Even ments and rewards clearly and definitely conceived. Another tendency present from the beginning, another aspect of the religious ideal which took clearer and clearer shape, though it failed to attain to a complete manifestation and a perfect revelation, was the monotheistic tendency. This shows itself, even in Homer, in two forms. There is the supremacy of Zeus, which is hardly distinguishable from destiny, for his will and the determination of fate are one.' But in spite of the fact that he is literally the Unseen, inasmuch as he is the only one of the Homeric gods who never appears in visible form to man, the individuality of the other deities was too strongly marked to allow of their being absorbed into the existence of one personal God. There remained the other form, also present in Homer, the tendency to generalisation and abstraction in speaking of the divine. In the "Odyssey" the divine action is already often generalised; not only are gods spoken of in the plural 'more frequently than in the "Iliad," but "god" or "a ""god," in the singular, often occurs where it is uncertain 'what individual deity is in question' (p. 94). This generalised use of Osós is even more frequent in Pindar; and later (though Professor Campbell does not notice it) ò Saíuwv is commonly used in the same way, and to express the same shade of feeling-something between compromise and non-committal as to the real separate existence of all the many different deities of the traditional polytheism. In Herodotus the process goes a step further, and we find for the first time an abstract, neuter term, Tò Ostov, which is a distinct movement away from the personality of ɛós or ó Saíuwv. To say that he attaches more reality to such abstractions as τὸ θεῖον, or τὸ δαιμόνιον, than he does to the individual personal deities who figure so frequently and so pleasantly in his pages, is rather to understate the case; with the profoundest belief in the divine, he believes that the numerous deities of polytheism are absolutely human inventions. That Eschylus also held them to be (in his own phrase) one form with many names,' and believed that, no matter to whom the worshipper prays-whether to Zeus, Jehovah, or Allah-his prayers are heard, provided that he worships in spirit and in truth, is plain from the first chorus of the Agamemnon : 'Zeus,-by what name soe'er He glories being addressed, I name the Highest and Best. Relief from this vain burden of the mind.' (P. 274.) That this was the feeling of Sophocles and Euripides also could easily be shown, if space allowed of the necessary quotations. They also found in direct personal communion with the Unseen a refuge and haven of rest from the doubts and difficulties which the orthodox form of traditional religion excited and could not allay. Eschylus, however, had no desire to break away from the traditional form; he was of the earnest conviction that the traditional beliefs and national mythology enshrined the truth, and if read aright as he spent his life and genius in trying to read and interpret them-could be made to yield the truth. Sophocles, too, though distinctly teaching that the Unwritten Laws, the commandments of God, were above the traditions of men, recognised with serene toleration that the divine spirit spoke by the lips of a Teiresias, the representative of the orthodox form, as well as to the hearts of those whom that form could no longer satisfy. Euripides wavers between the desire to make myths instrumental to true religion, and the impulse to show, by working them out to their consequences, how fatal to religious truth they are. Plato began by open denunciations of the traditional myths and the rites of sacrifice, but his final attitude, in the Laws,' recognises and acquiesces in the necessity of such institutions. In point of fact every religion, or rather every stage of religious evolution, must have its form, if it is to do its work. It is not merely that every earnest conviction cannot help finding outward expression for itself and bewraying itself in word and deed, but that most men, in order to maintain their convictions in a state of healthy efficiency, require periodic appeals to them and systematic oppor tunities for reaffirming them, for doing something to emphasise their affirmation. This need seems to be felt, and to be provided for, even in the lowest stages of the evolution of religion. But the faith which is thus expressed, and adequately expressed, is ex hypothesi faith in its least developed stage, and the form which is adequate to it will be inadequate to its later developements. In fine, any form of religion is the expression of a particular stage in the perpetually growing manifestation of the religious ideal. Polytheism, with its attendant myths and rites, was the form taken by Greek religion before the Homeric age. It remained an adequate expression of that need of the gods which all men have until the time of the Lyric poets, who instinctively appeal in their hours of most intense emotion to Zeus, or Dionysus, or Apollo. But after their time the form and the faith of Greek religion developed on independent lines; and it was precisely at the time when the ceremonial of public worship was most imposing and ritual at its highest that the most religious minds were beginning to be most conscious of the need of something which neither ritual nor mythology could supply, and the want of which was destined in the fulness of time to be fatal to both. But of this those who were in charge of the ritual knew nothing: it was a thing hidden from them. The connecting links between the safety which a Homeric god can afford if he wills and the developed conception of salvation-between the owτnpia of the Greek mysteries and of Christianity-do not fall within the scope of Professor Campbell's work, nor does he allude to them. ART. IV.-1. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and Memoir. 2 vols. By WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. London: 1895. 2. Life of William Morris. 2 vols. By J. W. MACKAIL. London, New York, and Bombay: 1899. 3. William Morris: his Art, Writings, and Public Life. By AYMER VALLANCE. London: 1897. 4. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters. London: 1899. By P. H. BATE. THERE remains little to say, either in the field of literary or in that of technical criticism, that has not been already said and re-echoed concerning the aims and methods of the Pre-Raphaelites and their heirs and successors of a somewhat later day. The history of the birth of the school which was to inaugurate the renaissance period, not only of English painting but of the general pursuit and understanding, lay no less than professional, of all things beautiful in colour and form, has been traced in Mr. Bate's book both to its fountain-head and in its most recent developements, and the reproductions of the pictures of various artists, living and dead, will give those who study them a clearer conception of the characteristics of the school than volumes of letterpress. Indeed, the principal features of the movement, whose nativity involved so complete a change in the ideals of art, are in a fair way to become familiar to all. The ideals themselves-ideals of the wider scope of art, of its possible application to the common surroundings of daily life; ideals of the right of all men, so far as it lies in them, to participate in the enjoyment of the outward fairness art may impart to the general environment-are diffused not alone among artists, but likewise among artisans and handicraftsmen, and have found practical embodiment in a widely spread system of education in those lesser arts' which for centuries had fallen into abeyance, or become the prey of the mechanical copyist. The names pre-eminently associated with Pre-Raphaelitism in its earliest stage-to whomsoever the credit of its conception be ascribed the names of Madox Brown, Millais, Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the first group of innovators, have become household words to the unlearned as well as to the wise. The names of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, who, stimulated by the same influence, incorporated and refashioned, each after his own manner, the tendencies both expanded and developed-making the goal of the forerunner the starting-point of the discipleare names even more intimately associated by the present generation with a fashion in decorative art of which the popularity, whether it prove permanent or transitory, is uncontested.* Nor is it the history alone of Pre-Raphaelitism which has been popularised. With the facts many and various have been the theories and formulas propounded to account for its origin and to epitomise its elementary and essential principles. 'Des hommes nouveaux,' writes M. de la Sizeranne in his analysis of the methods of the school,t'voulant un art nouveau, substituant le geste curieux, inédit, individuel, au geste banal et généralisateur, et la couleur franche, à sec, sans dessous, brillante par ses juxtapositions à la couleur fondue, renforcée par les superpositions, en un mot la ligne expressive au lieu de la ligne décorative, et le ton vif au lieu du ton chaud, voilà en toute simplicité ce que fut le préraphaélisme.' 'Their art,' says Muther, defining the sentiment, is a kind of Italian Renaissance upon English soil. The romantic chord which vibrates in English poetry is united to the grace and purity of Italian taste, the classical lucidity of the pagan mythology with catholic mysticism, and the most modern riot of emotion with the demure vesture of the primitive Florentines.' But these and all other attempts to summarise, to reduce to dogma, or to evolve a theory from ideals whose base and foundation was the recognition of absolute freedom of individual effort from all conventions of systems and from all rigid rule of authoritative precept, are obviously destined not only to fail, but to mislead, and in most cases prove not only inadequate, but untrue. The maxims inculcated in the first glow of revolutionary enthusiasm upon students yet untrained, the visionary vanities of half a dozen boys,' to quote Rossetti's own later verdict-have been continually cited as the decalogue regulating the skilled and experienced hand of the fully developed artist; while, on the other hand, types created by the genius and individual invention of one have been accepted as representing and bounding the ideals of the whole fellowship. As a matter of fact, when all has been analysed and specified, when the æsthetic theology has been fully determined, it may still be questioned * See Edinburgh Review, January 1897, William Morris, Poet and Craftsman.' + La Peinture Anglaise. Paris. 1895. History of Modern Painting, by R. Muther, vol. iii. |