Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/21

Rh earnest manner, the characteristics of his own period (Translation, pp. 82-86). Why, he is asked, has genius become so rare? There are many clever men, but scarce any highly exalted and wide-reaching genius. Has eloquence died with liberty? “We have learned the lesson of a benignant despotism, and have never tasted freedom.” The author answers that it is easy and characteristic of men to blame the present times. Genius may have been corrupted, not by a world-wide peace, but by love of gain and pleasure, passions so strong that “I fear, for such men as we are it is better to serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world.” Melancholy words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is almost universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between liberty and servitude hard to make, were the choice within our power.

But these words assuredly apply closely to the peaceful period of Augustus, when Virgil and Horace “praising their tyrant sang,” not to the confused age of the historical Longinus. Much has been said of the allusion to “the Lawgiver of the Jews” as “no ordinary person,” but that remark might have been made by a heathen acquainted with the Septuagint, at either of the disputed dates,