530.
[186] To this solution of the question, why literature should generally commence with attempts at philosophy, may be added another: -- When written first breaks upon oral communication, the reading public must necessarily be extremely confined.

In many early nations, that reading public would be composed of the caste of priests; in this case philosophy would be cramped by superstition.

In Greece, there being no caste of priests, philosophy embraced those studious minds addicted to a species of inquiry which rejected the poetical form, as well as the poetical spirit.

It may be observed, that the more limited the reading public, the more abstruse are generally prose compositions; as readers increase, literature goes back to the fashion of oral communication; for if the reciter addressed the multitude in the earlier age, so the writer addresses a multitude in the later; literature, therefore, commences with poetical fiction, and usually terminates with prose fiction.

It was so in the ancient world--it will be so with England and France.