: simply the Church, it was the Deity; the King was more than a high priest, he was very God, or the vicar of God. Nor is this the only way in which the Orientals have signalized themselves by the assumption of Divinity all sacred writings are of the East. Whether truly or not, and whether it be in the Bible, in the Koran, in the Shasters, in the Vedas, or in other books, the wise men of the East have put forward the most remarkable claims; they profess to utter divine oracles, and this, not simply by revealing the will, but even in some cases by repeating the words of the Most High. Nay, there was one sect of Mohammedans, the Sonnites or orthodox, who, in opposition to the Motazalites and Schiites, maintained to the death that the Koran is uncreated and eternal. Finally, is there not a world of meaning in that story of Psapho who, in the Libyan desert, taught the birds to say and thus to spread a report that Psapho is a God? II. This leads us to the second, a higher stage of artistic progress. For the deifying of self above mentioned is but the premature development of a great truth; the lyrical anticipation of an epic idea. That Immortality, through which alone Good is possible, is the dream of the lyric. But in striving after this it very soon and naturally becomes a question, How is Immortality itself possible? and it is readily perceived that to God alone belongs in any strict sense and as an essential attribute Everlasting life. This truth is perceived by the lyrical as well as by the epic artist; but the former in the mingled blindness of haste and egotism leaps to a wrong conclusion. He willeth his own immortality; then, discerning how alone it is possible, he willeth his own Divinity. Such was the tragedy of Eden. Yearning after immortality, our first parents would be as Gods possessed of the secret of immortality. Or, if not to this, the Oriental goes to the other extreme, and looks forward to the abolition of his own individuality, when at death his life shall return to God who gave it, and he shall be swallowed up and for ever lost in the Divine. Not so does it fare with the Greek or epic artist. He too has a craving for immortality, and to him also comes in due time the query, Is it possible? and how is it possible? With him, however, the result is, that he is content to deny self, content to be naught, content to die that he may thus truly live. Even when, in his most lyrical mood, the Greek displays so much of self-seeking as to pant for deathless renown, he is clearly willing so far to deny himself as to merge his own immortality in that of his race. For, rightly understood, does not the desire of fame amount to this: Though I, an individual, go hence, yet my race will survive survive perhaps for ever; and, content to die, since death is inevitable, I hope in the remembrance of that race to live everlastingly. But, in epic mood, the artist goes much farther, insomuch that his feeling may be regarded as the very antipodes of lyrical. Burning for immortality, he soon discovers that it is not an inherent property of the Ego; but he finds it in the Non-ego, he finds it only in God. What then? Can you understand how he should acquiesce in such a state of things? Understand it or not, he does acquiesce, and this acquiescence ever is the turning point of a man's life, by which he passes from what Mr Carlyle would call the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes. Of self, says the artist, I will think no more, talk no more, let me think and speak of eternal realities, whatever these may be; I may or may not achieve immortality, but whether life or death be mine, I will live and die in the presence of the Eternal. In a word, he prizes immortality as much as ever, but now no longer for himself nor for its own sake; he prizes it as characteristic of the alone true, the alone real, the alone Divine. Reality after stating this to be the grand object of Greek or epic art, is it any contradiction to say that the Greek or epic artist above everything sought after the Divine ideal? It is but another version of the same statement; the Divine ideal being the only steadfast reality. And perhaps it is in this form that the truth will most readily be recognised, for it is the version most commonly received; in fact, so commonly received that, opening any treatise on the nature of art, whether a college essay or an academy lecture, an article or a volume, we find it blazoned on every page that the Greek strove heart and hand to embody the ideal, to incarnate the Divine. For the ablest, the fullest, the most eloquent, and in every way the best exposition of this, the theology of art, the reader is referred to Mr Ruskin's work on Modern Painters. It is true that he there says little or nothing directly bearing on the productions of Greek art, but the whole of his work is written from a Greek, that is, an epic or historical point of view. All art is of necessity more or less historical. Even when most exclusively lyrical in form as well as in spirit, even in music, even in the dance, it has to a certain extent the effect of history; and indeed every overt act of which man is capable partakes of the same nature, so as willingly or unwillingly to tell a tale. It must be evident, however, that there is a class of works which are historical in a much narrower sense, historical not simply in effect, but also in design. In the lyric the poet merely puts his own existence to the proof, merely desires to perpetuate that existence by its reproduction under new forms, in a word, merely displays what the Orientals have always remarkably displayed, and what a phrenologist would call philoprogenitiveness. The spirit of the true historian, however, is not thus philoprogenitive, it is rather acquisitive. He desires to take possession of the Non-ego, and to make it a possession for ever-Tμa és deí. In search of the essentially true and real, he very soon finds that it is not in the Me, that it is uncreate, that it is Divine; and he endeavours by historical belief and historical records to make the Divine a human possession. The Muses were daughters of Zeus and of Mnemosyne ; their ideas were of heaven, their arts were but arts of Memory. III. Here enters Christianity, not simply giving to mankind an historical revelation of certain Divine facts, but also, as its chief glory, imparting to the soul of the believer a Divine life; and that makes all the difference between Olympian and Christian, epic and dramatic art. The epic artist gazes upon the Divine from afar; and whether he gives utterance in lyrical, in narrative, or in imitative forms to what he has thus apprehended, he does it with an eye to history: this or that is worth knowing, worth remembering, worth having, let it therefore be recorded with indelible inks and with pens of iron. The dramatic artist, however, draws nearer to God, is transformed into the Divine likeness, and begins to imitate for the sake of imitating. The epic artist beholding something divine, say, in a flower, if he be a painter, endeavours with his pencil to imitate its shape and hues; but this, only that he may appropriate the divine something as by a bond or deed of security. On the other hand, the dramatist, when he sees the godly existence of a plant, puts himself |