Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/19

Rh every literary work must seek public occasions of one sort or another. Among such a people, forms acquire a conventional value, depending first on religious respect and awe, and afterwards on habit, and the perception of a propriety and beauty in such natural promptings of the national genius, as no after-thought or higher culture is ever able to improve upon. They have in this respect a strict analogy with architectural forms, which in like manner have their origin in early and prescriptive religious models, gradually reduced to proportion and beauty, without ever leaving the sacred pristine shape. Certain of the arts are the nearly pure emanation and property of national genius; whilst others, in various degrees, become the property of individuals. Among the former we may reckon, first, Language, which, as far as we can judge, was more perfect in times beyond the record of literature than in later days, so that what languages we possess have been called the pieced fragments of antiquity; second, Literary forms, which also carry back their highest perfection nearly to the age of their invention; and, thirdly, Architecture. The other arts, religious and national in their origin, are more the province of individual genius, and less strictly subject to eras and races.

Whilst literature and the arts speak by the mouths and hands of gifted individuals, they are based upon the national genius; and to this they have finally to render account. Cultivated minds may perceive the beauty and perfection of a Greek temple; but they cannot persuade a Christian people of its fitness and appropriateness for their worship. Literary men may believe the epic, or the pure dramatic, to be the most perfect of literary forms; yet, since the people have learned to read to themselves what was formerly read or declaimed to them, these forms have been declared unmanageable. Cowper said he could not imagine a man writing, without the intention of publishing, and the idea of a reading public before him; and, in like manner, we can readily conceive how the idea of a circle of devoted hearers, fired with enthusiasm as they listened to the deeds of their ancestors, should be needful to inspire the bard, and buoy