The rhapsodists mark the transition from the lyric to the epic poets, as do the romancists that from the lyric to the dramatic poets.

Historians appear in the second period, chroniclers and critics in the third.

The characters of the ode are colossi--Adam, Cain, Noah; those of the epic are giants--Achilles, Atreus, Orestes; those of the drama are men--Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello.

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources--The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.
Such then--and we confine ourselves herein to noting a single result--such are the diverse aspects of thought in the different epochs of mankind and of civilization.