What the Greeks began
the critics and authors of the time of Augustus had settled in its
completed form, and the scholars of the Renaissance had only interpreted
their findings for modern use. There was the tragedy, which had certain
proper parts and a certain fixed order of treatment laid down for it;
there was the heroic poem, which had a story or "fable," which must be
treated in a certain fixed manner, and so on. The authors of the
"Classic" period so christened themselves because they observed these
rules. And they fancied that they had the temper of the Augustan
time--the temper displayed in the works of Horace more than in those of
any one else--its urbanity, its love of good sense and moderation, its
instinctive distrust of emotion, and its invincible good breeding. If
you had asked them to state as simply and broadly as possible their
purpose they would have said it was to follow nature, and if you had
enquired what they meant by nature it would turn out that they thought
of it mainly as the opposite of art and the negation of what was
fantastic, tortured, or far sought in thinking or writing. The later
"Romantic" Revival, when it called itself a return to nature, was only
claiming the intention which the classical school itself had proclaimed
as its main endeavour.
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