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the arrangement of plot and design, characters and lan- 

 guage are subordinated to the discussion and illustra- 

 tion of some great moral truth, or the series of truths 

 dependent thereon. That this rule sits ever above that 

 ideal beauty of structure supposed to be the crowning 

 glory of created work. Like a vertebrated backbone, 

 running through all the diverse characters and situations, 

 uniting them by a common motive, with one purpose — 

 maintaining vitality, preserving vigour, dilfusing health, 

 energy, command, from the seat of life itself. The human 

 agents move in seeming confusion, but in perfect order 

 in deference to law, like a swarm of fireflies now tangled 

 in a braid, and anon flying out into the darkness as sparks 

 struck from a common centre. 



In this text of usurped honour, without that grace 

 which should wait upon authority, of humility without 

 faith, or in the aspect which M. Ulrici prefers translating 

 it, whose true sense is that of the be'autiful petition in 

 the prayer — "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive 

 them that trespass against us" — lies the unity and 

 consistency of the play. Not the merely external and 

 superficial semblance of order — but that diviner order, 

 superior to all art — which binds the play together in 

 harmony, and which imparts to it the noblest, because a 

 purely moral, grandeur and dignity of design. The 

 general burden of the story is so strictly diffiised, that the 

 play seems the only practicable or possible illustration of 

 its meaning — the only means of conveying or expressing 

 in its different aspects, a text which it would be otherwise 

 impossible to fully represent. There is always a certain 

 amount of falsehood or inaccuracy, in the ordinary expres- 

 sion of any moral idea. Such ideas are indeed incapable 

 of direct statement. In this it is the Shaksperean Drama, 

 finds its meaning and justification ; the moral idea which 

 must always remain a riddle in words, is soluble in action. 

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