[Footnote 23: Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) was the father of Greek tragedy. He presents destiny in its sternest aspects. His Prometheus Bound has been translated by Mrs. Browning, and his Agamemnon by Robert Browning—two dramas that exhibit his grandeur and power at their best.]
[Footnote 24: Lucretius (about 95-51 B.C.) was the author of a didactic poem in six books entitled De Rerum Natura. It is Epicurean in morals and atheistic in philosophy. At the same time, as a work of art, it is one of the most perfect poems that have descended to us from antiquity.]
[Footnote 25: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 A.D.), one of the best emperors of Rome, was a noble Stoic philosopher. His Meditations is regarded by John Stuart Mill as almost equal to the Sermon on the Mount in moral elevation.]
[Footnote 26: Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) was the author of the famous Imitation of Christ in which, as Dean Milman says, "is gathered and concentered all that is elevating, passionate, profoundly pious in all the older mystics." No other book, except the Bible, has been so often translated and printed.]
[Footnote 27: Epictetus (born about 50 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher, many of whose moral teachings resemble those of Christianity. But he unduly emphasized renunciation, and wished to restrict human aspiration to the narrow limits of the attainable.]
[Footnote 28: Jacob Behmen, or Böhme (1575-1624), was a devout mystic philosopher, whose speculations, containing much that was beautiful and profound, sometimes passed the bounds of intelligibility.]
[Footnote 29: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish philosopher and theologian. His principal work, Arcana Caelestia, is made up of profound speculations and spiritualistic extravagance. He often oversteps the bounds of sanity.]
[Footnote 30: William Langland, or Langley (about 1332-1400), a disciple of Wycliffe, was a poet, whose Vision of Piers Plowman, written in strong, alliterative verse, describes, in a series of nine visions, the manifold corruptions of society, church, and state in England.]
[Footnote 31: Caedmon (lived about 670) was a cowherd attached to the monastery of Whitby in England. Later he became a poet, and wrote on Scripture themes in his native Anglo-Saxon. His Paraphrase, is, next to Beowulf, the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem in existence.]
[Footnote 32: Lanier was deeply religious, but his beliefs were broader than any creed. In Remonstrance he exclaims,—