If, and when, we arrive at the close of that century, after a somewhat shorter halt and survey at the termination of the seventeenth, when the deaths of Boileau and Dryden made a real break—we shall have to complete this necessarily partial view of the whole Neo-Classic dispensation. We have seen it here in its Period of Origins, and, without endeavouring to add too many strokes to the picture, we may point to the fresh illustration of that principle which has been adumbrated (I fear, from some remarks of good critics, with insufficient perspicuity) at the close of the last volume. We saw that the tendency of Greek criticism was good, because, whether it was perfect criticism in itself or not, it was exactly the criticism needed yet further to perfect the perfections of Greek literature; and that much the same was the case in Latin. We saw that the quiescence of Criticism in Mediæval times permitted the gracious wilding of mediæval art to flourish unchecked and fill the waste places of the field. But here we see a new thing, hinted at before, the opposition, that is to say, of criticism to at least the best creation. Sidney’s dramatic criticism simply would, if it could, sweep Shakespeare from _rerum natura_, and he looks half askance at the work of his own familiar friend Spenser. Ben would put the “_Tamerlanes_ and _Tamerchams_” in the dustbin. To that untamable Romantic luxuriance which makes the glory of English literature at the time, which gives French most of its actual strength, and which, in failing measure, still supports the pride of Italy, the general tendency of Renaissance criticism opposes a perpetual “Thou shalt not.” It is not too much heeded—that would have been disastrous; but it is heeded to some extent, and that is salutary. A kind of check is put on the too wild curvetings, the too meteoric flights, of Pegasus. There was always the danger that _Jeronimo_ at the beginning and Cleveland at the end might have too truly expressed our own great age; that the odd word-coinage of the Pléiade, and the tasteless rococo stuff of French literature about 1640, might have done the same for France. Against this the critics raised unceasing voices; and, though the voices were sometimes those of geese, they really did something to save the Capitol. BOOK V THE CRYSTALLISING OF THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED ----------------------- “_It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for Aristotle drew his models of tragedy from Sophocles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind._”—DRYDEN. CHAPTER I. FROM MALHERBE TO BOILEAU.