[739]. Gottsched, like a true Klassiker, dislikes and distrusts romance, ancient as well as modern, prose as well as verse, in and for itself. “Romance writers,” he says (at p. 167), “know as little of the rules of poetic imitation as of true morality.”
[740]. Thus we are to divide the Wonderful in Poetry (p. 171) into three parts—like omnis Gallia! One may hesitate whether to emend “three thousand” or “three million.”
[741]. He quotes a passage which he calls ein Muster des guten verblümten Ausdruckes.
[742]. In the 7th vol. (pp. 117-154) of his Works, 10 vols., Berne, 1774-75.
[743]. See The Misfortunes of Elphin.
[744]. I take these examples all from English merely to avoid confusion. The case in French is even clearer.
[745]. One word to guard against a possible supposition that the writer supposes Classicism dead. Nothing in literature dies: things only wane and wax, retire and come forward again. At this very moment there is even a sort of Classical reaction, which has shown itself in France for a long time and is showing itself in England now. When people are asking, not whether Old Mortality, and Vingt Ans Après, and Esmond, and Westward Ho! are good books, but whether the Historical novel is a good Kind,—when they argue, not that a play is decent, or sensible, or brilliant as literature, but that it is a “problem”-play, and therefore sacred—John Barleycorn is going to get up again, not to the surprise at all of historical students.
[747]. In judging pictures he would, indeed, have been almost equally liable to be “connoisseured out of his senses,” but the interference was less authoritative. Towards the end of the century the prophets of the Picturesque tried to invade prospects also with their preceptism: but Nature laughed at them too obviously.