between men and women. In all these myths the one common quality is the personality given to animals and to inanimate objects, and this general conception led to the idea that the world was peopled by a vast army of gods acutely and often hostilely interested in human affairs-gods to be worshipped, gods to be placated. Between the myth and the development of the religious idea there is a very intimate connection. The beginning of literature was largely concerned with the records of the deeds of the gods, and, as we have seen, as the religious idea developed and man built temples and constructed a ritual of worship, the temple became in many parts of the world the first home of the book.

There is no more interesting and important fact in human history than the universality of folk-songs and legends. There is an amazing similarity between the subjects of the songs of the East and the songs of the West, and stories are common to all the peoples of the world. Many theories have been devised to explain the wide distribution of myths. It has been suggested that the resemblance is purely accidental, but this is ridiculous. It has been suggested that the stories, common to Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, and Celts, were known to the ancestors of them all, the Aryan tribes, who lived on the central Asian tablelands before they emigrated westward, in several great waves, to found the European nations. This seems a plausible enough explanation, but it ignores the fact that the stories known to all the Aryan peoples are also, in some instances, known to non-Aryan peoples like the Chinese and the American Indians. Probably the most satisfactory explanations of the universality of myths is that they are the result of universal experience and sentiment. As Andrew Lang has said:

They are the rough produce of the early human mind and are not yet characterised by the differentiations of race and culture. Such myths might spring up anywhere among

Orpheus married Eurydice, who was bitten by a venomous serpent and died. Orpheus obtained the permission of Jupiter to seek her in Hades, where his music tamed the savage Cerberus and comforted the spirits condemned to eternal torment. He found his wife, but, disregarding the command of Pluto not to look her in the face until he was out of Hades, lost her again, and he was left to lament alone until his own death. The universality of the classic myths is shown by the fact that the name Eurydice is derived from the Sanskrit and means "the broad spreading flush of the dawn across the sky."

STORY OF PYGMALION. "THE HEART DESIRES,"
BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES

Pygmalion was the hero of one of the most famous of the Greek myths. He was a sculptor and, having completed the statue of a most beautiful woman, whom he christened Galatea, he prayed to Venus to give life to his work, and the goddess answered his prayer. In common with so many other classical myths, the story of Pygmalion and Galatea has inspired modern poets, among them Schiller and Andrew Lang. A play was written round the myth by W. S. Gilbert.

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untutored men and anywhere might survive into civilised literature.

Cupid and Psyche

Whatever the explanation may be, the wide distribution of these old-world stories is a most suggestive and interesting fact. It may be worth while giving two examples. The story of Cupid and Psyche is one of the best known incidents in Greek mythology. Psyche, the youngest daughter of a king, was so beautiful that she excited the jealousy of Venus herself, and the goddess bade her son Cupid slay her mortal rival. Cupid stole into Psyche's apartment, but, when he caught sight of her loveliness, he started back in surprise and one of his own arrows entered into his flesh. He vowed that he would never hurt such beauty and innocence. Shortly afterwards he became Psyche's lover, visiting her at night, making her promise that she would never attempt to discover his name or to catch a glimpse of his face, and warning her that if she broke her promise he would be compelled to leave her for ever. For a long time she restrained her curiosity, and then one night she lighted her lamp and gazed in admiration at her sleeping lover. Accidentally she let a drop of oil from the lamp fall on to Cupid's shoulder, and he immediately sprang from the couch and flew through the open window, and Psyche had to suffer many things before her lover was restored to her.

This same story of a bride who disobeys the orders of her husband occurs in the Norse legend of Freja and Oddur, and is told in the Indian Vedas of Pururavas and Urvasi. There is also a Welsh and a Zulu form of the same story. The even more familiar Greek story of Diana and Endymion has its versions in other languages. Diana, the goddess of the moon, was driving her milk-white steeds across the heavens, when she caught sight of Endymion, a handsome young shepherd, asleep on the hillside. She bent down and kissed him, and night after night

she left her car at the same place for a hasty blissful moment. As Byron has written:

Chaste Artemis, who guides the lunar car,

The pale nocturnal vigils ever keeping,

Sped through the silent space from star to star,

And, blushing, stooped to kiss Endymion sleeping.

After a while, Diana could not bear the thought of Endymion's beauty being lost or marred, so she caused him to fall into an eternal sleep and hid him in a cave never profaned by human presence. This story belongs to the Solar Myths, and it is generally supposed that Endymion was the setting sun, at which the moon gazes as she starts on her nightly journey. The same story is known to the Australian aboriginals, perhaps the most backward race in the world, to the Cingalese, and to certain African tribes, always, of course, with local variations.

These myths were the artistic possession of humanity long before the beginning of literature, and they have inspired poets throughout the ages, not only Homer and Ovid, but modern writers like Browning, Hawthorne, Herrick, Longfellow, Meredith, William Morris, Pope, Swinburne, Tennyson, and particularly Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Rossetti. It was to the stories of mythology that the great painters of the Renaissance turned for subjects when Greek learning and Greek culture were restored to Western Europe, and, centuries afterwards the same stories inspired the noble group of pre-Raphaelite painters, which was one of the outstanding glories of Victorian England.

A Co-operative Beginning

It is of the first importance to note that literature had a cooperative and not an individual beginning. The early stories of the stars, as well as the first songs crooned by mothers to their babies, were handed along from age to age, changed, elaborated, improved, until at last they were scratched on the bark of a tree