Then did He see it and declare it; He prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man He said: "Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." Here it is apparent enough that the moral purpose with which these writers were beyond all question surcharged, instead of interfering with the artistic value of their product, has spiritualized the art of it into an intensity which burns away all limitations of language and sets their poems as indestructible monuments in the hearts of the whole human race. If we descend to the next rank of poetry I have only to ask you to observe how, in Shakspeare, just as the moral purpose becomes loftier the artistic creations become lovelier. Compare, for example, the forgiveness and reconciliation group of plays as they have been called, _Winter's Tale_, _Henry VIII_, and _The Tempest_, (which must have been written late in Shakspeare's life when the moral beauty of large forgiveness seems to have taken full possession of his fancy, and when the moral purpose of displaying that beauty to his fellow-men seemed to have reigned over his creative energy): compare, I say, these plays with earlier ones, and it seems to me that all the main creations are more distinctly artistic, more spiritually beautiful, lifted up into a plane of holy ravishment which is far above that of all the earlier plays. Think of the dignity and endless womanly patience of Hermione, of the heavenly freshness and morning quality of Perdita, of the captivating roguery of Autolycus, in _Winter's Tale_; of the colossal forgiveness of Queen Katherine in _Henry VIII_, of the equally colossal pardon of Prospero, of the dewy innocence of Miranda, of the gracious and graceful ministrations of Ariel, of the grotesqueries of Caliban and Trinculo, of the play of ever-fresh delights and surprises which make the drama of _The Tempest_ a lone and music-haunted island among dramas! Everywhere in these latter plays I seem to feel the brooding of a certain sanctity which breathes out of the larger moral purpose of the period. Leaving these illustrations, for which time fails, it seems to me that we have fairly made out our case against these objections if, after this review of the connection between moral purpose and artistic creation we advance thirdly to the fact--of which these objectors seem profoundly oblivious--that the English novel at its very beginning announces itself as the vehicle of moral purposes. You will remember that when discussing Richardson and Fielding, the first English novelists, I was at pains to show how carefully they sheltered their works behind the claim of this very didacticism. Everywhere in _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, _Tom Jones_, in the preface, sometimes in the very title-page, it is ostentatiously set up that the object of the book is to improve men's _moral_ condition by setting before them plain examples of vice and virtue.