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A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Antient [sic] Greece
A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Antient Greece - sic Author:William Mure Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CRITICAL HISTORY, BOOK I. INTRODUCTION. — MYTHICAL PERIOD. CHAPTER I. PLAN AND PROPOSED EXTENT OP THE WORK. 1. HISTORY OF LITERATURE NEGLECTED AS A ... more »BRANCH OP POPULAU COMPOSITION. — 2. ADVANTAGES OF ITS BETTER CULTIVATION 3. ERAS OR PERIODS OP GREC1AK LITERATURE. JUST LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT. — 4. CHARACTERISTICS OF ITS EAKL1ER STAGES. " HOMERIC QUESTION." POETICAL PERIOD. 1. A Prominent feature of distinction between the early more genial stages of literary culture, and those of its maturity or decay, is the tendency of the human mind, in the former periods to produce for itself, in the latter to speculate on the works of others. This remark may indeed only appear strictly applicable to a state of society in which the origin and early progress of intellectual pursuit can be traced to the spontaneous efforts of native genius. The case is somewhat different vhere the first advances in the arts of civilised life have been made under the guidance of foreign or antient models. Hence among the nations of modern Europe, whose civilisation is founded on the ruins of VOL. I. B that of classical antiquity, scholastic or grammatical science has invariably preceded or accompanied the rise of taste for original composition. Even here, however, in regard to the properly national department of letters, the principle involved in the distinction above drawn will be found to hold good. Whatever zeal may have been displayed during our own middle ages by the learned men of Italy, France, or England, as commentators of the anticnt classics, it was not until the art of composition in the native languages of those countries hud reached a certain stage of maturity, that the productions of their native authors supplied any field for the labours of professional grammarians. In Gre...« less