Some have maintained the opinion that the monarchical form of government is better calculated to foster and encourage every species of literature than the republican, and consequently that the institutions of the United States would prove unfavorable to the growth and progress of literature. This opinion seems to be based upon the supposition that a king and aristocracy are necessary for the support and patronage of a literary class. I will briefly explain my views on this point, and then proceed to the consideration of that peculiar influence which our state or federative system of government will, in all probability, exert over the character and literature of our inhabitants. It is this latter view which I wish mainly to present this evening—it is this view which has been neglected or misunderstood in almost all the speculations which I have seen upon the character and influence of our institutions.
In the first place, it has been affirmed that republics are too economical—too niggardly in their expenditures, to afford that salutary and efficient patronage necessary to the growth of literature. To this I would answer, first, that this argument takes for granted that the literature of a nation advances or recedes in proportion to the pecuniary wages which it earns. Now, although I do not say with Dr. Goldsmith, that the man who draws his pen to take a purse, no more deserves to have it, than the man who draws his pistol for the same purpose, yet I may safely assert, that of the motives which operate on the literary man—the love of fame, the desire to be useful, and the love of money—the former, in the great majority of cases, exerts an infinitely more powerful influence than the latter. And if I shall be able to show, as I hope to do in the sequel, that the republican form of government is the one which is best calculated to stimulate these great passions of our nature and throw into action all the energies of man, then must we acknowledge its superiority, even in a literary point of view.
But even supposing that the progress of literature depends directly upon the amount of pecuniary patronage which it can command, it by no means follows that it will flourish most under a monarchical government. For granting that this kind of government may have the ability to patronise, it is by no means certain that it will always possess the will to do so. Augustus and his Mecænas may lavish to day the imperial treasures upon literature, but Tiberius and Sejanus may starve and proscribe it to-morrow. That which depends upon the will of one man must ever be unsteady and uncertain. It is much easier to predict the conduct of a multitude—of a whole nation—than of one individual. The support then which monarchs can be expected to yield to learning, must necessarily be extremely capricious and fluctuating. It is not however by sudden starts and violent impulses, that a sound, solid, wholesome literature can be created. Ages must conspire to the formation of such a literature. Constantine the Great, seated on the throne of the Eastern Empire, with all the resources of the Roman world at his command, could not awaken the slumbering genius of a degenerate race, nor revive the decaying arts of the ancient empire. The literature of his reign, with all the patronage he could bestow upon it, did but too nearly resemble those gorgeous piles, which his pride and vanity caused to be erected in his own imperial city, composed of the ruins of so many of the splendid monuments of antiquity.
Not only, however, is the support a capricious and uncertain one which a monarchy is calculated to yield to literature, but there are only certain departments of learning, and those by no means the most important, which such a government can ever be expected cordially to foster. Monarchs may patronise the fine arts and light literature—they may encourage the mathematical and physical sciences, but they can rarely feel a deep interest in the promotion of correct and orthodox moral, political and theological knowledge, which is, at the same time, much the most important and most difficult department of literature. The great law of self-preservation prompts us to war on every thing which threatens our interest and happiness. Moral and political philosophy has too often aimed its logic at the throne, and questioned the title of the monarch, ever to be a favorite with rulers. Hence, while even the absolute despot may encourage the arts, light literature and the physical and mathematical sciences, he dares not unbind the fetters of the mind in the region of politics, morals and religion. He can but tremble at that bold spirit of inquiry which may be aroused on those subjects—which dares to advance to the throne itself and loosen even the foundations on which it is erected. Napoleon Bonaparte, in the plenitude of his power, could give the utmost encouragement to all those departments of learning, whose principles could not be arrayed against despotism. In these departments he delighted to behold the genius and talent of the country. In the provinces and in the capital he called to the physical and mathematical chairs of his colleges, his universities and his polytechnic schools, some of the most splendid lecturers of the age; but selfishness forbade him to tolerate a free and manly spirit of inquiry in morals and politics, and he whose armies had deluged Europe with blood, whose name was a terror and whose word was a law unto nations, could not feel secure upon his throne while such men as Cousin were illustrating the nineteenth century by the splendor of their professorial eloquence, before the youth of France, or such writers as De Stael were making their animated appeals to the nation, in behalf of liberty of thought, and freedom of action. It is impossible, without full freedom of thought, and a single eye to truth and usefulness, that the scientific investigator, no matter how great his genius may be, can unravel the difficulties of moral and political philosophy. The very patronage of the throne enthrals his intellect, and his fears or his avarice tempt him to desert the cause of truth and humanity.
| "Thus trammell'd, thus condemn'd to flattery's trebles, He toils through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts like heavenly rebels Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings as the Athenean spoke, with pebbles In 's mouth, lest truth should stammer through his strain." |
If we look even to those epochs under monarchical governments, which have been designated by the high sounding title of the golden ages of literature, we shall observe a full exemplification of the remarks which I have made on this subject. Let us take the Augustan age itself. Under the patronage of the first of the Roman Emperors we find, it is true, the arts and light literature rising to a pitch which perhaps they had not reached under the republic. After the death of Brutus the world of letters experienced a revolution almost as great as that of the political world. The literature of the Augustan age is distinguished by that tone and spirit which mark the downfall of liberty, and the consequent thraldom of the mind. The bold and manly voice of eloquence was hushed. The high and lofty spirit of the republic was tamed down to a sickly and disgusting servility. The age of poetry came when that of eloquence and philosophy was past; and Virgil and Horace and Propertius, flattered, courted and enriched by an artful prince and an elegant courtier, could consent to sing the sycophantic praises of the monarch who had signed the proscriptions of the triumvirate, and rivetted a despotism on his country.
But the men who most adorned the various departments of learning during the long reign of Augustus, were born in the last days of the republic. They saw what the glory of the commonwealth had been—they beheld with their own eyes the greatness of their country, and they had inhaled in their youth the breath of freedom. No Roman writer, for example, excels the Lyric Bard in true feeling and sympathy for heroic greatness. We ever behold through the medium of his writings—even the gayest—a deep rooted sorrow locked up in his bosom, for the subversion of the liberties of the commonwealth. "On every occasion we can see the inspiring flame of patriotism and freedom breaking through that mist of levity in which his poetry is involved." "He constrained his inclinations," says Schlegel, "and endeavored to write like a royalist, but in spite of himself he is still manifestly a republican and a Roman."2
2 Horace fought under Brutus and Cassius, on the side of the Republic, at the battle of Philippi, and he was after the battle saved from the wreck of the republican army, and treated with great respect and kindness by Augustus and his minister Mecænas.
"In the last years of Augustus," says the same writer, "the younger generation who were born, or at least grew up to manhood, after the commencement of the monarchy, were altogether different. We can already perceive the symptoms of declining taste—in Ovid particularly, who is overrun with an unhealthy superfluity of fancy, and a sentimental effeminacy of expression." Even History itself, in which the Romans so far excelled, yielded to the corrupting influence of the Cæsars. Tacitus concluded the long series of splendid and vigorous writers, and he grew up and was educated under the comparatively happy reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and wrote under the mild government of Nerva. Unnatural pomp and extravagance of expression seem, strange as it may appear, to be the necessary results of social and political degradation. And it is curious indeed to behold among the writers under the first Cæsars, the extraordinary compounds which genius can produce, when impelled on the one hand by the all-powerful and stimulating love of liberty, and vivid glimpses of the real dignity of human nature, while checked and subdued on the other by the fear of arbitrary power. Take Lucan for an example. "In him we find the most outrageously republican feelings making their chosen abode in the breast of a wealthy and luxurious courtier of Nero. It excites surprise and even disgust, to observe how he stoops to flatter that disgusting tyrant, in expressions the meanness of which amounts to a crime, and then in the next page, exalts Cato above the Gods themselves, and speaks of all the enemies of the first Cæsar with an admiration that approaches to idolatry."
Let us now look for an exemplification of the same great truths, to the reign of Louis the fourteenth, a reign which has been celebrated as the zenith of warlike and literary splendor—and here I borrow the language of Macintosh. "Talent seemed robbed of the conscious elevation, of the erect and manly port, which is its noblest associate and its surest indication. The mild purity of Fenelon, the lofty spirit of Bossuet, the masculine mind of Boileau, the sublime fervor of Corneille, were confounded by the contagion of ignominious and indiscriminate servility." Purity, propriety and beauty of style, were indeed carried during this reign to a high pitch of perfection. The literature of this period was "the highest attainment of the imagination." An aristocratic society, such as that which adorned the court of Louis XIV, is particularly favorable to the delicacy and polish of style, the fascinations of wit and gaiety, and to all the decorations of an elegant imagination. No one has ever surpassed Racine, Fenelon, and Bossuet, in purity of style and elegance of language.