But in fact, he took the drama up at the point, which it had reached when he began to write for the stage, and followed the lines, which his forerunners had laid down. The history of literature, then, must take account of all these things. It must bring out the relationships between writer and writer and group and group; it must trace the rise, growth, and decline of ‘school’ and ‘movements’; and whenever any given writer had been especially prominent in their evolution, it must consider the influence he exerted in making literature either by keeping it in the old channels or in directing it into new.