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sorely needed. Men had wider opportunities, larger knowledge, were confronted with deeper and more complicated problems: old chains were straining and snapping. Were they to be henceforth wholly unfettered? Were there no eternal principles whose obligations would survive outworn prescription and decaying faith? If the Gods were not as myth and poet represented them, were there no Gods? Humanity's great inarticulate challenge had been flung down before priest, philosopher, and poet. The temple-doors closed against it with sullen clang: the philosopher plucked aside his robes and withdrew into his cultured coteries, his exclusive lecture-halls: the singers murmured, "We know our mission, and we have learnt our tune." So it was left to this one poet to take it up—alone. But his freedom of choice was strictly limited. The one channel of publication open to a dramatist was through the theatre, and hence an author could only hope to reach the public by conforming to conventional requirements, however these might trammel him. He must of necessity utter the new message through the old media: he must out of the experiences of the heroes and heroines of legend find an answer to the questions which perplexed common men, find help and guidance for very human weakness and bewilderment. If the old legends were of any ethical value for his day, it was because those represented in them were real, not ideal beings, hence of like passions with us, swayed by the same motives, sinning from the same temptations, excusing their errors by the same pleas, and, when they dared to face the unseen, disquieted by the same doubts. Looking deeper than the surface, moreover, he saw that there is nothing necessarily ideal in high descent or royal station, still less in the stately accessories of costume and environment associated with these. In peasant and bondman he found types of noble humanity, of selfless honour, of loyal faith. He showed that