springs up, each new mould that art finds ready to its hand. There
is really not a single form that art now uses that does not come to
us from the critical spirit of Alexandria, where these forms were
either stereotyped or invented or made perfect. I say Alexandria,
not merely because it was there that the Greek spirit became most
self-conscious, and indeed ultimately expired in scepticism and
theology, but because it was to that city, and not to Athens, that
Rome turned for her models, and it was through the survival, such
as it was, of the Latin language that culture lived at all. When,
at the Renaissance, Greek literature dawned upon Europe, the soil
had been in some measure prepared for it. But, to get rid of the
details of history, which are always wearisome and usually
inaccurate, let us say generally, that the forms of art have been
due to the Greek critical spirit. To it we owe the epic, the
lyric, the entire drama in every one of its developments, including
burlesque, the idyll, the romantic novel, the novel of adventure,
the essay, the dialogue, the oration, the lecture, for which
perhaps we should not forgive them, and the epigram, in all the
wide meaning of that word. In fact, we owe it everything, except
the sonnet, to which, however, some curious parallels of thought-
movement may be traced in the Anthology, American journalism, to
which no parallel can be found anywhere, and the ballad in sham
Scotch dialect, which one of our most industrious writers has
recently proposed should be made the basis for a final and
unanimous effort on the part of our second-rate poets to make
themselves really romantic. Each new school, as it appears, cries
out against criticism, but it is to the critical faculty in man
that it owes its origin. The mere creative instinct does not
innovate, but reproduces.