work illustration and confirmation
of its truth. There are many things
in his plays which are more intel-
ligible and significant to us than they
were to the men who heard their
musical cadence on the rude Eliza-
bethan stage, because the ripening of
experience has given the prophetic
thought an historical demonstration;
and there are truths in these plays
which will be read with clearer eyes
by the men of the next century than
they are now read by us.

It is this prophetic quality in the
books of power which silently moves
them forward with the inaudible ad-
vance of the successive files in the
ranks of the generations, and which
makes them contemporary with each
generation. For while the mediaeval
frame-work upon which Dante con-
structed the "Divine Comedy" be-

[[10]]

p009 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p010w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p011

v?