11. It is the most striking circumstance in the literary annals of the dark ages, that they seem to us still more deficient in native, than in acquired ability. The mere ignorance of letters has sometimes been a little exaggerated, and admits of certain qualifications; but a tameness and mediocrity, a servile habit of merely compiling from others, runs through the writers of these centuries. It is not only that much was lost, but that there was nothing to compensate for it; nothing of original genius in the province of imagination; and but two extraordinary men, Scotus Erigena and Gerbert, may be said to stand out from the crowd in literature and philosophy. It must be added, as to the former, that his writings contain, at least in such extracts as I have seen, unintelligible rhapsodies of mysticism, in which, perhaps, he should not even have the credit of originality. Eichhorn, however, bestows great praise on Scotus; and the modern historians of philosophy treat him with respect.[18] [18] Extracts from John Scotus Erigena will be found in Brucker, Hist. Philosophiæ, vol. iii. p. 619; in Meiners, ii. 373; or more fully, in Turner’s History of England, vol. i. 447, and Guizot, Hist. de la Civilisation en France, iii. 137, 178. The reader may consult also Buhle, Tennemann, and the article on Thomas Aquinas in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, ascribed to Dr. Hampden. But, perhaps, Mr. Turner is the only one of them who has seen, or at least read the metaphysical treatise of John Scotus, entitled De Divisione Naturæ, in which alone we find his philosophy. It is very rare out of England. |Prevalence of bad taste.| 12. It would be a strange hypothesis, that no man endowed with superior gifts of nature lived in so many ages. Though the pauses of her fertility in these high endowments are more considerable, I am disposed to think, that any previous calculation of probabilities would lead us to anticipate, we could not embrace so extreme a paradox. Of military skill, indeed, and civil prudence, we are not now speaking. But, though no man appeared of genius sufficient to burst the fetters imposed by ignorance and bad taste, some there must have been, who, in a happier condition of literature, would have been its legitimate pride. We perceive, therefore, in the deficiencies of these writers, the effect which an oblivion of good models, and the prevalence of a false standard of merit, may produce in repressing the natural vigour of the mind. Their style, where they aim at eloquence, is inflated and redundant, formed upon the model of the later fathers, whom they chiefly read; a feeble imitation of that vicious rhetoric which had long overspread the latinity of the empire.[19]