spirit of the Middle Ages. "The essential elements," he says, "of the
romantic spirit are curiosity and the love of beauty; and it is as the
accidental effect of these qualities only, that it seeks the Middle Ages;
because in the overcharged atmosphere of the Middle Age there are
unworked sources of romantic effect, of a strange beauty to be won by
strong imagination out of things unlikely or remote." "The sense in
which Scott is to be called a romantic writer is chiefly that, in
opposition to the literary tradition of the last century, he loved
strange adventure and sought it in the Middle Age."

Here again the essayist is careful to explain that there are certain
epochs which are predominately romantic. "Outbreaks of this spirit come
naturally with particular periods: times when . . . men come to art and
poetry with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement, after a long
_ennui_." He instances, as periods naturally romantic, the time of the
early Provençal troubadour poetry: the years following the Bourbon
Restoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the later Middle Age; so that
the medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Greek or
Roman poetry, as romantic to classical poetry."

In Pater's use of the terms, then, classic and romantic do not describe
particular literature, or particular periods in literary history, so much
as certain counterbalancing qualities and tendencies which run through
the literatures of all times and countries. There were romantic writings
among the Greeks and Romans; there were classical writings in the Middle
Ages; nay, there are classical and romantic traits in the same author.
If there is any poet who may safely be described as a classic, it is
Sophocles; and yet Pater declares that the "Philoctetes" of Sophocles, if
issued to-day, would be called romantic. And he points out--what indeed
has been often pointed out--that the "Odyssey"[7] is more romantic than