It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at
once of its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe
the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the
sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have perceived
the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and
isolated portions: those who are more finely organized, or, born in
a happier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem, which
all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built
up since the beginning of the world.
The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient
Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have
been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear
to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the
selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from
creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture
anything which might bear a particular relation to their own condition,
whilst it should bear a general one to the universal constitution of
the world.
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