The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-26
LITERARY GARAGES OF
 THE GREAT AGE
tCoNTINUED FROM PAGE 1s)


 be, but 1t offers an example of Shakes peare's mode of dramatizing a fact
 Perhaps there is no more correct estimate of Shakespeare than this of George Saintsbury: q do not know unnatural character or an unnatural scene in Shakespeare even among these which have most evidently been written to the gallery. Everything in him passes in some mysterious way, under and into that species of eternity which transforms all the great works of art which at once prevents them from being mere copies of nature, and ex- cuses whatever tn ere is of nature In them that Is not beautiful and noble If this touch is wanting anywhere (and it is wanting very seldom) that take 1t. Is the best, indeed, the only l sign that that passage is not Shake | speare's-that he has either made use of some oth CT mans work, or that some | other man had made use of his If
 such passages were of more frequent l oocurance, this argument might be | called a circular one. But the propor- tion of such passages as l at least 1 should exclude Is so small, and the 1 difference between them and the rest l is so marked that no improper begging
 of the question can properly be 1 charged. The plays in The Globe Edi- l ton contain jus a thousand closely printed pages. l do not think there
 are 50 in all. perhaps not 20, putting l scraps and patches together, in which l the Shakespearean touch is want l ing; and do not think that touch ap- pears outside the covers of the volume, 1 once in a thousand pages of all the 1 rest of English literature. The finest | things of other men. of Marlowe, of l Fletcher, of Webster (who no doubt 1 comes nearest to the Shakespearean l.. Col He aort af a l Shakespearean range)-might conceiva- bly, be the work of others. But the
 famous passages of Shakespeare, too | numerous to mention could be no one | elses. It is to this point that aesthetic
 criticism of Shakespeare is constantly | coming round with an almost monot- | onous repetition. As great as all oth- CTS in their own points of greatness,
 holding points of greatness which of/- | CTS even approach; such is Shake ] speare."
 And now it is we come to the meet | ing, the meeting of the literary past | and present-in Mlton-the last of | the greatest writers of the Great Age,
 nor did he fail like all the great men
 to make a cast into the future. He | did not represent in any way the Eng | land that followed, the tyranny the
 coarseness. the sensuality, the false-
 ness. or the irreligion of the Stuarts, l put ne u1Q represent i<hS ioiiu, l and the whole career of Puritanism
 from its cradle to it's grave.
 To the greatness or the artist, Mill
 ton joined a pure and lofty character.
 His poetic style was as stately as his character and proceeded from It. Liv-
 ing at time when criticism began to
 purify the verse of England, and be-
 ing himself well acquainted with the | great classical models. his work IS | seldom, if ever, weakened by false con- | ceits, and the intemperance or other | great writers of this age, and yet IS as | ina ginative as theirs and as various. | While he may not possess their natur- l alness nor all their intensity, he has | a larger grace, more finished art. and | a sublime dignity they did not possess All the kinds of poetry he touched he | touched with the ease of great strength 1 and with so much might that they be- | came new in his hands. He put new life into the masque, the sonnet, the | elegy, the descriptive lyric, the song, the choral drama; and he created the
 epic in England. The light love poem he never wrote, and we are glad ne kept his coarse satirical power apart from his poetry. His taste as severe,
 his verse as polished, his method and | language as strict as those or the
 school of Dryden and Pope that grew up when he was old, such was the great Milton, who, when dealing with
 enduring principles, could at once ire
 the imagination and convince the Judg-
 ment
 The Literary Graces of the Crest Age lived among the common people