CONTENTS: The Book of the DeadEgyptian TalesThe Tell Amarna TabletsCuneiform Inscriptions and Hieratic Papyri

THE DRAMA OF JAPAN Nakamitsu Abstraction Book Excerpt: Nakamitsu.-I am Nakamitsu, a man of the Fujihara clan, and retainer of Mitsunaka, Lord of Tada in the land of Setsushiu. Now you must know that my lord hath an only son, and him hath he sent to a certain monastery amid the mountains named Chiynuzanzhi, while I, too, have a son called Kauzhiyu, who is gone as page to young my lord. But young my lord doth not condescend to apply his mind unto study, loving rather nothing so well as to spend from morn to night in quarrelling and disturbance. Wherefore, thinking doubtless to disinherit young...

The poetry of a nation is always the best revealer of its genuine life: the range of its spiritual as well as of its intellectual outlook. This is the case even where poetry is imitative, for imitation only pertains to the form of poetry, and not to its essence. Vergil copied the metre and borrowed the phraseology of Homer, but is never Homeric. In one sense, all national poetry is original, even though it be shackled by rules of traditional prosody, and has adopted the system of rhyme devised by writers in another language, whose words seem naturally to bourgeon into assonant terminations....

Hebrew literature contains some of the most profound and most influential productions of the human spirit. It constitutes a potent factor in modern civilization, and possesses merits which place it far above most other literatures of the world. The common salutation of the Hebrew is "Peace," while that of the Greeks is "Grace," and that of the Romans, "Safety." The Greek sought after grace, or intellectual and bodily perfection, and the power of artistic accomplishment. The Roman's ideal was strength and security of life and property.

The great nation which dwelt in the seventh century before our era on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician character.

The romantic figure of Antar, or Antarah, takes the same place in Arabian literature as that of Achilles among the Greeks. The Cid in Spain, Orlando in Italy, and Arthur in England, are similar examples of national ideals put forth by poets and romance writers as embodiments of a certain half-mythic age of chivalry, when personal valor, prudence, generosity, and high feeling gave the warrior an admitted preeminence among his fellows.