Virgil followed Homer; Plautus
copied Menander; and Roman literature took on that secondary and
reminiscent character which it never lost. It was a literature of
culture, not of creed. This people had so practical a genius that they
could put the world in harness; for the decoration of the world they were
willing to depend on foreign loans.
In so far as Latin literature was founded on the Greek, that is, in so
far as it was a derivative and imitative literature, it was not very fit
for missionary purposes. One people can give to another only what is its
own. The Greek gods were useless for export. An example may be taken
from the English rule in India. We can give to the peoples of India our
own representative institutions. We can give them our own authors,
Shakespeare, Burke, Macaulay. But we cannot give them Homer and Virgil,
who nevertheless continue to play an appreciable part in training the
English mind; and we can hardly give them Milton, whose subtlest beauties
depend on the niceties of the Latin speech. The trial for Latin
literature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and kennels of Rome, like
a hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The earliest Christians were
for the most part illiterate; but when at last Christianity reached the
high places of the government, and controlled the Empire, a problem of
enormous difficulty presented itself for solution. The whole elaborate
educational system of the Romans was founded on the older literature and
the older creeds.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26