CHAPTER VII.
THE CLASSICS.
The communications between father and son after this day were very constant; and for some weeks Vivian employed his time rather in conversing with his father, than with books. It must not be concealed (and when the fact is stated, it must not be conceived that Vivian's mind was a weak one) that his fixed principles became daily loosened, and that his opinions were very soon considerably modified. He speedily began to discover that there were classics in other languages besides Greek and Latin, and patient inquiry and dispassionate examination soon convinced him of the futility of that mass of insanity and imposture—the Greek philosophy. Introduced to that band of noble spirits, the great poets, and legislators, and philosophers of modern Europe, the mind of Vivian Grey recovered, in a study of their immortal writings, a great portion of its original freshness and primal vigour. Nor in his new worship did he blaspheme against the former objects of his adoration. He likened the ancient and the new literatures to the two Dispensations of Holy Writ:—the one arose to complete the other. Æschylus was to him not less divine, because Shakspeare was immortal; nor did he deny the inspiration of Demosthenes, because he recognised in Burke the divine afflatus. The ancient literature, lost in corruption, degraded, and forgotten, ceased to benefit society; the new literature arose. It hurled from "the high places," the idols of corrupt understandings and perverted taste; but while "it purified the altars of the Lord," while it commanded our reverence and our gratitude, the new literature itself vailed to the first grey Fathers of the human mind.