constancy and perseverance; yet that the temerity of Alexander was not always the effect of impetuous passion, but sometimes the result at once of situation and deliberate reflection. As regards the political capacities of these two great conquerors, he shows that Cæsar possessed an over-mastering ascendancy over the minds of men—the talent of guiding their wills, and making them subservient to his own views and interests—in short, a consummate skill in the tactics of a party-leader. Yet he thinks him destitute of the wisdom of a law-giver, or what he emphatically calls, the organic genius of state—the power to found, or renovate a constitution. To Alexander, on the contrary, he attributes the plastic genius of legislation—the will and the ability to diffuse among nations the blessings of civilization—to plant cities, and establish free, flourishing and permanent communities.

In the year 1797, Schlegel published his first important work, entitled "the Greeks and the Romans." This work was two or three years afterwards followed by another, entitled "History of Greek Poetry." These two writings in their original form are no longer to be met with—for in the new edition of the author's works, they not only have undergone various alterations and additions, but have been, as it were, melted into one work. Winkelmann's history of art was the model which Schlegel proposed to himself in this history of Greek poetry; and we must allow that the noble school which that illustrious man, as well as Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had founded in Germany, never received a richer acquisition than in the work here spoken of. Prior to the illustrious writers I have named, Germany had produced a multitude of scholars distinguished for profound learning and critical acuteness; but their labours may be considered as only ancillary and preliminary to the works of men who, with an erudition and a perspicacity never surpassed, united a poetical sense and a philosophic discernment that could catch the spirit of antiquity, reanimate her forms, and place them in all their living freshness before our eyes.

In the first chapter of the "History of Greek Poetry," Schlegel speaks of the religious rites and mysteries of the primitive Greeks, and of the Orphic poetry to which they gave rise. Contrary to the opinion of many scholars who, though they admit the present form of the Orphic hymns to be the work of a later period, yet refer their substance to a very remote antiquity, Schlegel assigns their origin to the age of Hesiod. "Enthusiasm," he says, "is the characteristic of the Orphic poetry—repose that of the Homeric poems." His observations however on the early religion of the Greeks, form, in my humble opinion, the least satisfactory portion of this work. He next gives an interesting account of the state of society in Greece in the age of Homer, as well as in the one preceding, and shews by a long process of inductive evidence, how the Homeric poetry was the crown and perfection of a long series of Bardic poems.

He then examines, at great length, the opinions of the ancients from the earliest Greek to the latest Roman critics, on the plan, the diction and poetical merits of the Iliad and the Odyssey; interweaving in this review of ancient criticism his own remarks, which serve either to correct the errors, supply the deficiencies, or illustrate the wisdom of those ancient judges of art. After this survey of ancient criticism, he proceeds to point out some of the characteristic features of the Homeric poems. He enquires what is understood by natural poetry, or the poetry of nature; shews that it is perfectly compatible with art—that there is a wide difference between the natural and the rude—that Homer is distinguished as much for delicacy of perception, accuracy of delineation, and sagacity of judgment, as for fertility of fancy and energy of passion. The author next passes in review the Hesiodic epos, the middle epos, or the works of the Cyclic poets, and lastly, the productions of the Ionic, Æolic, and Doric schools of lyric poetry. The fragments on the lyric poetry of Greece are particularly beautiful, and comprise not only excellent criticisms on the genius of the different lyrists themselves, but also most interesting observations on the character, manners, and social institutions of the races that composed the Hellenic confederacy.

It was Schlegel's intention to have given a complete history of Greek poetry; but the execution of this task was abandoned, not from any want of perseverance, as some have imagined, but from some peculiar circumstances in the world of letters at that period. The literary scepticism of Wolf, supported with so much learning and ability, was then convulsing the German mind; and while the purity of the Homeric text, and the unity and integrity of the Homeric poems themselves were so ably contested, Schlegel deemed it a hazardous task to attempt to draw public attention to any æsthetic enquiries on the elder Greek poetry. Hence the second part of this work, which treats of the lyric poets, remained unfinished. The general qualities, which must strike all in this history of Greek poetry are, a masterly acquaintance with classical literature—a wariness and circumspection of judgment, rare in any writer, especially in one so young—a critical perspicacity, that draws its conclusions from the widest range of observation—and a poetic flexibility of fancy, that can transport itself into the remotest periods of antiquity. In a word, the author analyzes as a critic, feels as a poet, and observes like a philosopher.

But a new career now expanded before the ardent mind of Schlegel. The enterprising spirit of British scholars had but twenty years before opened a new intellectual world to European inquiry:—a world many of whose spiritual productions, disguised in one shape or another, the Western nations had for a long course of ages admired and enjoyed, ignorant as they were of the precise region from which they were brought. For the knowledge of the Sanscrit tongue and literature—an event in literary importance inferior only to the revival of Greek learning, and in a religious and philosophic point of view, pregnant, perhaps, with greater results;—mankind have been indebted to the influence of British commerce; and it is not one of the least services which that commerce has rendered to the cause of civilization. In the promotion of Sanscrit learning, the merchant princes of Britain emulated the noble zeal displayed four centuries before by the merchant princes of Florence, in the encouragement and diffusion of Hellenic literature. By dint of promises and entreaties, they extorted from the Brahmin the mystic key, which has opened to us so many wonders of the primitive world. And as a great Christian philosopher of our age[2] has observed, it is fortunate that India was not then under the dominion of the French; for during the irreligious fever which inflamed and maddened that great people, their insidious guides—those detestable sophists of the eighteenth century—would most assuredly have leagued with the Brahmins to suppress the truth, to mutilate the ancient monuments of Sanscrit lore, and thus would have for ever poisoned the sources of Indian learning. A British society was established at Calcutta—whose object it was to investigate the languages, historical antiquities, sciences, and religious and philosophical systems of Asia, and more especially of Hindostan. Sir William Jones—a name that will be revered as long as genius, learning, and Christian philosophy command the respect of mankind—was the soul of this enterprise. He brought to the