As in most literary revivals the classical myths received a new life; and in the hands of Tennyson, Arnold, and Swinburne, was made to express the thought and feelings of the modern world Arnold lived in habitual converse with the Greeks and derived his art and ideas from them rate than from any modern source.
Browning made the period of the Renaissance living and real Pater found much that could be applied to modern conditions in the life of the second century of the Christian era. But the chief historical interest of the time was in the Middle Ages, the chief expression of this interest was, perhaps, the Oxford movement.