He was persuaded - against his will - to turn his attention to a court life, and he went to London under the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels, to follow that course; but he very soon returned home with a fixed resolve - confirmed by the death of his mother - to study divinity.
But without following the explanation into the details in which it revels, it may be enough to say that the whole hypothesis is but an attempt to exclude the occult conception of action at a distance, and substitute a familiar phenomenon.
So scandalous became the popular revels associated with it, that the celebration was prohibited by the church in the 15th century.
The lower classes, bullied by sabbatarianism and deprived of the old revels, were restive and hostile; but the educated middle class was with the preachers; so were many lesser country gentry; and the nobles, securing the spoils of the church, were acquiescent.
He flourished about 625 B.C. Several of the ancients ascribe to him the invention of the dithyramb and of dithyrambic poetry; it is probable, however, that his real service was confined to the organization of that verse, and the conversion of it from a mere drunken song, used in the Dionysiac revels, to a measured antistrophic hymn, sung by a trained body of performers.
