national spirit seems to be making a last effort to assert itself
in literature and to overcome cosmopolitan influences and the art
of writers who express a purely personal feeling. It is true that
nationality may express itself in many ways: it may not be at all
evident in the subject matter, but it may be very evident in the
sentiment. But a literature loosely held together by some emotional
characteristics common to the writers, however great it may be,
does not fulfill the purpose of a literature or art created by a
number of men who have a common aim in building up an overwhelming
ideal--who create, in a sense, a soul for their country, and who
have a common pride in the achievement of all. The world has not
seen this since the great antique civilizations of Egypt and Greece
passed away. We cannot imagine an Egyptian artist daring enough
to set aside the majestic attainment of many centuries. An Egyptian
boy as he grew up must have been overawed by the national tradition,
and have felt that it was not to be set aside: it was beyond his
individual rivalry. The soul of Egypt incarnated in him, and,
using its immemorial language and its mysterious lines, the efforts
of the least workman who decorated a tomb seem to have been directed
by the same hand that carved the Sphinx. This adherence to a
traditional form is true of Greece, though to a less extent. Some
little Tanagra terra-cottas might have been fashioned by Phidias,
and in literature Ulysses and Agamemnon were not the heroes of one
epic, but appeared endlessly in epic and drama. Since the Greek
civilization no European nation has had an intellectual literature
which was genuinely national. In the present century, leaving
aside a few things in outward circumstance, there is little to
distinguish the work of the best English writers or artists from
that of their Continental contemporaries. Milliais, Leighton,
Rossetti, Turner--how different from each other, and yet they might