Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (tr John Black) | Page 9

external appearance. Everything must be traced up to
the root of human nature: if it has sprung from thence, it has an
undoubted worth of its own; but if, without possessing a living germ, it
is merely externally attached thereto, it will never thrive nor acquire a
proper growth. Many productions which appear at first sight dazzling
phenomena in the province of the fine arts, and which as a whole have
been honoured with the appellation of works of a golden age, resemble
the mimic gardens of children: impatient to witness the work of their
hands, they break off here and there branches and flowers, and plant
them in the earth; everything at first assumes a noble appearance: the
childish gardener struts proudly up and down among his showy beds,

till the rootless plants begin to droop, and hang their withered leaves
and blossoms, and nothing soon remains but the bare twigs, while the
dark forest, on which no art or care was ever bestowed, and which
towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears
every blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe.
Let us now apply the idea which we have been developing, of the
universality of true criticism, to the history of poetry and the fine arts.
This, like the so-called universal history, we generally limit (even
though beyond this range there may be much that is both remarkable
and worth knowing) to whatever has had a nearer or more remote
influence on the present civilisation of Europe: consequently, to the
works of the Greeks and Romans, and of those of the modern European
nations, who first and chiefly distinguished themselves in art and
literature. It is well known that, three centuries and a-half ago, the study
of ancient literature received a new life, by the diffusion of the Grecian
language (for the Latin never became extinct); the classical authors
were brought to light, and rendered universally accessible by means of
the press; and the monuments of ancient art were diligently disinterred
and preserved. All this powerfully excited the human mind, and formed
a decided epoch in the history of human civilisation; its manifold
effects have extended to our times, and will yet extend to an
incalculable series of ages. But the study of the ancients was forthwith
most fatally perverted. The learned, who were chiefly in the possession
of this knowledge, and who were incapable of distinguishing
themselves by works of their own, claimed for the ancients an
unlimited authority, and with great appearance of reason, since they are
models in their kind. Maintaining that nothing could be hoped for the
human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works of the
moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a
resemblance to, those of the ancients. Everything else they rejected as
barbarous and unnatural. With the great poets and artists it was quite
otherwise. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and
however determined their purpose of entering into competition with
them, they were compelled by their independence and originality of
mind, to strike out a path of their own, and to impress upon their
productions the stamp of their own genius. Such was the case with
Dante among the Italians, the father of modern poetry; acknowledging

Virgil for his master, he has produced a work which, of all others, most
differs from the Aeneid, and in our opinion far excels its pretended
model in power, truth, compass, and profundity. It was the same
afterwards with Ariosto, who has most unaccountably been compared
to Homer, for nothing can be more unlike. So in art with Michael
Angelo and Raphael, who had no doubt deeply studied the antique.
When we ground our judgment of modern painters merely on their
greater or less resemblance to the ancients, we must necessarily be
unjust towards them, as Winkelmann undoubtedly has in the case of
Raphael. As the poets for the most part had their share of scholarship, it
gave rise to a curious struggle between their natural inclination and
their imaginary duty. When they sacrificed to the latter, they were
praised by the learned; but by yielding to the former, they became the
favourites of the people. What preserves the heroic poems of a Tasso
and a Camoëns to this day alive in the hearts and on the lips of their
countrymen, is by no means their imperfect resemblance to Virgil, or
even to Homer, but in Tasso the tender feeling of chivalrous love and
honour, and in Camoëns the glowing inspiration of heroic patriotism.
Those very ages, nations, and ranks, who felt least the want of a poetry
of their own, were the most assiduous in their imitation of the ancients;
accordingly, its results are but dull school exercises, which at best
excite