A spirit of inquiry, originating in events which had never reached the ancient world, and the same refined taste in the arts of composition caught from the models of antiquity, at length raised up rivals, who competed with the great ancients themselves; and modern literature now occupies a space which appears as immensity, compared with the narrow and the imperfect limits of the ancient.  A complete collection of classical works, all the bees of antiquity, may be hived in a glass-case; but those we should find only the milk and honey of our youth; to obtain the substantial nourishment of European knowledge, a library of ten thousand volumes will not avail nor satisfy our inquiries, nor supply our researches even on a single topic!

Let not, however, the votaries of ancient literature dread its neglect, nor be over-jealous of their younger and Gothic sister.  The existence of their favourite study is secured, as well by its own imperishable claims, as by the stationary institutions of Europe.  But one of those silent revolutions in the intellectual history of mankind, which are not so obvious as those in their political state, seems now fully accomplished.  The very term “classical,” so long limited to the ancient authors, is now equally applicable to the most elegant writers of every literary people; and although Latin and Greek were long characterised as “the learned languages,” yet we cannot in truth any longer concede that those are the most learned who are “inter Graecos Graecissimi, inter Latinos Latinissimi,” any more than we can reject from the class of “the learned,” those great writers, whose scholarship in the ancient classics may he very indifferent.  The modern languages now have also become learned ones, when he who writes in them is imbued with their respective learning.  He is a “learned” writer who has embraced most knowledge on the particular subject of his investigation, as he is a “classical” one who composes with the greatest elegance.  Sir David Dalrymple dedicates his “Memorials relating to the History of Britain” to the Earl of Hardwicke, whom he styles, with equal happiness and propriety, “Learned in British History.”  “Scholarship” has hitherto been a term reserved for the adept in ancient literature, whatever may be the mediocrity of his intellect; but the honourable distinction must be extended to all great writers in modern literature, if we would not confound the natural sense and propriety of things.

Modern literature may, perhaps, still be discriminated from the ancient, by a term it began to be called by at the Reformation, that of “the New Learning.”  Without supplanting the ancient, the modern must grow up with it; the farther we advance in society, it will more deeply occupy our interests; and it has already proved what Bacon, casting his philosophical views retrospectively and prospectively, has observed, “that Time is the greatest of innovators.”