arrived. They thus almost wholly missed the period of original
invention. The only Latin poets whose writings exhibit much
vigour of imagination are Lucretius and Catullus. The Augustan
age produced nothing equal to their finer passages.

In France that licensed jester, whose jingling cap and motley
coat concealed more genius than ever mustered in the saloon of
Ninon or of Madame Geoffrin, was succeeded by writers as decorous
and as tiresome as gentlemen ushers.

The poetry of Italy and of Spain has undergone the same change.
But nowhere has the revolution been more complete and violent
than in England. The same person who, when a boy, had clapped
his thrilling hands at the first representation of the Tempest
might, without attaining to a marvellous longevity, have lived to
read the earlier works of Prior and Addison. The change, we
believe, must, sooner or later, have taken place. But its
progress was accelerated, and its character modified, by the
political occurrences of the times, and particularly by two
events, the closing of the theatres under the Commonwealth, and
the restoration of the House of Stuart.

We have said that the critical and poetical faculties are not
only distinct, but almost incompatible. The state of our
literature during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First is
a strong confirmation of this remark. The greatest works of
imagination that the world has ever seen were produced at that
period. The national taste, in the meantime, was to the last
degree detestable. Alliterations, puns, antithetical forms of
expression lavishly employed where no corresponding opposition