Indeed their voice was so convincing that even the great
Christian chorus that broke out afresh in the Victorian era could not
entirely drown it, and Elizabeth Barrett had an apologetic way of
dismissing 'the dead Pan', and all the 'vain false gods of Hellas',
with an acknowledgement of
your beauty which confesses
Some chief Beauty conquering you.
This may be taken to have been the average attitude, in the forties,
towards classical mythology. That twenty years before, at least in the
Shelley circle, it was far less grudging, we now have definite proof.
Not only was Shelley prepared to admit, with the liberal opinion of
the time, that ancient mythology 'was a system of nature concealed
under the veil of allegory', a system in which 'a thousand fanciful
fables contained a secret and mystic meaning': [Footnote: _Edinb.
Rev._, July 1808.] he was prepared to go a considerable step farther,
and claim that there was no essential difference between ancient
mythology and the theology of the Christians, that both were
interpretations, in more or less figurative language, of the great
mysteries of being, and indeed that the earlier interpretation,
precisely because it was more frankly figurative and poetical than the
later one, was better fitted to stimulate and to allay the sense of
wonder which ought to accompany a reverent and high-souled man
throughout his life-career.
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