The English Lyric 9 



of daemons of earth and air and sea, of giants and Titans and 

 the wars of gods and men, which are the substance and life of 

 cur folktales ; — aye, and it is out of these that sprung, half by 

 miracle, the vision of an immortal life, and of a destiny-con- 

 quering man. 



And with the wild phantasy of these beliefs we have to reckon 

 in any account we may give of the spiritual development forth- 

 shown in any European literature. We have to reckon with it 

 . . . but rather as the background, the hinterland of the forward 

 thought, than as its determinant. It is a background that is 

 valuable, first, as a ground of comparison for the different modes 

 that have developed upon it, and second, as the secret and spring 

 of that like-mindedness which enables Europeans of diverse 

 culture-traditions to comprehend and sympathize with one 

 another. As, for example, it is great profit to compare what is 

 made of the idea of Fate by Hellene and Teuton respectively, the 

 Nemesis of the one a moral principle, Righteous Indignation, the 

 Wyrd of the other a Valkyrie-like Snatcher of Souls, implacable, 

 wrathful ; or, again, to contrast the clodlike Jotunn of the North- 

 man or the malignant man-devouring Fomor of the Gael with the 

 Titan of the brighter myth of the South, the Titan who may be 

 a Prometheus and a champion of mankind, his Earth-born kin. 



Against the murk background, what we must seek in each 

 is the distinctive light which each race develops in its own 

 habitation. 



III. THE GREEK MODE 



Let us once again consider this " luminous " Hellenic mode 

 which plays so profound a role in the development of all European 

 literature. 



" The ' serene and classical ' Greek of Winckelmann and 

 Goethe," says Gilbert Murray, " did good service to the world in 

 his day, though we now feel him to be mainly a phantom. He 

 has been succeeded, especially in the works of painters and poets, 

 by an aesthetic and fleshly Greek in fine raiment, an abstract 

 Pagan who lives to be contrasted with an equally abstract early 

 Christian or Puritan, and to be glorified or mishandled accord- 



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