LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Esthwaite Water The Capture of Troy. From a vase in the Museum of Naples The Assassination of Julius Cæsar. After the painting by Georges The Hall of the Middle Temple, London Frontispiece FACING PAGE 11 18 50 67 83 The Birthplace of Burns 100 Abraham Lincoln. From the statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens . 131 145 177 The Canterbury Pilgrims. After the fresco painting by William Blake. 206 Portia. After the painting by John Everett Millais 233 Milton dictating "Paradise Lost." After the painting by Michael A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds'. After the painting by 260 Isabella and the Pot of Basil. After the painting by Holman Holmo 284 Thomas Carlyle. After the portrait by James McNeil Whistler 293 CHAPTER I THE EPIC LITERATURE is an interpretation of life. Great books are not written apart from the world by authors who are ignorant of men and events. Shakespeare and Milton and Tennyson, for example, were all in close touch with life. Each lived when men were thinking hard and acting strenuously; each gave expression to the best that was thought and done in his time. The plays of Shakespeare reflect the vigor and enterprise of the Elizabethan time; the poems of Milton express the stern heroism of Puritan England; Tennyson's poetry exemplifies the great struggle between science and faith in the nineteenth century. A masterpiece of literature is not the result of genius alone. It is the result of both a great individual mind and a vigorous national life. Sometimes, it is true, the personality of the author is emphasized; the important thing seems to be, not so much what he sees of life as what he thinks about it. He reflects, he philosophizes, he moralizes. Yet, in the last analysis, his concern is with the "application of ideas to life." But the author is not always prominent. In dramatic literature, for example, the reflections and comments of the dramatist are rare. We have a representation of men and events. Life seems actually to be going on before us. And this is not true of dramatic literature alone. It is true of the old popular ballads and epics, composed before the days of printed books when literature was recited or sung, and transmitted from genera |