[11] "History of English Thought in the Eighteen Century," Vol. II. chap. xii. Section iv. See also "Selections from Newman," by Lewis E. Gates, Introduction, pp. xlvii-xlviii. (1895). [12] See especially _Spectator_, Nos. 185, 186, 201, 381, and 494. [13] The classical Landor's impatience of mysticism explains his dislike of Plato, the mystic among Greeks. Diogenes says to Plato: "I meddle not at present with infinity or eternity: when I can comprehend them, I will talk about them," "Imaginary Conversations," 2d series, Conversation XV. Landor's contempt for German literature is significant. [14] "Selections from Newman," Introduction, pp. xlvii-xlviii. [15] Racine observes that good sense and reason are the same in all ages. What is the result of this generalization? Heroes can be transported from epoch to epoch, from country to country, without causing surprise. Their Achilles is no more a Greek than is Porus an Indian; Andromache feels and talks like a seventeenth-century princess: Phaedra experiences the remorse of a Christian.--_Pellissier, "Literary Movement in France,"_ p. 18. In substituting men of concrete, individual lives for the ideal figures of tragic art, romanticism was forced to determine their physiognomy by a host of local, casual details. In the name of universal truth the classicists rejected the coloring of time and place; and this is precisely what the romanticists seek under the name of particular reality.--_Ibid._ p. 220. Similarly Montezuma's Mexicans in Dryden's "Indian Emperor" have no more national individuality than the Spanish Moors in his "Conquest of Granada." The only attempt at local color in "Aurungzebe"--an heroic play founded on the history of a contemporary East Indian potentate who died seven years after the author--is the introduction of the _suttee_, and one or two mentions of elephants. [16] See "Les Orientales" (Hugo) and Nerval's "Les Nuits de Rhamadan" and "La Legende du Calife Hakem." [17] The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys; And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. --_Pope, "Essay on Criticism,"_ [18] These critical verse essays seem to have been particularly affected by this order of the peerage; for, somewhat later, we have one, "On Unnatural Flights in Poetry," by the Earl of Lansdowne--"Granville the polite." [19] "Epistle to Sacheverel." [20] "Essay on Addison." [21] Sweet hour of twilight!--in the solitude Of the pine forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er, To where the last Caesarian fortress stood, Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, How have I loved the twilight hour and thee! --_Don Juan_ [22] I must entirely agree with Monsieur Boileau, that one verse of Vergil is worth all the _clinquant _or tinsel of Tasso.--_Spectator_, No. 5. [23] _Spectator_, No. 419.