ART. I. History of Spanish Literature. By GEORGE TICKNOR. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1849. 3 vols. 8vo.
LITERARY history is the least familiar kind of historical writing. It is, in some respects, the most difficult, requiring, and certainly, far the most laborious study. The facts for civil history we gather from personal experience, or from the examination of a comparatively few authors, whose statements the historian transfers, with such modification and commentary as he pleases, to his own pages. But in literary history, the books are the facts, and pretty substantial ones in many cases, which are not to be mastered at a glance, or on the report of another. It is a tedious process to read through a library in order to decide that the greater part is probably not worth reading at all.
Literary history must come late in the intellectual development of a nation. It is the history of books, and there can be no history of books till books are written. It presupposes, moreover, a critical knowledge, an acquaintance with the principles of taste, which can come only from a wide study and comparison of models. It is, therefore, necessarily the product of an advanced state of civilization and mental cul
Although criticism, in one form or another, was studied and exemplified by the ancients, yet they made no progress