among these color and liberty and variety and power, rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to Gower Street.  It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want of beauty in person and dress has driven us.  The imagination of it, as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually.  We look fondly back to the manners of the age sought in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in everything. . .  This romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history and in external nature the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life.”—­Modern Painters, Vol.  III. p. 260.

[6] Although devout in their admiration for antiquity, the writers of the seventeenth century have by no means always clearly grasped the object of their cult.  Though they may understand Latin tradition, they have certainly never entered into the freer, more original spirit of Greek art.  They have but an incomplete, superficial conception of Hellenism. . .  Boileau celebrates but does not understand Pindar. . .  The seventeenth century comprehended Homer no better than Pindar.  What we miss in them is exactly what we like best in his epopee—­the vast living picture of semi-barbarous civilization. . .  No society could be less fitted than that of the seventeenth century to feel and understand the spirit of primitive antiquity.  In order to appreciate Homer, it was thought necessary to civilize the barbarian, make him a scrupulous writer, and convince him that the word “ass” is a “very noble” expression in Greek—­Pellisier:  “The Literary Movement in France” (Brinton’s translation, 1897), pp. 8-10.  So Addison apologizes for Homer’s failure to observe those qualities of nicety, correctness, and what the French call bienseance (decorum,) the necessity of which had only been found out in later times.  See The Spectator, No. 160.

[7] Preface to “Cromwell.”

[8] “History of English Poetry,” section lxi.  Vol III. p. 398 (edition of 1840).

[9] See, for a fuller discussion of this subject, “From Shakspere to Pope:  An Inquiry into the Causes and Phenomena of the Rise of Classical Poetry in England,” by Edmund Gosse, 1885.

[10] The cold-hearted, polished Chesterfield is a very representative figure.  Johnson, who was really devout, angrily affirmed that his celebrated letters taught:  “the morality of a whore with the manners of a dancing-master.”

[11] “History of English Thought in the Eighteen Century,” Vol.  II. chap. xii.  Section iv.  See also “Selections from Newman,” by Lewis E. Gates, Introduction, pp. xlvii-xlviii. (1895).

[12] See especially Spectator, Nos. 185, 186, 201, 381, and 494.

[13] The classical Landor’s impatience of mysticism explains his dislike of Plato, the mystic among Greeks.  Diogenes says to Plato:  “I meddle not at present with infinity or eternity:  when I can comprehend them, I will talk about them,” “Imaginary Conversations,” 2d series, Conversation XV.  Landor’s contempt for German literature is significant.