CHAP. II. _____was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.
Degeneracy.The sublime Longinus, who in somewhat a later period, and in the court of a Syrian queen, preserved the spirit of ancient Athens, observes and laments this degeneracy of his contemporaries, which debased their sentiments, enervated their courage, and depressed their talents. " In the same manner," says he, " as some children always remain pygmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined ; thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we admire in the ancients ; who, living under a popular government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted[1]." This diminutive stature of mankind, if we pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of pygmies, when the fierce giants of the north broke in, and mended the puny breed. They restored a manly spirit of freedom ; and after the revolution of ten centuries, freedom became the happy parent of taste and science.
↑Longin. de Sublim. c. 43. p. 229. edit. Toll. Here too we may say of Longinus, " His own example strengthens all his laws." Instead of proposing his sentiments with a manly boldness, he insinuates them with the most guarded caution, puts them into the mouth of a friend, and, as far as we can collect from a corrupted text, makes a show of refuting them himself.
