is another, an exoteric element in him which one finds nowhere in
English literature before him: the Grandeur from within, the
high Soul Symbol. In him suddenly that portentous thing appears,
like a great broad river emerging from the earth.--Of which we do
not say, however, that they have had no antecedent rills and
fountain; we know that they have traveled long beneath the
mountains, unseen; they sank under the earth-surface somewhere,
and are not special new creations. Looking back behind Shakespeare,
from this our eminence in time, we can see beyond the intervening
heights this broad water shine again over the plain in Dante;
and beyond him some glimmer of it in Virgil; until at last
we see the far-off sheen of it in Aeschylus, very near the
backward horizon of time. We can catch no glimpse of it
farther, because that horizon is there.

We can trace Aeschylus' outward descent--as Shakespeare's from
Chaucer--from the nascent Greek drama and the rudimentary plays
at the rustic festivals; but the grand river of his esotericism
--there it shines, as large and majestic, at least, as in
Shakespeare; and it was, no more than his, a special creation or
new thing. Our horizon lies there, to prevent our vision going
further; but from some higher time-eminence in the future,
we shall see it emerge again in the backward vastnesses of
pre-history; again and again. The grandeur of Aeschylus his no
parent in Greek, or in western extant literature; or if we say
that it has a parent in Homer (which I doubt, because not seeing
the Soul Symbols in Homer), it is only putting matters one step
further back.... But behind Greece, there were the lost literatures
of Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, of which we know nothing; aye, and
for a guess, lost and mighty literatures from all parts of Europe
too. If I could imagine it otherwise, I would say so.

Almost suddenly, during Aeschylus' lifetime, another Greek Art
came into being. When he was a boy, sculpture was still a very
crude affair; or perhaps just beginning to emerge from that
condition. The images that come down to us, say from Pisistratus'
time and earlier, are not greatly different from the 'primitive'
carvings of many so-called savage peoples of our own day. That
statement is loose and general; but near enough the mark to
serve our purpose. You may characterize them as rude imitations
of the human form, without any troublesome realism, and with a
strong element of the grotes