[967]. An ancient author has the following expression: οὐκοῦν τὸ θῆλυ, κᾄν λίθινον ᾖ, φιλεῖται· τί δ᾽ εἴ τις ἔμψυχον εἶδε τοιοῦτον κάλλος;—Luc. Amor. § 17.
Something very like which is found in Byron:
“There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty.”
[968]. Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 23.
[969]. Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 67.
CHAPTER X.
HELLENIC LITERATURE.
From the arts the transition is natural to the literature[[970]] of Greece, which in the historical period necessarily constituted the principal agent in ripening and stamping their peculiar character upon the fruits of education among the people. Literature is in fact the school-mistress of nations. In it so long as it remains entire, we may contemplate the whole character, intellectual and moral, of the race out of whose passions, yearnings, tastes, and energies it may be said to be fashioned. And this, true of all literature, is especially applicable to that of Greece, which more than any other bears the impress of nationality. Every idea, every image, every maxim, every reflection seems to emanate from one source. Nothing is foreign. Neither the inspiration, nor the spirit which regulated it and moulded it into beauty, borrowed a single impulse from anything existing beyond the circle of Hellenic thought. Greece supplied at once the matrix and the materials, the active power and that delicate sense of beauty and perfection which presided over its organisation and rendered it the delight of mankind.
In characterising this literature many singular notions have been broached. We have been told that its spirit is exclusively masculine, which means, of course, that while it abounds with strength and energy, with sublimity of speculation and impassioned and impetuous impulses, it is wanting in that sweetness, delicacy, grace, and tenderness which confer on the intellectual offspring of some modern nations a feminine aspect. Grecian literature, however, is neither masculine nor feminine, but androgynous like the son of Aphrodite and Hermes. There is no excellence of thought or language, of which, even in its present fragmentary state, it does not offer us some example. There is a predominance, doubtless, of stern grandeur and colossal elevation of thought; but, beside these, we discover frequently modifications of light and airy beauty, infantine purity of sentiment, ease, grace, felicitous negligence, and a dreamy luxury of speculation not to be outdone by the most subtile and fanciful literature existing. If there be a deficiency of any thing, it is of spirituality. The imagination of the Greeks confined itself too rigidly perhaps to this “bank and shoal of time.” Not being able to lift the veil which curtains the realms beyond the grave, it busied itself too little about those things with which the disembodied soul must converse for ever. In most Greek writers there is a visible reluctance to walk amid the forms of Hades. Their fancy will not be conducted beyond the limits of the visible universe, but shudders, rears and reverts its eyes towards the light where alone it finds firm footing for speculation. But on the other hand if it refuse to quit this earthly scene of existence, how glorious is the flood of sunshine and splendour which it pours over it! It is in these walks of literature that we discover truly the freshness and the loveliness of morning. The very clouds that hover over the landscape only add to its majesty, by diversifying the prospect and introducing those shadows and contrasts which the mind delights everywhere to discover.