what he ought to deduce from the works themselves. It is offensively obtrusive to tell us beforehand what judgement we are to form on the persons we read of. It prevents our regarding them as living men, whom we are to study, and to compare with our idea of human nature. Instead of this we view them as fictions for an express purpose, and compare them therewith. We think, not what they are, but how they exemplify the proposition which the writer designed. to enforce and wherever the author's purpose is prominent, art degenerates into artifice. In logic indeed the enunciation rightly precedes the proof. But the workings of poetry are more subtile and complicated and indirect: nor are our feelings so readily toucht by what a man intends to say or to do or to be, as by what he says and does and is without intending it. Thus we involuntarily recognise the hollowness of all that man does, when cut off from that spring of life, which, though in him, is not of him. Moreover to the author himself it must needs be hurtful, when he sets to work with a definite purpose of exhibiting such and such qualities, instead of living, concrete men. It leads him to consider, not how such a man would speak and act, but how on every occasion he may display his besetting humour; which yet in real life he would mostly conceal, and which would scarcely vent itself, except under some special excitement, when he was thrown off his balance, and made forgetful of self-restraint.

Still the humours and peculiar aspects of human nature thus portrayed by the second-rate poets of former times are those which do actually rise the most conspicuously and obtrusively above the common surface of life, and which not seldom betray themselves by certain fixt habits of speech, gesture, and manner; so that there is less inappropriateness in their being made thus prominent. But the psychological analysis of criticism has enabled us to discern deeper and more latent springs, and more delicate shades, of feeling in the masters of poetry: and those feelings, which are only genuine and powerful when latent, are now drawn forward into view, whereupon they splash and vanish.

For example, no sooner had attention been called, some fifty years ago, to the powerful influence exercised by Fate, as the dark ground of the Greek tragedies, than poet after poet in Germany, from Schiller downward, set about composing tragedies on the principle of fatality; each insisting that his own was the true Fate, and that all others were spurious and fictitious. And so in fact they were: only his was no less so. Nor could it well be otherwise. When the Greek tragedians wrote, the overruling power of Fate was a living article of faith, both with them and with the people; as everything ought to be, which is made the leading idea in a tragedy. Since a drama, by the conditions of its representation, addresses itself to the assembled people, if it is to act strongly upon them, it must appeal to those feelings and thoughts which actually

hold sway over them. Tragic poetry is indeed fond of drawing its plots and personages from the stores of ancient history or fable; partly because the immediate present is too full of petty details to coalesce into a grand imaginative unity, whereas antiquity even of itself is majestic; partly because it stirs so many personal feelings and interests, which sort ill with dignity and with solemn contemplation; and partly because a tragic catastrophe befalling a contemporary would have too much of painful horrour. Yet, though the personages of tragedy may rightly be taken from former ages, or from forein countries, remoteness in space being a sort of equivalent for remoteness in time, still a true dramatic poet will always make the universal human element in his characters predominate over the accidental costume of age and country. Nor will he bring forward any mode of faith or superstition as a prominent agent in his tragedy, except such as will meet with something responsive in the popular belief of his age. When Shakspeare wrote, almost everybody believed in ghosts and witches. Hence it is difficult for us to conceive the impression which must have been made on such an audience by Hamlet and Macbeth: whereas the witches in the latter play now, on the stage, produce the effect of broad, fantastical caricatures; and so far are we from comprehending the power which the demoniacal apparitions exercised over Macbeth's mind, that they are seldom seen without peals of hoarse, dissonant laughter. In like

manner Fate, in the modern German tragedies, instead of being awful, is either ludicrous or revolting. As it is not an object of faith, either with the poet or his hearers, so that they would hardly observe its latent working, he brings it forth into broad daylight; and his whole representation is cold, artificial, pompous, and untrue. While in Greek tragedy Fate stalks in silence among the generations of mankind, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children and grandchildren, — τῆς μέν θ ̓ ἁπαλοὶ πόδες· οὐ γὰρ ἐπ ̓ οὔδει Πίλναται, ἀλλ ̓ ἄρα ἦγε κατ ̓ ἀνδρῶν κράατα βαίνει, on the modern German stage it clatters in wooden shoes, and springs its rattle, and clutches its victim by the throat.

U.

Your good sayings would be far better, if you did not think them so good. He who is in a hurry to laugh at his own jests, is apt to make a false start, and then has to return with downcast head to his place.

U.

Many nowadays write what may be called a dashing style. Unable to put much meaning into their words, they try to eke it out by certain marks which they attach to them, something like pigtails sticking out at right angles to the body. The finest models of this style are in the articles by the original editor of the Edinburgh Review, and in Lord Byron's poems, above all, in the Corsair, his most popular work, as one might have

expected that it would be, seeing that his faults came to a head in it. A couplet from the Bride of Abydos may instance my meaning.

A thousand swords-thy Selim's heart and handWait-wave-defend-destroy-at thy command. How much grander is this, than if there had been nothing between the lines but commas! even as a pigtail is grander than a curl, or at least has been deemed so by many a German prince. Tacitus himself, though his words are already as solid and substantial as one can wish, yet, when translated, is drest after the same fashion, with a skewer jutting out here and there. The celebrated sentence of Galgacus is turned into He makes a solitudeand calls it-peace. The noble poet places a flourish after every second word, like a vulgar writing-master. Or perhaps they are rather marks of admiration, standing prostrate, as Lord Castlereagh would have exprest it. Nor are upright ones spared.

U.

Are you quite sure that Pygmalion is the only person who ever fell in love with his own handiwork?

U.

"In good prose (says Frederic Schlegel) every word should be underlined." That is, every word

should be the right word; and then no word would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato.