The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-13


whom had begun TO write, before the
Augustan Age began. To 20 no further
the writer in the Times has quite forgotten
how large portion of the writings of Horace
was written before the Gate of Janus was
shut, while the Civil War was still raging.
Inc Augustan Age ITSELF the men born in
that age, produced very little indeed. The
only way in which the empire really en-
couraged genius and mental energy of any
kind was by drawing forth indignant protests
against itself, in the form of tho writings of
Lucan, Juvenal, and Tacitus That is TO say,
the hrst crop Of Roman literature was due to
men who were formed in the days before the
empire, the second crop was due to men
whom the empire schooled into opposition to
ltseif. For the mental energy which is called
forth by imperialism pure and simple, the
Martial.
AS to the Medicean age in Italy. that may
mean either the last half of the fifteenth CEN
tury or the first half of the sixteenth, or both
together. 1t Is by no means clear what exact
time the writer in the Times means. The
Golden Age of modern Italy, he tells us,
dates from the termination of medieval
ieuds ushering in domestic tyranny and
foreign domination. 1t is by no means clear
whether it was the medimvaIfeuds themselves,
or the termination of the medieval feuds,
which ushered in domestic tyranny and
foreign domination. The Medicean period
is generally hold at least to take in
the days of Lorenzo, and in the
days OF Lorenzo, whatever we say about
domestic tyranny, foreign domination can
hardly be said to have been yet ushered in.
And whichever period we take for the Golden
Age, whether the days of Lorenzo or the days
Of his son, can we call the Medicean period
a time of real mental energy? A time of
ati tixytfry ta1lx yxuac nm
age OF revived art, of revived scholarship, of
much curious study in many ways. But for
real mental energy we must surely go to an
earlier time. Surely the one name of Dante,
the true child and type of free Italy, out
weighs all the elegant scholars and makers of
pretty Latin verses who swarmed around Lo-
| renZo and Leo.
To turn to our own land, the description
which the writer gives of the time of Eliza
beth sounds rather odd ''Under her sceptre"
we are told that religious dissensions subsidized.
Surely we cannot say that religious dissen-
sions subsided under Elizabeth, but rather
that they took new shapes and were more de-
hnltely formulized. Under Henry, Edward,
| and Mary, there had been no small stock of
religious dissensions, but they were all dis
sensions within the same body. Some thought
that change had gone too far, others that it
had not gone far enough, out there was no
|
beths time we get the beginning of religious
dissensions of the modern type; we find the
first separatists from the established religion,
first Papists and the first Dissenters strictly
SO called. And surely the reign of Elizabeth,
though not exactly time of political convul-
sion within the kingdom, was a time of in
tense political excitement, anything but q
time of ease and repose. And again, the dis
play of mental energy during the Elizabethan
age was of quite another sort from that of
either the Augustan or the Medicean age. 1t
was essentially display, not of mere scholar
| ship and imitation, but of the boldest original
| genius.
1t is somewhat strange that the writer
makes no reference whatever to the literature
of old Greece. Certainly there is no litera-
ture whose history more thoroughly upsets
his theory. To whatever date we assign the
| Homeric poems, we can hardly fancy that
they are the work of an age of special ease
and repose, and it is certain that the recorded
literature OF Greece, from Archilocbus to De-
mosthenes, was the work of very stirring
times indeed. It's greatest displays of mental
energy took place in the midst of the political
commissions of the Persian, the Peloponne.
sian, and the Macedonian wars For the Au-
GUSTAV or Medicean age of Greek literature
we must look to the days of the Ptolemies,
when such Greek intellect as was left took
shelter in the ease and repose of the Court of
Alexandria. There we find plenty of learning,
plenty of science, plenty of initiative poetry;
but the nearest approach to original genius is
to be found in the pastorals of Theocritus.
And they can hardly be set against Homer,
Pindar, and the dramatic poets. The one
really great Greek writer of this age is surely
Polybius; and he passed the best of his days
as the citizen and statesman of free COM
monwealth.