himself master also in setting contemporary life to music. If Shakspeare wrote Julius Cæsar, he also wrote Henry VIII.; and Hamlet is essentially modern. Dante does not appear to have thought his own age unpoetic, though himself the master of ideal or spiritual creations. Dante, and Milton, set the dominant theologies of their own day to music; while Dante is full of allusions to passing events. Homer did not endeavour to reproduce classically correct imitations of the poems he may have read in Egyptian papyri. Gama, the hero of Camoens's epic, was still alive when the poet was a boy; and Camoens himself took part in adventures similar to those which he relates—indeed he contrives to relate what was actually happening in the Lusiad itself. Dryden wrote of Contemporary Politics; Pope sang the Rape of the Lock; Byron sang contemporary life in Childe Harold and Don Juan; Wordsworth also in some of his greatest poems. So did Campbell, Gray, and Goldsmith at their best—while Scott, if he sang of chivalry, sang at
