164 SWINBURNE S TRAGEDIES* 



models, but are much rather born of some genetic principle 

 in the character of the people and the age which produce them. 

 One drop of ruddy human blood puts more life into the veins of 

 a poem than all the delusive aurum polabile that can be dis 

 tilled out of the choicest library. 



The opera is the closest approach we have to the ancient 

 drama in the essentials of structure and presentation; and 

 could we have a libretto founded on a national legend and 

 written by one man of genius, to be filled out and accompanied 

 by the music of another, we might hope for something of the 

 same effect upon the stage. But themes of universal familiarity 

 and interest are rare Don Giovanni and Faust, perhaps, most 

 nearly, though not entirely, fulfilling the required conditions 

 and men of genius rarer. The oratorio seeks to evade the diffi 

 culty by choosing Scriptural subjects, and it may certainly be 

 questioned whether the day of popular mythology, in the sense 

 in which it subserves the purposes of epic or dramatic poetry, be 

 not gone by for ever. Longfellow is driven to take refuge 

 among the red men, and Tennyson in the Cambro-Breton cyclus 

 of Arthur; but it is impossible that such themes should come 

 so intimately home to us as the semi-fabulous stories of their 

 own ancestors did to the Greeks. The most successful attempt 

 at reproducing the Greek tragedy, both in theme and treatment, 

 is the Samson Agonistes, as it is also the most masterly piece 

 of English versification. Goethe admits that it alone, among 

 modern works, has caught life from the breath of the antique 

 spirit. But he failed to see, or at least to give, the reason of it ; 

 probably failed to see it, or he would never have attempted the 

 Iphigenia. Milton not only subjected himself to the structural 

 requirements of the Attic tragedy, but with the true poetic 

 instinct availed himself of the striking advantage it had in the 

 choice of a subject. No popular tradition lay near enough to 

 him for his purpose ; none united in itself the essential requi 

 sites of human interest and universal belief. He accordingly 

 chose a Jewish mythus, very near to his own heart as a blind 

 prisoner, betrayed by his wife, among the Philistines of the 

 Restoration, and familiar to the earliest associations of his 

 hearers. This subject, and this alone, met all the demands both 

 of living poetic production and of antique form the action 

 grandly simple, the personages few, the protagonist at once 

 a victim of Divine judgment and an executor of Divine retribu 

 tion, an intense personal sympathy in the poet himself, and no 

 strangeness to the habitual prepossessions of those he addressed 



