but the more subtle harmonies of such a passage of prose as Cardinal Newman's The Site of a University need a more highly trained ear.

"He would look over the Ægean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down below; nor of those graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear, in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore, he would not deign to notice that restless living element at all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it."

Above all, the study of literature requires the ability to think about what one reads, especially to see its relation to life. This requirement means that a student must read for more than amusement and relaxation; he must try to see the light which his reading throws upon his own experience. And he must cultivate a sense of beauty and excellence. William James once said, "The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help you to know a good man when you see him." The same thing may be said of the study of literature: it should aim to help a student to know a good book when he sees one, to distinguish between the temporary and the permanent, the artificial and the true, the flashy and the genuine, the momentarily interesting and the intrinsically beautiful.

CHAPTER II

THE FORMS OF LITERATURE

THE FORMS OF LITERATURE IN GREECE AND ROME

European literature begins with the ancient Greeks. Not only were they the first of the Europeans to produce literature of enduring power; they were also the first to analyze and classify literature. The Greeks carefully distinguished between imaginative literature and the literature which records facts. The great critic Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) calls imaginative literature "poetry" and other writing "history" and thus defines the difference between them:

"It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it.

Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular."

This is a hard definition, the full meaning of which centuries of comment have not settled. Yet it is clear from this that when the Greeks talked of "poetry" they were not thinking of writing in verse as opposed to writing in prose; they were thinking of imaginative or creative literature as opposed to the recording of facts. To be sure, all Greek imaginative literature was written in verse, and consequently the distinction which we make between poetry and prose

rather than between "poetry" and "history" had no value for them.

The Greeks divided "poetry" into three divisions, epic, lyric, and dramatic, divisions based upon literature as their critics found it.

The epic literature consisted of the stories of the Greeks at the dawn of their history as they were worked into the two great poems attributed to Homer: the Iliad, the story of the events which took place in the tenth year of the siege of Troy (Ilion) and the Odyssey, the story of the wanderings of the Greek hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy. Containing stories of the heroes of their race, legends of their gods, and accounts of strange men and lands, these poems possessed for the Greeks the same importance which we attach to the Bible. Naturally the epic form was regarded as a form of great dignity and power. Critics carefully analyzed the epics, drawing from them rules which were regarded as standard literary doctrine and which in later centuries came to have a most important influence.

The epic was defined as a poem which was recited. It was required that an epic have a theme of dignity or even grandeur, that it be carefully planned to secure perfect unity, and that it move steadily in regular progress toward its end. The various devices used in the Homeric poems were regarded as part of the epic manner: the invocation to the muses with which the epics begin; the catalogue on the model of the catalogue of the ships in the Iliad; the mighty struggles between two heroic champions; the interposition of the gods in human affairs; and such matters of style as the surging roll of the dactylic hexameter, the long elaborate Homeric simile, the conventional epithet such as "crafty Odysseus" and the "wine-dark sea." So, to-day, we use the word "epic" not only to mean the two great Greek poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, but poems of other peoples modeled

upon them, such as the Roman Virgil's Eneid, or poems
which have been influenced by their characteristics such as
the Italian Dante's Divine Comedy or the English Milton's c
Paradise Lost. Then, too, we use the term to apply to heroic 2)

stories which come from the early history of other peoples
though these stories never were influenced by the Greek epics,
stories like the Old English Beowulf. A third use of the term
is in application to those stories, whether in verse or in prose,
which have plots covering many aspects of life, and many
characters which are representative of types of people rather
than individuals. We speak, for instance, of a novel of 3
"epic proportions" or of a novel as an "epic of the war"
with reference chiefly to its size and breadth of interest.

As the term epic has come to be used in the study of literature, then, it has the following uses: it refers to the Greek epic poems, to poems of other peoples modeled upon or influenced by them, to primitive stories of national heroes which have never been influenced by Greek literature, and finally to stories of heroic proportions and a wide field of plot and character.

The second division of creative literature, or "poetry" according to the Greeks, was lyric poetry. Lyric poetry was intended not to be recited like the epic, but sung to the accompaniment of the lyre (hence, lyric), either by a single voice or by a chorus. The Greek lyric poems gave expression to the poet's mood, to his hopes, fears, and longings, his love, patriotism, and rejoicing. The two most famous of the Greek lyric poets were Sappho (sixth century, B. C.) and Pindar (died 443 B. C.). Sappho was a woman of Lesbos, most of whose poems have been lost. Enough survive, however, to show her greatness as a poet of love. Pindar was

a Theban poet. His most famous poems are Odes of Victory, poems in honor of the victors of the great Greek games. They are written in a brilliant and daring imaginative style

full of bold figures and striking language. They make frequent use of heroic myths and are marked by strong religious feeling and dignified moral sentiments.

The third division of imaginative literature, dramatic poetry, was the crowning glory of Greek literature. The Greek drama began as song and dance by a chorus in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of the spirit of life and joy. The early song and dance were developed by the addition of speeches between the leader of the chorus and the members of the chorus. Later other actors were added, but the chorus and their songs formed the basis of the Greek drama, which really consisted of recitation and formal dialogue rather than of dramatic action as we understand it to-day.

The Greeks distinguished carefully between tragedy and comedy. Tragedy they regarded as a dramatic poem of great seriousness representing an important event at a critical time in the life of a person or persons of exalted rank. The outcome of this event was always melancholy. The style of tragic poetry was necessarily elevated. To the Greeks a tragic play was of religious significance presented not for amusement but for the illumination of the most serious issues of life.

Greek tragedy was developed to its highest point at Athens by the great dramatists Eschylus (525-456 B. C.), Sophocles (495 (or 6)-406 B. c.), and Euripides (480-406 B. C.). The plots of Greek tragedy were taken from the old stories of gods and heroes. By means of these familiar stories the dramatists set forth their themes of the inevitability of punishment for sin, of the tragic overturn of mighty men who felt themselves too secure in their high position, of the heroism of devoted womanhood, and of the pain and woe of war.

Comedy the Greeks regarded as light and amusing drama the object of which was to satirize the weaknesses, vices, and follies of contemporary society.