copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides. The Latin
philosophy was borrowed, without alteration, from the Portico and
the Academy; and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to
themselves as patterns the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias.

But there was an earlier Latin literature, a literature truly
Latin, which has wholly perished, which had, indeed almost wholly
perished long before those whom we are in the habit of regarding
as the greatest Latin writers were born. That literature abounded
with metrical romances, such as are found in every country where
there is much curiosity and intelligence, but little reading and
writing. All human beings, not utterly savage, long for some
information about past times, and are delighted by narratives
which present pictures to the eye of the mind. But it is only in
very enlightened communities that books are readily accessible.
Metrical composition, therefore, which, in a highly civilized
nation, is a mere luxury, is, in nations imperfectly civilized,
almost a necessary of life, and is valued less on account of the
pleasure which it gives to the ear, than on account of the help
which it gives to the memory. A man who can invent or embellish
an interesting story, and put it into a form which others may
easily retain in their recollection, will always be highly
esteemed by a people eager for amusement and information, but
destitute of libraries. Such is the origin of ballad-poetry, a
species of composition which scarcely ever fails to spring up and
flourish in every society, at a certain point in the progress
towards refinement. Tacitus informs us that songs were the only
memorials of the past which the ancient Germans possessed. We
learn from Lucan and from Ammianus Marcellinus that the brave
actions of the ancient Gauls were commemorated in the verses of