rushing on the mala in se. Their great predecessors, it is true,
were as bad critics as themselves, or perhaps worse, but those
predecessors, as we have attempted to show, were inspired by a
faculty independent of criticism, and, therefore, wrote well
while they judged ill.

In time men begin to take more rational and comprehensive views
of literature. The analysis of poetry, which, as we have
remarked, must at best be imperfect, approaches nearer and nearer
to exactness. The merits of the wonderful models of former times
are justly appreciated. The frigid productions of a later age
are rated at no more than their proper value. Pleasing and
ingenious imitations of the manner of the great masters appear.
Poetry has a partial revival, a Saint Martin's Summer, which,
after a period of dreariness and decay, agreeably reminds us of
the splendour of its June. A second harvest is gathered in;
though, growing on a spent soil, it has not the heart of the
former. Thus, in the present age, Monti has successfully
imitated the style of Dante; and something of the Elizabethan
inspiration has been caught by several eminent countrymen of our
own. But never will Italy produce another Inferno, or England
another Hamlet. We look on the beauties of the modern
imaginations with feelings similar to those with which we see
flowers disposed in vases, to ornament the drawing-rooms of a
capital. We doubtless regard them with pleasure, with greater
pleasure, perhaps, because, in the midst of a place ungenial to
them, they remind us of the distant spots on which they flourish
in spontaneous exuberance. But we miss the sap, the freshness,
and the bloom. Or, if we may borrow another illustration from
Queen Scheherezade, we would compare the writers of this school