It is felt in whatever they wrote. It did not enervate them. It inspired them to eloquence, to rebellion. In technical equipment the poets stand shoulder to shoulder. In grace, in fanciful invention, they were likewise equal. But the Hebrew and the Persian possessed in greater degree the power of passion, anger, and the strength to use them. Tu Fu was a lyric genius, of whom years of training made a master. Yet it seems to us that none has made art so absolute a thing as did Anacreon, in the days when his race were making models for remaining time to copy. However, this is matter of temperament, which helps render criticism uncertain. There was an interesting superstition in the long ago regarding the two older, Hafiz and Anacreon, to the effect that to read them brought madness. Its origin is as deeply veiled in mystery as origin of the wandering quatrains of Persia. But we recognize gladly a tribute to power. Both Hafiz and Heine, with Tu Fu, have that inexplainable quality that touches the heart. They say the things we can not forget. But there was an elfish caprice in Heine which Hafiz did not have, just as there was a mystic yearning in the Persian the Hebrew did not know. And in Tu Fu there were heights of lyric rapture none have surpassed. They were not lonely geniuses, seeking solitude, meditation. They lived in the whirl of life. They learned wisdom of its sadness. Heine had the beauty-loving soul of an ancient Greek, the restless pitiful heart of a modern, and the passionate vengeance, the hate of the Hebrew. He realized in his life, in the few years of health granted him, the fierce, furious ideals of pleasure of Anacreon and Hafiz. He lived like a God. And he received the punishment of a God, in a consuming Promethean fire of pain, that crippled him, then burned up his life. Each lived in an age of mental expansion, when minds were creative. The Paris of Heine was the most brilliant age of that gay city by the Seine, when she best deserved the proud appellation of _the step-mother of genius_. Poland had fallen. Paris was filled with a crowd of brilliant Slav exiles. It was the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas, Gautier, the Goncourt Brothers, Gavarni, Saint Beuve, Liszt, Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Ary, Sheffer, Delacroix, Horace Vernet. Mickiewicz was there, too, editing the fourth volume of his poetry. And Julius Slowacki, and Count Krasinski. After the period of these men had passed there was no more writing whose inspiration came from deep conviction, and which was indifferent to gold and to the praise of the world. Tu Fu lived at the time lyric verse reached its height under art loving Emperors of Tang, and when one of the proudest periods of plastic art was beginning, the Period of Sung Emperors.