thoroughly epic development; what made the subject of intrinsic value
to the poet was the idea which sprung from it of the power of artistic
representation upon the human soul. This power of poetry, of an
invisible force created purely by the intellect and vanishing away
when brought into contact with reality, belonged essentially to the
sphere of ideas which occupied Schiller so intensely.

As many as eight years before the time when this subject assumed the
ballad form within his mind it had floated before his vision, as is
evident in the lines which are taken from his poem _The Artists_--

"Awed by the Furies' chorus dread
Murder draws down upon its head
The doom of death from their wild song."

This idea, moreover, permitted an exposition in complete harmony with
the spirit of antiquity; the latter had all the requisites for
bringing it into bold relief in all its purity and strength.
Consequently, every particular in the whole narrative is borrowed
immediately from the ancient world, especially the appearance and the
song of Eumenides. The chorus as employed by Æschylus is so
artistically interwoven with the modern poetic form, both in the
matter of rhyme and the length of the metre, that no portion of its
quiet grandeur is lost.

_The Festival of Victory_ is of a lyric, of a contemplative nature. In
this work the poet was able--indeed was compelled--to lend from his
own store an element which did not lie within the sphere of ideas and
the sentiments of antiquity; but everything else follows the spirit of
the Homeric poem with as great purity as it does in the _Cranes of