MONTAIGNE has been censured for his universal scepticism, and for the unsettled notions he drew out on his motley page, which has been attributed to his incapacity of forming decisive opinions.  “Que scais-je?” was his motto, The same accusation may reach the gentle ERASMUS, who alike offended the old catholics and the new reformers.  The real source of their vacillations we may discover in the age itself.  It was one of controversy and of civil wars, when the minds of men were thrown into perpetual agitation, and opinions, like the victories of the parties, were every day changing sides.

Even in its advancement beyond the intelligence of its own age genius is but progressive.  In nature all is continuous; she makes no starts and leaps.  Genius is said to soar, but we should rather say that genius climbs.  Did the great VERULAM, or RAWLEIGH, or Dr. MORE, emancipate themselves from all the dreams of their age, from the occult agency of witchcraft, the astral influence, and the ghost and demon creed?

Before a particular man of genius can appear, certain events must arise to prepare the age for him.  A great commercial nation, in the maturity of time, opened all the sources of wealth to the contemplation of ADAM SMITH.  That extensive system of what is called political economy could not have been produced at any other time; for before this period the materials of this work had but an imperfect existence, and the advances which this sort of science had made were only partial and preparatory.  If the principle of Adam Smith’s great work seems to confound the happiness of a nation with its wealth, we can scarcely reproach the man of genius, who we shall find is always reflecting back the feelings of his own nation, even in his most original speculations.

In works of pure imagination we trace the same march of the human intellect; and we discover in those inventions, which appear sealed by their originality, how much has been derived from the age and the people in which they were produced.  Every work of genius is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the events, of the times.  The Inferno of DANTE was caught from the popular superstitions of the age, and had been preceded by the gross visions which the monks had forged, usually for their own purposes.  “La Citta dolente,” and “la perduta gente,” were familiar to the imaginations of the people, by the monkish visions, and it seems even by ocular illusions of Hell, exhibited in Mysteries, with its gulfs of flame, and its mountains of ice, and the shrieks of the condemned.[A] To produce the “Inferno” only required the giant step of genius, in the sombre, the awful, and the fierce, DANTE.  When the age of chivalry flourished, all breathed of love and courtesy; the great man was the great lover, and the great author the romancer.  It was from his own age that MILTON derived his greatest blemish—­the introduction of school-divinity into poetry.  In a polemical age the poet, as well as the sovereign, reflected the reigning tastes.