More than this, the masters of creative literature have made regions of
their own which they have peopled with the children of their genius.
Homer has given us an Ægean of sunlit islands and purple seas; Dante, a
dark and mysterious Inferno; Milton, a Garden of Eden; Shakespeare, an
Elizabethan England, with landscapes more brightly hued, and men and
women more finely real, than the landscapes or the people of the England
of Elizabeth; Molière, a France more natural and more vivid than the
France of the Grand Monarque. And so it is that Odysseus, Antigone,
Beatrice, Hamlet, Tartufe and the rest, these spiritual offspring of
great souls, live side by side with Moses, Alexander, Cæsar, Joan of
Arc, Henry VIII., and Washington: for literature has made the
personalities of each almost as familiar to us as those of our dearest
or most intimate friends.