To all this ferment the desperate conflict of the Catholic religion
with the new form of faith now coming in adds an element of stern strength;
men are pondering not only the physical relation of the earth to the heavens,
but the spiritual relation of the soul to heaven and hell.
This is no dandy period."*
--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 168.
--
"And if any one should say there is not time to read these poets,"
he says in a strain of excessive admiration, "I reply with vehemence
that in any wise distribution of your moments, after you have read
the Bible and Shakspere, you have no time to read anything
until you have read these . . . old artists. They are so noble,
so manful, so earnest; they have put into such perfect music
that protective tenderness of the rugged man for the delicate woman
which throbs all down the muscles of the man's life and turns
every deed of strength into a deed of love; they have set the woman,
as woman, upon such adorable heights of worship, and by that act
have so immeasurably uplifted the whole plane upon which society moves;
they have given to all earnest men and strong lovers
such a dear ritual and litany of chivalric devotion;
they have sung us such a high mass of constancy for our love;
they have enlightened us with such celestial revelation of the possible Eden
which the modern Adam and Eve may win back for themselves
by faithful and generous affection; that -- I speak it with reverence --
they have made another religion of loyal love and have given us
a second Bible of womanhood.
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