Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Universal Anthology, Vol. 21: A Collection of the Best Literature, Ancient, Medieval and Modern, With Biographical and Explanatory Notes
Contemplating the literature of the whole century, we notice how slightly new developments correspond to our arbitrary divisions of time, and perhaps we convince ourselves of the futility of literary generalisations. The art of letters has, indeed, on the whole, and in the procession of the years, certain well-marked periods. Begin ning with mere popular snatches of song, amatory, magical, religious, man advances to narrative lays of heroic adventure, and to the evolution Of professional minstrels, and castes of hymn singers. The Epic, the Drama, Satire, are developed; then come lyrics of individual experience, while, in the region Of prose, and after the discovery of writing, the brief notes of annalists expand into history; philosophy turns from semi-religious verse to pedestrian measures, and written criticism comes last of all. Greece, Rome, the mediaeval and the modern world all exhibit this natural process. But the full round once accomplished, the literature of a given century, say the nineteenth, depends for its character on forces which we can but partially estimate.
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