то THE THIRTY-THIRD VOLUME OF THE MONTHLY REVIEW ENLARGED. ART. I. FOREIGN LITERATURE. Lycée, ou Cours de Littérature, &c.; i.e. The Lyceum, By or a Course of Lectures on antient and modern Literature. J. F. LAHARPE. 8vo. 7 Vols. Paris. 1799. Imported by De Boffe, London. WE E had been long waiting for a copy of this interesting work, when we at length received that which is now on our table. The importance of the subject, the reception which the lectures obtained when publicly delivered at Paris previously to and during the Revolution, and the number of volumes for which they had furnished materials, all acted as stimulants to our curiosity. A complete course of lectures on the rise and progress of literature seems to imply a history of the transactions of human intellect; at least, in a cultivated state for where there is no literature, there is no civilization. The plan of this enterprize, indeed, is not new: but the execution seems to be more complete than in any former attempts. To extract the essence of every antient work that has escaped the destructive scythe of time; to analyse its beauties and point out its defects; to distinguish creation from memory, or originals from copies: to draw parallels, with deductions for those times and that state of society and cultivation in which works have been produced; to measure talents and weigh merit by fair standards: all this forms a task which requires learning, perspicacity, meditation, taste, and enlargement of mind. APP. REV. Vol. XxxIII. Gg A A per A performance which carries us back to poetry, eloquence, history, philosophy, Aristotle, Longinus, &c. may perhaps heal and soothe the mind; and may afford a balm which is the more necessary at present, because hostile politics have rendered us ferocious, and have robbed us of many of the finer feelings of the human heart. We have indeed physics, mathematics, and chemistry, to humanize us: but the flowers which we are able to gather in these fields of science, although among the most noble, are not always of the most fragrant kind. M. DE LA HARPE, a pupil of Voltaire, a Philosophe, and at first an abettor of the French Revolution, has abandoned the licentious principles of his master, and has become a powerful advocate for religion, morality, and social order. He has long distinguished himself among men of letters by his productions; he was a member of the Royal Academy before the Revolution; and it was allowed that he possessed a large por tion of well-digested knowlege, a sound judgment, and a pure and refined taste. This we have long known: but we did not expect to find such extensive crudition, such discriminative judgment in analysing works in every species of polite literature, nor (at the present period of his life) such feeling, animation, and fire, as he has manifested in the decisions and translations contained in the performance before us. In his preface to the first volume, the author gives an ac count of the establishment of the Lyceum in 1786, of its overthrow in 1789, and of its revival after the reign of terror. Respecting his present undertaking, he observes: The first confession, which it is incumbent on me to make, is that such an enterprise was beyond my powers, if it were equally necessary to explore all its several parts, many of which I was not qualified to investigate. I even venture to doubt whether it be in the power of any one man to execute the whole with equal ability.We have, it is true, an infinite number of didactic books, and bibliographic collections, the merit of which it does not become me to dis pute, since many of them have been of use to myself: but all treat particular objects, or are nothing more than nomenclatures or dictionaries for general things. This, I believe, is the first time either in France or in Europe, that a regular history of all the arts of thinking and imagination has been offered, from the time of Homer to the present period, in which nothing but mathematics and natural history are omitted. I cannot too often repeat how much I feel myself une qual to so immense a task; and if I am here deemed less modest than I wish to appear, I shall likewise be deemed more ignorant than I really am. To study, as I have done, any one object of this course, would be sufficient to persuade others, as it has convinced me, that perhaps a single article would require the life of one artist, and and a good artist, to treat it amply and give to it all its perfection. It will be seen how I was enveloped in this plan, and what efforts I have made during twelve years to fulfil its object to the utmost of my power; and I am inclined to hope that those, who best know what to expect, will be the most ready to excuse what must still be inevitably wanting. Such readers also will comprehend how much more it has cost me to compress than to extend my materials; and that to include them in twelve volumes, has not been one of my least difficulties. * This is not an elementary book for young students, nor a work of erudition for the learned. It includes whatever I have been able to extract of the flower, the juice, and the substance of every object of instruction which belongs to my undertaking. It is the completion of study for those who wish to advance farther than they have yet gone; and a supplement for persons in the great world, who have not leisure to compose one for themselves. I have been particularly ambitious that it should be of some use to orators and poets; and if they should allow the utility of the work, it will be some consolation to me, though it should not be so amusing to others as I could wish.' In the Introduction, the author treats of general ideas concerning the art of writing; the reality and necessity of this art; the nature of precepts; the alliance of philosophy with the powers of invention; and the acceptation of the words Taste and Genius.-These subjects are ingeniously discussed: but we perceive some expressions with which memory has furnished the writer, though it has failed to enable him to acknowlege the sources of them; as sterile abondance, from Boileau; hérissé du pedantisme-hérissé du grec, from D'Alembert; &c. &c. We do not always subscribe to the opinions here delivered, particularly those which relate to English authors; concerning whom, whether in peace or war with France, we are always to be on the qui vive? Twelve or fourteen pages of this introduction are employed in discussing the acceptation of the words Genius and Taste. The antients, who personified every thing, assigned to all human beings an attendant spirit; a good or evil genius. In later times, genius was confined to mental powers of invention, combination, penetration, &c.: but, in the present day, it seems to be vulgarly applied in saying that a man of talents, of any odd or peculiar kind, is a genius. M. DE LA HARPE finds no such use made of this word, in the works of writers of the first class in the reign of Louis XIV.; and indeed it has always appeared to us a colloquial vulgarism in our own language, He speaks of three volumes more, for the philosophy of the eighteenth century. We believe that vols. 8, 9, and 10, are already pub lished: but we have not yet been able to obtain them. however respectable the authors may be who have used it. Even Voltaire, the lecturer thinks, (and we are of his opinion,) has applied the word genius unwarrantably : "Ils sont encore au rang des beaux-ésprits, 'Mong wits, though not a perfect blank, This appellation, still worse in the plural than in the singular, might have been avoided, at least in English: 'Mong wits though none are perfect blanks, Not one with men of genius ranks. An excellent passage is quoted from one of Boileau's prefaces; which, at the same time that it gives his idea of the word genius, saftens the severity of his satire against men of partial talents and abilities, which he allowed them to possess in other pursuits than poetry, and sometimes even in such poetry as was not the immediate object of his censure. Rules (M. DE LA H. observes) have been often called the tyrants of genius; whereas rules are its best guides. Taste is said to be timid and pusillanimous; yet that alone teaches how to dare happily. It is a vulgar prejudice of ignorance, to say that, where taste is wanting, genius abounds. Young people, (who are easily persuaded of their superior disposition for any art or science,) when ever they are flattered by their friends with having genius, think that they have discovered a short road to knowlege and talents, and that study and practice are necessary only for dull plodders. Taste and genius are abstract terms, so vague and hard to be defined, that every one gives to them whatever weight or import he pleases; so that men often talk and write without understanding each other. They dispute whether writers of the first class had ge nius; and if any be allowed to them, then, how much? is the question; and, still in this spirit of comparison, who had the most genius of any two specific writers? so that, the word genius not being clearly defined, this quality is frequently refused to the best writers, and granted to the worst.' This Introduction, which is written with great spirit, was read at the first meeting of the patrons of the Lyceum-esta blishment, in 1786, attended by all the flower of Paris, male and female. By presenting our readers with the last paragraph of this address, they will be more fully acquainted with the lecturer's design than from the result of any inquiries which we have been able to make concerning the origin of the institution. The object of inviting you to this Lyceum has been a desire of combining every species of amusement and instruction; and can there be be a more noble and interesting incitement proposed to you than the present, which is to converse with the greatest literary men of every age, from Homer to Voltaire, from Archimedes to Buffon? It will not be mere vanity, if our nation glories in having known better than others the advantages of sociability, and all the pleasures of elegant and cultivated minds. We shall now have an assembly in which the lovers of learning will associate to study the master-pieces of the human mind; and from which the fair sex will not be excluded, who by their presence alone will oblige us to give to our lectures a form of instruction the most pleasing and attractive; will command from all who have received any education, that decorum and circumspection which are so necessary in literary assemblies; and who, by true feeling and quick sensibility, impart the highest charms and the greatest effect to those impressions in which they participate. Here those immortal authors whom time has consecrated will appear, not, as in the schools, enveloped in pedantry; not, as in our theatres, surrounded by illusion and the magic of stage effect: but in their native grandeur, and in the simple majesty of their own genius. Here their names will be uttered only with those testimonies of veneration which will not stifle the confession that some faults exist, mixed with so many beauties. It is to you that they will apply for refuge from foes to their glory, and in your hands they will deposit their monuments in safety from mutilation. We are all equally their admirers and disciples. It is not by my feeble voice that their culogium will be pronounced, but by your own admiration of their beauties; and I shall think that I have attained the most desirable object of my ambition, if my thoughts should appear to you only as those of your own feelings and reminiscences. Perhaps I may flatter myself that I have not been wholly useless, if the few moments which you may pass here should induce you to consecrate others to the study of those classics which in our early youth we so little understood, and which were designed to be felt at a more mature age, but are too often neglected during a life of dissipation. We are never so well instructed as by our own reflections; by a habit of reading, and a choice of books, which form our taste for what is beautiful and our love of what is true; and, to conclude with a precept of a great poet, who has so often clothed useful truths in charming verse, "S'occuper, c'est savoir jouir; Course of Lectures. First Part. The Antients. Book I. Poetry.-Chap. I. Analysis of the Poetic of Aristotle. Gg3 The |