National Literature the Exponent of National Character [pp. 201-225]

National Literature, the
approved and accepted form, a German monster, grotesque,
and huge, and horrible, and blind;
Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.
The Greek mythology was little more than an apotheosis of
the objects and the powers of nature in their friendly and hostile aspects toward man. If their Dryads, their Naiads, and
their Nereids were the creatures of fancy, there was a living
reality in the refreshing coolness of the grotto, in the shade,
and greenness of the forest-in the sleeping beauty of the quiet
lake, and in the awful convulsions of the agitated ocean.
If the ancient poets were fortunate in living at a period when
their sensations must be varied and acute-when the mountain
awed them by its vastness, the unpierced solitude filled them
with a congenial horror, and the sunny landscape inspired a
sunnier joy-it must be confessed that the multitude and acuteness of their sensations rendered it more difficult to discriminate and portray them.
It has been sometimes imagined that the manifest advantages of our later and Christian poets are more than balanced
by a certain alleged simplicity of ancient manners, which gave
their poets an opportunity of seeing the heart without disguise.
We may well doubt, however, whether any such simplicity ever
could have existed. BIut granting that it might, the poet does
not derive his knowledge of human nature from other men, nor
from books. He probes his own heart. He proves its
strength and its weakness, and is satisfied that when he knows
himself, he knows mankind-" for as in water face answereth
to face, so the heart of man to man." It was not from books,
nor was it mainly from observation, that Shakspeare drew his
marvellous knowledge of man. Such knowledge could be gathered only from self-study. Cicero's noble words with reference to the lex nata, non scripta, may be applied to the whole
science of the soul: Quam non didicimus, accepimus, legimus,
verum ex naturi ivsd arripuimus, hausimus, expressimus;
ad quam non docti, sedfacti; non instituti, sed imbuti sumus.
The soul of man, as Wordsworth has told us, is the "haunt
and main region" of the poet's study and the poet's song.
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