helps them to forget, but which in hours of danger they are compelled to remember. The most natural illustration of this is Horace's wellknown Ode, which I give in Conington's translation.

PARCUS DEORUM.

My prayers were scant, my offerings few,
While witless wisdom fool'd my mind;
But now I trim my sails anew,

And trace the course I left behind.

For lo! the Sire of heaven on high,

By whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven,
To-day through an unclouded sky

His thundering steeds and car has driven.
E'en now dull earth and wandering floods,
And Atlas' limitary range,

And Styx, and Tænarus' dark abodes
Are reeling. He can lowliest change

And loftiest; bring the mighty down

And lift the weak; with whirring flight
Comes Fortune, plucks the Monarch's crown,
And decks therewith some meaner wight.
(Hor. Od., Bk. i. 34.)

Thus the poetical and the religious feeling join hands. They may not be indispensably necessary to one another. Indeed they are not. We shall see that poetry may be lusty and strong while quite indifferent to religion; but nevertheless they cannot long remain sundered. Poetry has been glad to use the sublime ele

ments of religion to build up its most noble work; she has found in the deep religious problems of life her most invigorating food; she has reached her loftiest flights when religion has impelled her wings. Nor is the benefit wholly on one side. Poetry repays her debt, and religion finds in poetry her ally and evangelist. She has wrought some of her profoundest and most enduring impressions by the aid of poetry.

A verse may find him who a sermon flies.

And it is through the aid of poetry that religion has been able to rouse ardour and revive courage; and times without number the lonely heart of the exiled and weary warrior of the faith has been comforted and quickened by hearing one of the Songs of Zion.

CHAPTER II

RELIGION AND LITERARY INSPIRATION

THE religious sentiment was the cradle of the drama. It is not in the history of the Greek drama alone that we find evidence of this. The drama in France and in England owed its beginning to the influence of religion.

On

"The Church," says an interesting French writer, "was in France the first Theatre." This was literally true; for in the churches began those representations of religious history out of which the more established drama arose. the great and most solemn days of the Christian year some of the scenes of the sacred story were enacted. There were mystery, morality, and miracle plays. The great Passion Play at Ober Ammergau is a magnificent survival of what was attempted in many places in former days. But the earlier plays were performed in the churches. There were serious and less serious

presentations of the leading facts and incidents in the sacred story. The first were mainly religious tragedies. The awful scenes of the Agony, the Betrayal, the Trial, and the Death of our Lord were enacted. But there were other representations which might be called almost comedies. At some festivals a frolicsome spirit was allowed-certain buffooneries were permitted in the pieces played. The fate of some of the adversaries of the faith was exhibited in laughterprovoking fashion. In the carved woodwork of our cathedrals we find grotesque scenes which may be reminiscences of these. Below the seat of one of the stalls in Ripon Cathedral there is a carving which represents a man seated in a wheelbarrow and grasping a bag. It is Judas Iscariot, still clutching his gains, being wheeled off to his doom. Thus this lighter element mingled with the severe in the Church plays of the Middle Ages.

By degrees a change took place. The dramas were no longer played in church. This was the first step towards a freer treatment of subject. As long as the play was represented in church the subjects were necessarily limited, and the methods of treatment were obliged to conform to certain current orthodox conceptions. Once re

moved from the sacred buildings a wider range of subject and a freer rendering became possible. But the religious character of the dramas did not disappear all at once. This was partly due to the popular taste, which then delighted in the religious plays to which people had been accustomed, and partly also to the fact that the conduct of the plays was in the hands of the religious orders. Thus we find one religious order, who occupied the Hospital of the Trinity outside the gate of St. Denis, gave on certain fête days representations of the Passion and the Resurrection, and of the scenes of Heaven and Hell.

Out of these mystery and miracle plays there developed the regular drama. Out of the moralities, as they were then called, sprang allegorical representations. Out of the gay buffooneries grew farces. The piece known as the 'Jeu de Saint Nicolas" was the precursor of "Polyeucte."

What was true of France was also true of England. In our own country also the mystery or miracle plays were the forerunners of the drama. They were popular here in the twelfth century. The aim of these plays was instruction. A certain lesson or fact of the faith was