The Columbus journal., 1881-11-09
The yyerid,s Thinker.

TIE individpsi might and wortl
Of the thinker depends upon qnie
and serenity. The best thought ia,
been evolved from minds free from
carking care and the grinding des
q potism OF petty circumstances. UpoT
individual celebrity depends the
might of a nations literature. The
worlds greatest authors have been
enumerated inside of a hundred
numbers; the great authors of any
one nation can be told upon the fin.
gers. The names of Shakespeare
Chaucer, Milton, Pope, and Words
worth represent England's greatness
in the field of poetry.
In sunny Italy, with her myriad
painters, sculptors and architects,
the literature ofthe country is confin-
ed to only a few great names
Dante, one of the worlds greatest
poets, Bocaccio, Petrarch, Michael
Angelo, and Rsphael--the latter ones
merely sonnetteers. Spain had her
Oalderon, Cervantes, and Lope de
Vega, although the latter was only
a monstrously prolific trifler in the
world of letters. Little Portugal
has only her one poet, Camoens.
Germany, the fatherland of thought.
has but few bright geniuses whose
names will survive thousand years
Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Rich
ter--snd France none at all of that
dignity, not excepting Racine, Ra-
belsise, Voltaire, and Hugo.
Our own country, il may be said
in all humility, has not produced
one author OF such classic prowess
that he may vie with any of the
authors above mentioned. Even
Emerson and Longfellow will not be
permitted 20 live in the archives OF
fame until their celebrity has been
canonized by the verdict of futnrity.
As yet they can be placed on no
higher plane Than Tennyson and
Carlyle. Time only will tell the
truth about them.
In Greece, the mother of all ma
tions in literature, the school of all
later ambitions, there are five ia
nous names of the first magnitude,
Homer, Eschylus, Plutarch, Plato,
Demosthenes in Rome as many
more, Horace, Virgil, Cesar, Cicero,
and Juvenal. They have given hu-
manity assurance of its greatness !;
they are now as hostages of human
ity in the realm of perpetuity. Their
brethren of lower degree are gradu-
ally sinking out of sight in the limbo
of oblivion. Those nations which
failed to produce any distinguishing
lights in literature, will in time
come to he considered merely bar
barous, or at best, mediocre.
The Middle Ages have been called
the Dark Ages darkness, ignorance,
and superstition are said TO have
prevailed. The monks were said to
have slept their lives away; the
whole period has been depicted as if
il were a hideous nightmare. This
is mistaken impression. If the
reader will but consider ours as a
new world, quite apart from the old
classic world-just as the world that
began with Noah was different from
the world that began with Adam
he will see a new light dawning on
this Renaissance of thought - the
spring-time of new era in litera-
ture. The times of the German and
English Reformations, and the
French and American revolutions
may then be compared to the sum-
mer-time following, with fierce and
fiery heats; and our own degenerate,
or rather mature day, is the autumn
of this great era of thought; we are
now in the sere and yellow leaf, as
regards literature, and the occasion
al pre-Raphaelite glints of color,
against a soberer back k-ground, are
only the gorgeous dyes and tints of
early autumn, presaging blight
KOkOmO (Ind.) Tribune.