imparted by them to the mores. Our age is optimistic by virtue of the
economic opportunities, power, and prosperity which it enjoys. The
writers above mentioned are all pessimistic. They do not affect the age
except upon the surface, by entertaining it, but they disturb its moral
philosophy, they confuse its standards and codes, and they corrupt its
tastes. They set fashions in literature which the writers of the second
class imitate. In general, they relax the inhibitions which have come
down to us in our mores without giving by suggestion an independence of
character which would replace the traditions by sound judgments. Their
influence will be greater when it has been diluted so as to reach the
great mass. It hardly can be worse than that of the literature which is
now used by that class.

+199. Illustrations.+ In the later days of Greece the study of Homer
became an affectation. Dio Chrysostom tells of a visit he made to a
colony on the Borysthenes, in which nearly all could read the _Iliad_,
and heard it more willingly than anything else.[411] The Athenians,
especially the gilded youth, affected Spartan manners and ways. The
dandies went about with uncut hair, unwashed hands, and they practiced
fist-fights. They were as proud of torn ears as German students are of
cuts on their faces.[412] The religious and social reforms of Augustus
were a pose. They lacked sincerity and were adopted for a political
purpose. Men took them up who did not conform their own conduct to them.
Hence a "general social falsehood" was the result.[413] In the fourth
and fifth centuries all the well-to-do classes spent their time in
making imitations of the ancient literature and philosophy. They tried
to imitate Seneca and Pliny, writing compositions and letters, and
pursuing a mode of life which they supposed the men of the period of
glory had lived.[414] The French of the fifteenth century had the
greatest fear of ridicule; the Italians feared most that they might
appear to be simpletons.[415] In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
the "chevaliers transis" wore furs in summer and summer mantles in
winter. They meant to prove that "love suffices for everything."[416]
Old pictures of the sixteenth century show that it was considered modest
to squint. A Spaniard thought that it showed friendship for any one to
squint at him. It was also considered a sign of probity to have the lips
primly closed and drawn.[417] The Italian _cicisbeo_ in t