survive now for our delight in their style and in their substance,
a delight independent of the occasion of their utterance.

Others there are, no doubt, who were also possest of this double gift.
The French, for instance, might well urge the claim of Bossuet to be
raised to the same pinnacle; but the English and the Germans have not
yielded to the spell of his majestic periods. Perhaps we here in the
United States should not be extravagant if we set up also a claim for
Daniel Webster; but, however firm our faith, and however solid our
justification, we should be met with a silent stare from the French and
the Italians and the Spaniards, who might fail even to recognize
Webster's name. Demosthenes and Cicero alone would be hailed as the
supreme orators thruout the whole group of civilized nations.

There is close kinship between oratory and history; and as the supreme
orators are only two, one a Greek and the other a Roman, so the supreme
historians, however tightly we may restrict the selection, will include
a Greek, Thucydides, and a Roman, Tacitus. With them, and not inferior,
stands Gibbon; and perhaps these three, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon,
are all about whom there would be nowhere any dispute. But there is need
to note that Taine held Macaulay to be in no wise inferior to Gibbon.
Again, it may be well to mention also that an American authority insists
on elevating Voltaire also, as the earliest of the modern masters of
history.

So we find that the supreme historians are three at the least, and at
most four or five, just as the supreme poets are four, the supreme
masters of prose are perhaps six, and the supreme orators are only two.
And if we apply the same standards, if we disregard personal and
provincial and national predilections and preferences, if we try to take
the verdict of the cosmopolitan tribunal, we should find that the
supreme dramatists are but three--Sophocles, Shakspere, and Moliere.
These three only were at once playwrights of contemporary popularity,
masters of dramaturgic craftsmanship, creators of character independent
of their own personality, makers of plays which deal with themes of an
import at once permanent and universal, and poets also, each with his
own philosophy of life.

Others there are who unite some of these qualifications, but none who
can make good a right to be ranked with the mighty three. It is true
that the power of AEschylus is as undeniable as the pathos of Euri