paid to scenery, and it may be safely asserted that the Greeks had not the very strict ideas which the French maintain regarding unity of place; nevertheless, the binding of the drama, in so far as they did bind it, to one spot, was thus far a slighting of place. For if in one place are performed actions suitable to two or three very different localities, the beholder must learn to overlook the characteristics of the scene before him; the scene becomes anywhere, and anywhere is nowhere. This forgetfulness, however, this disregard of place, is not peculiar to the classical drama; it belongs to everything classical, as, on the other hand, romantic art delights not simply in giving a background to its figures, but even in representing that background without any living figures whatsoever. Poems descriptive of the country, the mere country, are found in modern, not in ancient times. To account for this, Twining will have it that the ancients had no such poems, because they had no landscape painting; that they had no Thomson, poet of the seasons, because they had no Claude to paint the seasons. One might as well say, that in Shetland a cow is small because a pony is small, or that the oak will not thrive there because the beech will not thrive. Why are there in Shetland no forest trees at all? Why no Claude in Greece? Campbell, reasonably dissatisfied with the logic of Twining, has, in his life of Thomson, found a cause partly, it would seem, in the civilizing influences of philosophy and of free

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dom (surely forgetting that the Greeks had philosophy abundant as light, and freedom elastic as air); but chiefly in that influence of Christianity which has given such height and depth and length and breadth to our fellow-feeling with all nature, as being the image of the divine. With this remark, if he has not hit the bull's-eye, he has at least not missed the target. Christianity is indeed the cause, although a doubt may arise whether Campbell has fully seized the manner. a great deal to know that the spirit of a certain effect agrees with that of its supposed cause, that the spirit of Christianity and of landscape-painting are one; but to be assured that these twain stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect, we should like to know that the one gives shape as well as spirit to the other. This may be shown as follows. It has been stated more than once already, that romantic, or modern, or Christian art, is essentially dramatic. Hitherto I have rested this doctrine rather on historic than on any other grounds, but it may be proved philosophically. Given Christianity, it was to be expected from its very nature that should it ever express itself in art, the art should be dramatic. Without here entering into the proof, tempting though such a discussion be, this hint may be sufficient in the meantime, that Christian art must be dramatic, since it needs no Thomas à Kempis to show that Christian life is in all its outward manifestations an imitative life. As Christianity thus begets dramatic

art, so I may be allowed simply to state here what I hope to prove in its proper place, namely, in handling the language of the drama, (see p. 207) that the dramatic, the first law of poetry, engenders the idea of place. When Shakespere speaks of a "local habitation" given to airy nothings by the imagination, he refers to that work of imagination which he best knew, its dramatic working. Thus it is because of its thorough dramatism that modern art in almost everything it touches, and above all in its imitative touches, brings forward, and dwells upon, and presses home the idea of locality. And thus also, remembering how little statuary has to do with place, it is shown that when the romantic drama is called picturesque, and the classical drama sculpturesque, these very common epithets express not a mere fancied resemblance, but a resemblance founded deep in the nature of things.

These remarks are by no means foreign to the question before us; they bear upon it directly. For if dramatic art and imitative thus blend and tally, it will be clear that to ascertain the ruling idea of the drama, strictly so called, we have a right to obtain evidence from the kindred arts of painting and of sculpture, and to regard that evidence as conclusive.

The arts of imitation aim in the first place at truth; but do they aim at nothing more? If that were indeed all, then truthfulness would be the grand touchstone of success; a correct likeness of that which is most inimi

table, be it ever so base, would be the highest reach of art. Moreover, truth of this kind is not peculiar to imitation; it is needful to every art of representation alike,―imitative, narrative and musical,―otherwise, dramatic, epic and lyrical. Words do not imitate things or thoughts, but they represent things or thoughts, and must represent them faithfully. Such truth is plainly the means to an end; and in the arts of imitation what is that end? Surely it is the expression of the beautiful. In painting and in sculpture this is evident; and if not so evident in the drama properly so called, it is because the drama is made up of a series of speeches, and speech can be turned to any purpose. A speech professing to be only a life-like copy from nature, may yet very slyly be made to insinuate certain doctrines or certain lessons; and as some men have been endowed with that most marvellous of elfin gifts by which, with every word they let fall, a pearl or a jewel will drop from their lips; moreover, as such will very often be represented in the drama, it must in many cases happen that a person can never open his mouth without giving utterance to weighty truths. But are doctrines thus instilled essential to the drama? I trow not. For looking at dramatic speeches in their true light, as the means of imitating character and life, not as a means of as it were by slanting mirrors throwing opinions among an audience, and far less as a running commentary on the whole play, it will be seen that if they convey any

thing different in kind from what may be conveyed, however feebly, by dumb show, they swerve from dramatic fitness, or at least are more than dramatic.

These views, it is true, are at variance with the views of Schlegel, and of other Germans,-Herman Ulrici, for one, who has written a book in which he has attempted to draw the corks of all Shakespere's plays, with the intention of giving the world a taste of those moral truths which lie in them, and which, if any such wine there be, certainly ought to be very good, as not having seen the face of day for these two hundred and fifty years. I can only say in defence that although the Germans undoubtedly see further into a millstone than most men, they have, in the matter of the drama, very cheaply earned the reputation of better than Shakespere's countrymen understanding Shakespere. They look at Shakespere, they look at the drama, from a wrong point of view. In his third lecture, Schlegel says, that to find the three kinds of poesy in their purity, we must turn to the Græcian models; and afterwards in the same lecture, having set forth his ideas of the classical drama, the pure idea of tragic and of comic, as he deems it, he refers to the romantic as a medley corrupt. Thus avowedly judging the drama from the stand-point of the epic drama, their views become intelligible, as it also becomes intelligible how and where they are at fault. So long as they speak of the epic drama, they are entirely in the right; but they are so entirely astray