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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860 by Various
page 9 of 294 (03%)
of before Homer came, their first glory and their oldest reminiscence.

One reason, perhaps, why mediæval literature assumed so light and
unartistic a form was, that by necessity it could not be full-orbed.
Religion could not enter into it as a plastic element, but was fixed, a
veiled, external figure, radiating indeed color and fragrance, but
not making one of the struggling, independent vitals of the heart.
Literature could play about this figure, but could not grasp it, and
take it in among the materials to be fashioned. The Church, through
its clergy, held jealous command of divine knowledge, beneath divine
guidance, and left no developments of it possible to the lay mind, which
culminated in minstrels and romancers. The Greeks, on the contrary,
whose religion was an apotheosis of the earth, framed upwards and only
by fiction of fancy handed downwards, derived all their theology from
the poets. Prophecy and taste were combined in Homer,--Isaiah and the
king's jester in Pindar. The care of the highest, not less than the
lowest departments of thought, fell upon the creative author, and
a happy suggestion became a new article in the Hellenic creed. His
composition thus bore the burden and was hallowed by the sanctity
of piety, the key to every human perfect thing. But the Provençal
celebrators of love and chivalry had no such dignity in their task. The
solemnities of thought and life were cared for and hedged about by the
Church as its own peculiar treasure, and to them there remained only the
lighter office of amusing. The age was eminently religious, but the poet
could not aid in erecting and adorning its temples. Every fair work of
art must have a central idea; but the proper principle of unity for
all grand artistic efforts not being within the reach of authors, it
followed that their productions were not symmetrical, did not have an
even outline nor cosmical meaning, did not consist of balanced parts,
were poorly framed and articulated, and were charming only by their
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