It has been observed, under all great governments acting over wide spread empires, that both the arts and literature quickly come to a stand, and most generally begin to decline afterwards. In fact, Mr. Hume makes the bold assertion in his Essays, "that when the arts and sciences come to perfection in any state, from that moment they naturally or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in that nation where they formerly flourished." His remark is certainly much more applicable to large monarchical governments than to such a system as ours. In large countries, with great national governments, there will be quickly formed in literature as perfect a despotism as exists in politics. Some few great geniuses will arise, explore certain departments of literature, earn an imperishable reputation, die, and bequeath to posterity in their writings a model ever after to be imitated, and for that very reason never to be excelled. And thus it is that certain standard authors establish their dominion in the world of letters, and impose a binding law on their successors, who, it has been well said, do nothing more than transpose the incidents, new-name the characters, and paraphrase the sentiments of their great prototypes. It is known that under the Roman emperors, even as late as the time of Justinian, Virgil was called _the poet_, by way of distinction, throughout the western empire, while Homer received the same appellation in the eastern empire. These two poets were of undisputed authority to all their successors in epic poetry. We are told that in the vast empire of China, speaking but one language, governed by one law, and consequently moulded into one dull homogeneous character, this literary despotism is still more marked. When the authority of a great teacher, like that of Confucius, is once established, the doctrine of passive obedience to such authority is just as certainly enforced upon succeeding literati as the same doctrine towards the monarch is enforced on the subject. Now all this has a tendency to cramp genius, and paralyze literary effort. The developing genius of the modern world was arrested in the career of invention at least, and the imagination was tamed down by the servile imitation of the ancients immediately after the revival of letters. And perhaps one of the greatest benefits conferred on learning by the reformation, consisted of the new impulse that was suddenly communicated to the human mind--an impulse that at once broke asunder the bonds which the literature of the ancient world had rivetted--set free the mind after directing it into a new career of inquiry and investigation, unshackled even by the Latin language, which had so long robbed the vernacular tongues of Europe of the honors justly due to them from the literati of the age.[5]