Let us endeavour to
examine the question, neither with the cold prejudice of antiquity on
the one hand; nor on the other, with the too eager thirst of novelty,
and unbounded admiration of the geniuses, by whom it has been attacked.
When we look back to the venerable ancients, we behold a class of
writers, if not of a much higher rank, at least of a very different
character, from the moderns. One natural advantage they indisputably
possessed. The field of nature was all their own. It had not yet been
blasted by any vulgar breath, or touched with a sacrilegious hand. Its
fairest flowers had not been culled, and its choicest sweets rifled
before them. As they were not encumbered and hedged in with the
multitude of their predecessors, they did not servilely borrow their
knowledge from books; they read it in the page of the universe. They
studied nature in all her romantic scenes, and all her secret haunts.
They studied men in the various ranks of society, and in different
nations of the world. I might add to this several other advantages. Of
these the noble freedom of mind that was characteristic of the
republicans of Greece and Rome, and that has scarcely any parallel among
ourselves, would not be the least.
Agreeably to these advantages, they almost every where, particularly
among the Greeks, bear upon them the stamp of originality.
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