new forms and been developed into the great European
languages, never recovered.

This monotony of literature, without merit, without genius and without
character, is a phenomenon which deserves more attention than it has
hitherto received; it is a phenomenon unique in the literary history
of the world. How could there have been so much cultivation, so much
diligence in writing, and so little mind or real creative power? Why
did a thousand years invent nothing better than Sibylline books,
Orphic poems, Byzantine imitations of classical histories, Christian
reproductions of Greek plays, novels like the silly and obscene romances
of Longus and Heliodorus, innumerable forged epistles, a great many
epigrams, biographies of the meanest and most meagre description, a sham
philosophy which was the bastard progeny of the union between Hellas
and the East? Only in Plutarch, in Lucian, in Longinus, in the Roman
emperors Marcus Aurelius and Julian, in some of the Christian fathers
are there any traces of good sense or originality, or any power of
arousing the interest of later ages. And when new books ceased to be
written, why did hosts of grammarians and interpreters flock in, who
never attain to any sound notion either of grammar or interpretation?
Why did the physical sciences never arrive at any true knowledge or make
any real progress? Why did poetry droop and languish? Why did history
degenerate into fable? Why did words lose their power of expression?
Why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the
signs of decay in the human mind which are possible?

To these questions many answers may be given, which if not the true
causes, are at least to be reckoned among the symptoms of the decline.
There is the want of method in physical science, the want of criticism
in history, the want of simplicity or delicacy in poetry, the want of
political freedom, which is the true atmosphere of public speaking, in
oratory. The ways of life were luxurious and commonplace. Philosophy had
become extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. At
length it ceased to exist. It had spread words like plaster over the
whole field of knowledge. It had grown ascetic on one side, mystical
on the other. Neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature.
There was no sense of beauty either in language or in art. The Greek
world became vacant, barbaric, oriental. No one had anything new to say,
or any convictio