At the period when
England produced its greatest poets, we find exactly the reverse of
this, and we are thankful that the man who made the monument of Lord
Bacon had genius to copy every button of his dress, everything down to
the rosettes on his shoes, and then to write under his statue, "Thus sat
Francis Bacon"--not "Cneius Pompeius"--"Viscount Verulam." Those men had
faith even in their own shoe-strings.
After all, how is our poor scapegoat of a nineteenth century to blame?
Why, for not being the seventeenth, to be sure! It is always raining
opportunity, but it seems it was only the men two hundred years ago who
were intelligent enough not to hold their cups bottom-up. We are like
beggars who think if a piece of gold drop into their palm it must be
counterfeit, and would rather change it for the smooth-worn piece of
familiar copper. And so, as we stand in our mendicancy by the wayside,
Time tosses carefully the great golden to-day into our hats, and we turn
it over grumblingly and suspiciously, and are pleasantly surprised at
finding that we can exchange it for beef and potatoes. Till Dante's time
the Italian poets thought no language good enough to put their nothings
into but Latin,--and indeed a dead tongue was the best for dead
thoughts,--but Dante found the common speech of Florence, in which men
bargained and scolded and made love, good enough for him, and out of the
world around him made a poem such as no Roman ever sang.
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