Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/52

 3S LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE wealth in the society, — and for all these reasons, to» the means of enslaving the people, or, in other words, of repressing the nobler sentiments which are natural to independent man, when individual character is permitted to develope itself. In pro- portion as the soil and climate improve, or perhaps^ nearly in the degree in which we proceed east- ward, or towards the equator, and nature fur- nishes man with necessaries with the smallest ef- fort, despotism increases, and the human intellect becomes weaker. The Persians, Turks, and Arabs, whose individual characters are unquestionably the most independent and energetic of all eastern na- tions, have also the best poetry ; that of the Hin- dus is much worse ; the best poetry of Java i& borrowed from the latter. The Burmans and Siamese, from all accounts, are as tame in poetic genius as the Javanese ; and for the poetry of the nations which write in the Hieroglyphics of China, nonsense is hardly too bad a name. I have sometimes thought, that the extreme monotony and uniformity of season, production, and scenery, in the East, might contribute, with political institutions, to deaden and tranquillize the faculties, removing from the mind the powerful in- centive of variety, to animate, and rouse it to action. In further illustration of this subject, I may ob- serve, that to this cause, too, may possibly be owing the great similarity, not only between the different