of a magnetized chain which, appropriating unceasingly new links, was to cover Europe with its numberless extensions. His first conquests were in Greece. His verses, carried from city to city by actors known under the name of rhapsodists,[1] excited the keenest enthusiasm; they passed soon from mouth to mouth, fixed the attention of legislators, were the ornament of the most brilliant fêtes,[2] and became everywhere the basis of public instruction.[3] The secret flame which they concealed, becoming developed in young souls, warmed there the particular germ which they possessed, and according to their divers specie and the fertility of the soil, brought forth many talents.[4] The poets who were found endowed with a genius vast enough to receive the second inspiration in its entirety, imitated their model and raised themselves to epopœia. Antimachus and Dicæogenes are noticeable, the one for his Thebaïs, and the other for his cyprien verses.[5] Those to whom nature had given passions more gentle than violent, more touching than vehement, inclinations more rustic than bellicose, whose souls contained more sensitiveness than elevation, were led to copy certain isolated groups of this vast tableau, and placing them, following their tastes, in the palace or in the thatched cottage, caused accents of joy or of sorrow, the plaints of heroes or the sports of shepherds to be heard, and thus created elegy, eclogue, or idyl.[6] Others, on the contrary, whose too vehement enthusiasm shortened the duration of it, whose keen fiery passions had left little empire for reason, who allowed themselves to be drawn easily toward the object of which they were momentarily captive, created the ode, dithyramb, or song, according to the nature of their genius and the object of their passion. These were more numerous than all the
- ↑ Ælian., Var. Hist., l. xiii., c. 14; Diog. Laërt., In Solon., l. i., § 57.
- ↑ Plat., In Hipparc.; Pausan, l. vii., c. 26; Cicer., De Orat., l. iii.
- ↑ Eustath., In Iliad., l. i., p. 145; l. ii., p. 263.
- ↑ Dionys. Halic., De Comp. verb., t. v., c. 16 et 24; Quintil., Instit., l. x., c. 1.
- ↑ Athen., l. xv., c. 8; Aristot., De Poët., c. 16; Ælian., Var. Hist., c. 15.
- ↑ Barthel., Voyag. d'Anarchar., t. vii., ch. 80, p. 46, 52.
