In the school of which we may take Virgil and Tennyson to be the most conspicuous representatives, a school which seldom fails to make its appearance in every literature at a certain point of its development, all this is reversed. Their material is derived not from the world of Nature, but from the world of Art. The hint, the framework, the method of their most characteristic compositions, seldom or never emanate from themselves. Take their dramatis personce. The only powerful portrait in Virgil is a study from Euripides and Apollonius; the rest are shadows, mere outlines, suggested sometimes by Homer and sometimes by the Greek dramatists. Tennyson's Arthur, Guinevere, Elaine, and Launcelot are, regarded as characters, in no sense of the term creations. Derived from types which have long been commonplaces in fiction, they add nothing to the gallery of dramatic portaiture. His Ulysses is a study from Dante. His most subtly elaborated character, Lucretius, is the result of a minute and patient study of the De Rerum Natura. The archetype for his most charming female creation, Edith, he found in Wordsworth. His minor heroes and heroines, his Eleanores, his Madelines, his Marianas, are rather embodiments of peculiar moods and fancies than human beings. When Virgil sits down to write pastorals he reproduces Theocritus with servile fidelity. When he writes didactic poetry he takes Hesiod for his model. When he composes the LEneid he casts the first part in the mould of the Odyssey and the second part in the mould of the Iliad. He is careful also to introduce no episode for which he cannot point to his pattern. So with the Laureate. Tennyson's Idylls are a series of incidents from the Arthurian Romances. The plan of the work was suggested partly by Spenser and partly, perhaps, by Theocritus.1 His 'Enid' is from Lady Charlotte Guest's version of the Mabinogion. Of his classical studies 'CEnone' was modelled on the Theocritean Idylls; 'Ulysses' and 'Tithonus' on the soliloquies in the Greek Plays. His English Idylls are obviously modelled on Theocritus, Southey, and Wordsworth. In Wordsworth's 'Michael' he found a

model for 'Enoch Arden', and in Miss Proctor's 'Homeward Bound' the greater part of the plot. His 'Lady Clare' was derived from Miss S. E. Ferrier's novel, The Inheritance. His In Memoriam was suggested by Petrarch; his 'Dream of Fair Women' by Chaucer; his 'Godiva' by Moultrie; his 'Columbus' by Mr. Ellis; the women's university in The Princess by Johnson. His 'Lotos-Eaters' is an interpretative sketch from the Odyssey; his 'Golden Supper' is from Boccaccio; his 'Dora' is the versification of a story by Miss Mitford. His 'Voyage of Maeldune' is adapted from Joyce's Celtic Romances.