Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/411



§ 100. at an effort perhaps uncouth, certainly in form but rudely rhythmical, to gather into song all that Nature on a scale stupendous, social life in forms most various, individuality most profound because realised as distinct from all groups and all Nature's wonders, we close our task. Very imperfectly have we essayed to follow the effects of social and individual evolution on literature from the rudest beginnings of song down to the poetry of the great Western Republic. We have but glanced at the progress of prose in place of those metrical forms which in the absence of writing supplied supports for the memory; the influence of conversation public and private—its character largely depending on the forms of social communion in which men meet—on such progress in the East and West; the influence of individualised thinking, of philosophy, in fact, upon the form and spirit of prose in Athens and Rome and Modern Europe. We have omitted the varying aspects of animal life as reflected in the literatures of different countries and climates. We have omitted the comparison of satire in different social conditions, though we willingly allow that "there is no outward expression, be it in literature, sculpture, painting, or any other art, which more openly tells of a nation's character and exhibits it to all eyes than caricature"—not that all satire is caricature, but, like caricature, it is a negative index to an ideal con-