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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
Ing almost the frivolities of dress , is better than a momentary and senseless caprice : it is a step , either retrograde or progressive , whose impulse is given by a complexity of circumstances that escape the attention of the multitude ; by the form of governmentSjfor example , by the greater or smaller influence of theladies ;*
by conquests , victories , and peace , by the patronage or neglect of literature in princes , and by a thousand other causes of less consequence . Thence it is that , placed in the ages of which we have spoken , Rossini and Scott might have been the first of their times , one in music and the other in the poetry of romance , supposing each to have followed his bent ; because , endowed as they
are with an exquisite organization , they would have managed to possess themselves of the sceptre . But this sceptre would have come into their hands in a very different manner from that in which they have now obtained it : for , the Psalms of David , the Litanies of the Saints , the Chaunts of the Crusaders , and above all the superstitious and fanatical spirit of the age required notes ,
tones , harmonies , and cadences of an entirely different colour from those of " the Barber of Seville : " as also , the last groans of Feudalism , mortally wounded by those same Crusaders , the institution of Knight-errantry which for some time held the place of it , and the mystified veneration with which the fair sex was
regarded , would not have been satisfied with the historical variety of Walter Scott , and much less with the profane levity ( if I may so speak ) with which he rambles through those fields into which our ancestors , like Egyptian priests , allowed no one to enter with a smile of irony on his lip .
It certainly does not yet , from what I have said , appear very clearly that in the two geniuses , of whom we are speaking , there is that principle of identity , the existence of which I have undertaken to demonstrate . Perhaps what 1 am about to add may spread brighter light over an ar g ument , the validity of which cannot be very easily or satisfactorily established from its being founded
on supposition , a species of intricate wood , out of which it is rather difficult to make an exit , although every row of trees may have the appearance of pointing to the shortest path . By transplanting lvossini and Scott into an epoch of a different physiognomy , and b y demonstrating that they could only have obtained the command over it which they exercise over the present one , by forming their genius ( so to express myself ) upon a different model , 1 have intended to establish that , resembling each other in almost every thing " , they by no means resemble others who , like them , have received from heaven splendid talents in that degree which constitutes exalted genius . To make this idea more intelligible , let me be permitted to continue my
suppo-• lie means educated women . —Ed-
Untitled Article
560 JRossini and Walter Scott .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 560, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/36/
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