which towered up towards heaven long before human remembrance, bears every
blast unshaken, and fills the solitary beholder with religious awe.

Let us now apply the idea which we have been developing, of the
universality of true criticism, to the history of poetry and the fine
arts. This, like the so-called universal history, we generally limit (even
though beyond this range there may be much that is both remarkable and
worth knowing) to whatever has had a nearer or more remote influence on
the present civilisation of Europe: consequently, to the works of the
Greeks and Romans, and of those of the modern European nations, who first
and chiefly distinguished themselves in art and literature. It is well
known that, three centuries and a-half ago, the study of ancient
literature received a new life, by the diffusion of the Grecian language
(for the Latin never became extinct); the classical authors were brought
to light, and rendered universally accessible by means of the press; and
the monuments of ancient art were diligently disinterred and preserved.
All this powerfully excited the human mind, and formed a decided epoch in
the history of human civilisation; its manifold effects have extended to
our times, and will yet extend to an incalculable series of ages. But the
study of the ancients was forthwith most fatally perverted. The learned,
who were chiefly in the possession of this knowledge, and who were
incapable of distinguishing themselves by works of their own, claimed for
the ancients an unlimited authority, and with great appearance of reason,
since they are models in their kind. Maintaining that nothing could be
hoped for the human mind but from an imitation of antiquity, in the works
of the moderns they only valued what resembled, or seemed to bear a
resemblance to, those of the ancients. Everything else they rejected as
barbarous and unnatural. With the great poets and artists it was quite
otherwise. However strong their enthusiasm for the ancients, and however
determined their purpose of entering into competition with them, they were