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.