A man, a poet-king, _poeta soverano_, as Dante calls Homer, is about to adjust everything.

The two rival genii combine their flames, and thence issues Shakespeare.
We have now reached the poetic culmination of modern times.
Shakespeare is the drama; and the drama, which with the same breath moulds the grotesque and the sublime, the terrible and the absurd, tragedy and comedy--the drama is the distinguishing characteristic of the third epoch of poetry, of the literature of the present day.
Thus, to sum up hurriedly the facts that we have noted thus far, poetry has three periods, each of which corresponds to an epoch of civilization: the ode, the epic, and the drama.

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic.

The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity to history, the drama depicts life.

The characteristic of the first poetry is ingenuousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.