Allusion to history is another characteristic form of the language of literature. References to classic story are perhaps more common than those to general or modern, but both are plentiful. Sometimes the form is that of a familiar phrase, as "a Cadmean victory," "a Procrustean bed," "a crusade," "a Waterloo," and so on. Phrases like these are easily understood, although it is hardly possible to get their full effect without a knowledge of their origin. What, however, would this passage in Gray's "Elegy" convey to one unfamiliar with English history?-- Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. It is necessary to know about the majestic figure of ivory and gold which the Athenian sculptor wrought, or one misses the meaning of Emerson's couplet,-- Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought. Shakespeare abounds in examples of this use of allusions to history to produce a clear or vivid impression of some emotion or thought. I will make a Star-chamber matter of it. _Merry Wives_, i. 1. Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable. _Merchant of Venice_, i. 1. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burnt. _2 Henry IV._, i. 1. The reader must know something of the Star-chamber, of the gravity and wisdom of Nestor, of the circumstances of the tragic destruction of Troy, or these passages can have little meaning for him. Sometimes references of this class are less evident, as where Byron speaks of The starry Galileo with his woes; or where Poe finely compresses the whole splendid story of antiquity into a couple of lines:-- To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. If we have in mind the varied and inspiring story of Greece and Rome, these lines unroll before us like a matchless panorama. We linger over them to let the imagination realize the full richness of their suggestion. The heart beats more quickly, and we find ourselves murmuring over and over to ourselves with a kindling sense of warmth and glow:-- To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. Poe affords an excellent example of this device of historical allusion carried to its extreme. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," there is a stanza which reads:-- Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tunèd law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well-befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen.