Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/181

 Early English Poetry.

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��The Arabs were as fond of letters as of war. In the eighth century, when they overran the Asiatic provinces, they found many Greek books which they read \vith eagerness. They trans- lated such as best pleased them into Arabic. Greek poetry they rejected be- cause it was polytheistic. Of Greek his- tory they made no use, because it re- corded events prior to the advent of their prophet. The poHtics of Greece and its eloquence were not congenial to their despotic notions, and so they passed them by. Grecian ethics were suspended by the Koran, hence Plato was overlooked. Mathematics, meta- physics, logic, and medicine, accorded with their tastes. Hence they trans- lated and studied Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, and illustrated them with voluminous commentaries. These works stimulated native authors to write new treatises. The Arabs, therefore, be- came distinguished for their skill in logic, medicine, mathematics, and kin- dred studies. They founded universi- ties during the eighth century in the cities of Spain and Africa. Charle- magne commanded their books to be translated into Latin ; thus Aristotle entered Europe through Asia by the double door of the Arabic and Latin tongues, and, by long prescription, still holds his place in European schools.

Charlemagne founded the universities of Bononia, Pavia, Paris, and Osnaburg, in Hanover. These became centres for propagating the new sciences. The Normans, too, shared in the general progress of learning, and carried with them their attainments into England. The wild imagination of the Saracens kindled a love of romantic fiction, wherever their influence was felt. The crusades made the Europeans intimately acquainted with the literature of the Arabs. Says Marton, who maintains

��that romantic fiction originated in Ara^ bia, in his " History of Enghsh Poetry,"^ " Amid the gloom of superstition, in an< age of the grossest ignorance and cre-- dulity, a taste for the wonders of orien' tal fiction was introduced by the Ara* bians into Europe, many countries of which were already seasoned to a recep- tion of its extravagancies by means of the poetry of the Gothic scalds, who, perhaps, originally derived their ideas from the same fruitful region of invention.

"These fictions coinciding with the reigning manners, and perpetually kept up and improved in the tales of trouba- dours and minstrels, seem to have centred about the eleventh century in the ideal histories of Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, which record the supposi- tious achievements of Charlemagne and King Arthur, where they formed the groundwork of that species of narrative called romance. And from these begin- nings or causes, afterwards enlarged and enriched by kindred fancies fetched from the crusades, that singular and ca- pricious mode of imagination arose, which at length composed the marvel- lous machineries of the more sublime ItaUan poets, and of their disciple Spen- ser." The theory which traces romantic fiction to the Arabs is but partially true. The entire Hterature of that age was monstrous, full of the most absurd and extravagant fancies. History was fabu- lous ; poetry mendacious and philosophy erroneous. Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying le- gends to adorn the hves of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to

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