The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-09-26
Literary Braces Of
 The Gredt Age
BY MABEL 20 RD LEAI<E.

of love, his own pre-eminent loyeliness or loveiiness, walking through the whole or this woven world of faeries with the moons beauty and the moons soft pace.
 It is Chapman, the dramatist, whose plays are unique among those or tne period in that they deal with almost con temporary events in French history. Not with the purpose of exciting any feeling for or against the parties introduced, but in calm ignoring of public opinion, they bring recent happenings on the stage to suit the dramatist's purpose. He alone Of all the great writers of the great age was unable to go outside of himself and enter into the thoughts and habits of his char acters Chapman, it seems, was too much of a scholar and thinker to be a success full delineator of men. His Is the drama of the man who thinks about life, not of one who lives In Its fitness. He does not get into the hearts of men. He Is man of theory. Homer had become the ruling influence in his life, and he looked at things from the Homeric point of view and presented life epically. He Is at his best in single didactio or narrative pas- sages, and exquisite bits of poetry are scattered up and down the pages of his tragedies. Next to Shakespeare he IS the most sentitious of dramatists. He sounded the depths of things in thought which, heretofore, only Marlowe had done. He is the most metaphysical of dramatists
 Chapman wrote comedies to make money, and tragedies because 1t was fash ionable, and he studded the latter with exquisite passages because he was a poet born. But he was above all a scholar with wide and deep learning, not only of the classics but also of the Renaissance literature. His fame, howeverf rests on his version Of Homer. he first portion appeared in 15a8. Though he, perhaps. does not reproduce Homer faithfully. he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and grandeur. It is a typical prod uct of the English Renaissance, full of vie/ and passion, but also of conceit and faZcifulness. It lacks the simplicity and severity of the Greek, but has caught its noblenegs and rapidity. As has been said. Tt is what Homer might have written before he came to years of dis cretion." Yet with all its shortcomings it remains one of the classics of the great age.
 Spencer's name seems indelibiy linked with that of his friend, that bright and noble figure. the lover of Stella, the last of the old knights, the poet, the critic, and the Christian, Sir Philip Sidney, who in the prime of his manhood lay wound- ed unto death at the seige of Zutphen. quenched not his own parching thirst, but gave the refreshing cup of water to 0 dying soldier. We find his whole spirit in the story of the Arcadia The senti- ment in this romance Is too me ana delicate for this world. The descriptions are picturesque while the sentences are as perfect as possible. A quaint or poetic thought appears in every line. So full of poetical thought is 1t that it became a. yeritable mine into which poets dug for subjects. We may place alongside of it as the other great prose work of the Great Age the development of the essay, in Lord Bacon's writings. Their highest literary merit is their combina- ton of charm and even of poetic prose with conciseness of expression and fui- ness of thought In Bacons "Essays Civil and Moral'' an intellect of the high est order expresses itself with an art so subtle that 1t does not seem to pc art at all Literary form Is lost sight of and the thought engrosses attention to the exclusion of admiration for the greatness of the mind which conceived It. Admiration is excited only in the pres ence of what seems higher than our own level It Is the peculiarity ana touchstone of all great art that aomr- alton for 1t comes only as an after- thought Its first office is that of sym pathy. It expresses what is strongest and truest in us as if 1t was our right to have 1t wholly expressed. We reel no sense of obligation to 1t, but rather or comradeship with 1t, as if by some pro cess too simple and natural to be sur rfrising we had regained consciousness of higher life in us than we had sus- nected. of a life which belongs to our common lives as much as 1t does to the highest genius of earth. or to the healthiest and most natural souls m whatever state or natural heaitniness or soul Is to constitute hereafter our heaven. When from this high future that Is to be ours, some great soul comes 10 us as Bacon does. 1t is always in the sim phcity of good neighborliness. He goes in and out among us. speaking our every day language and ministerins 70 our avery day needs. and we do not feel his superiority until he is gone. Then 1t is that we look among ourselves and back through civilization to find his eoual. learning then to admire him for the first time as we had not thought to do before.
 To read 20 lines in ono of the most commonplace of Bacon's essays Is to come into the presence of the most