Shakspere period is the most notable example in English literature. Shakspere beyond any other writer in English joined to the grasp on the solid and concrete facts of life and the keenest and most penetrating perception of their meaning a power of feeling and a charm of form which fused and transfigured the facts into a stream of living beauty. It is hard to say whether one thinks first of the firm and definite outline of his characters or of the glowing beauty of his poetry and its rich halo of suggestiveness. In the generation succeeding him these two constituents of the poetic power fall apart. On the one hand there is the school of Drayton, of Brown, of Wither and the Fletchers, and the other mellifluous poets of the post-Elizabethan time, whose verse has the flowing and gracious beauty that belongs to a golden age, yet whose thought is so thin and reflected as to leave little lasting impression on one's mind. On the other hand there is the school of Donne and the socalled metaphysicians, whose intensity of thought lost itself in subtle intricacies and involution and who lacked the power of clothing their thought with clear and beautiful words. A like differentiation might be made out for the poets of the nineteenth century, starting with the great school of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, which splits in our own time into the two tendencies shown by Tennyson and

Browning, of flowing beauty of form on the one hand, and rugged and whimsical intricacy of thought on the other. We are too near these latter poets to work out the parallel in detail; but the history of English literature clearly establishes the law. In a school of poetry the decay and breaking up come as the forces of thought and of feeling separate from each other.

A development closely akin to this appears in the external form of these books of the prophecy. The first great prophets show the penetrating and statesmanlike understanding of fact fused by the intensity of their emotion and transfigured to words of glowing fire. Two hundred years later, in the prophets of the time of the Exile one finds the firm and earnest perception of fact on the one hand in Ezekiel, Haggai and Malachi, and on the other the soaring imagination and emotion of the Isaiah of the Exile, and the mystical visions of Zechariah; but by this time we find no example of the two forces fused into one.

This change in the outward manifestation of the gift I will set forth at some little length, then I will return to the general characteristics of all the prophets and discuss what seems to be the essence of their character in our literature. In the next chapter we shall see how the prophecy developed naturally into another form of literature, known as the apocalypse, which gave to the New Testament its climax in Rev

elation. It is significant of the character of all the literature we are studying that the element of the prophecy which thus rose up into new life is that which embodies emotion and intuition, and that as it soared to its highest reaches, more and more it cut loose from the trammels of fact and the limitations of time and space.

The writings of the prophets as we have them begin with Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, in the middle of the eighth century B.C., the time when under Jeroboam II of Northern Israel and Azariah of Judah, the two little kingdoms flickered up into a final period of prosperity and apparent independence before the great power of the Euphrates aroused itself

and extended its borders once more to meet those of Egypt. Of these we may take the prophecies of Amos and Isaiah as examples of the prophecy at its strongest and noblest.

The first appearance of Amos, a rough herdsman from the hills of Judah, before the wealthy and cultivated nobles of Samaria, men grown fat with riches and luxury, is a most dramatic incident. He begins with a series of denunciations against their hereditary enemies:

Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have

threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:

But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Ben-hadad.

I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the house of Eden: and the people of Syria shall go into captivity unto Kir, saith the Lord.1

Then he follows with denunciations of Gaza and Ashdod, of Tyrus, of Edom because "he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever", of Ammon, and of Moab, "because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime." Then when his hearers are lulled by these satisfying denunciations of their enemies, suddenly and without warning he turns on them:

Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;

That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek:

And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the 1 Amos i. 3-5.

wine of the condemned in the house of their god.1

Here we have the prophecy at its best; the sharp perception of the concrete facts is fused by imagination into a message of the deeper meaning which underlies it. Amos always shows this combination: both his descriptions of the oppressive luxury of the nobles and the imagery in which he denounces the punishment of them are extraordinarily vivid:

Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near;

That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall;

That chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David;

That drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.2

And for the punishment:

And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused 1 Amos ii. 6-8. 2 Ibid., vi. 3-6.