a materialized religion, an ecclesiastical structure, be firmly planted on the earth by the same hand that established the universe and tapestried it with morning and evening, and if its gates and archways, its altar, columns, and courts be given in trust to chosen stewards as a divine priesthood, then the highest problem of being is not a human problem, and the mind of the laity has nothing more important to do than to play with the flowers of gallant love and heroism. Such was the feeling, perhaps the unconscious reasoning, of the founders of modern literature, as they began their labors in the alcoves of that church architecture which covered Christendom, embracing and symbolically expressing all its ideas and institutes. Therefore some vice of imperfection, a character of frivolity, or an artificially serious treatment of lightsome subjects marked all the literature of the time, which resembled that grotesque and unaccountable mathematical figure that has its centre outside of itself.
Modern literature thus had its origin in romantic metrical pieces, which, in the next stage, were transformed into prose novels. Two circumstances contributed to this change,--a change which could not have been anticipated; for the Trouv��re fabliaux and romans promised only epics, and the Troubadour chansons and tensons promised only lyrics and dramas. But the mind was now obliged to traverse the unbeaten paths of the Christian universe; it was overwhelmed by the extent of its range, the richness and delicacy of its materials; it could with difficulty poise itself amid the indefinite heights and depths which encompassed it, and with greater difficulty could wield the magician's rod which should sway the driving elements into artistic reconstruction. This mental inadequacy alone would not have created the novel, but would only have made lyrics and epics rare, the works of superior