of the divine nature; but Hellenism seeks to do this through the reason, by making us see things as they are; Hebraism insists rather upon conduct and obedience. In our own country, the intellectual influence of the Renaissance was crossed, and for a time checked, by the Hebraising tendency. But, though there is a profound difference, there is no necessary antagonism, between the ideal broadly described as Hebraic, and the permanent, the essential parts of Hellenism. The Greek influence has acted upon modern life and literature even more widely as a pervading and quickening spirit than as an exemplar of form; and it has shown itself capable of co-operating, in this subtle manner, with various alien forces, so as neither to lose its own distinction, nor to infringe upon theirs. Milton illustrates this. By temperament no less than creed he is a Puritan of the higher type. Steeped though he was in classical literature, the pervading spirit of his work is at any rate not Greek; it is more akin to the Hebraic, or, when not that, to the Roman. The Lycidas, for instance, is a pastoral elegy on an Alexandrian Greek model; but how strangely the temper of the Hellenic original is changed when the English poet's wrath blazes forth against the corruptions of the time. He shows his own consciousness of this in reverting to his theme:
"Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse!"
The Samson Agonistes has the form of a Greek
