166 SWINBURNE S TRAGEDIES. 



peas was a criticism worthy of Aristotle s pupil. We should 

 reward such writing with the gift of a classical dictionary. In 

 this idyllic kind of poetry also we have a classic, because Gold 

 smith went to nature for his Deserted Village/ and borrowed 

 of tradition nothing but the poetic diction in which he described 

 it. This is the only method by which a poet may surely reckon 

 on ever becoming an ancient himself. When we heard it said 

 once that a certain poem might have been written by Simonides, 

 we could not help thinking that, if it were so, then it was pre 

 cisely what Simonides could never have written, since he looked 

 at the world through his own eyes, not through those of Linus 

 or Hesiod, and thought his own thoughts, not theirs, or we 

 should never have had him to imitate. 



Objections of the same nature, but even stronger, lie against 

 a servile copying of the form and style of the Greek tragic 

 drama, and yet more against the selection of a Greek theme. 

 As we said before, the life we lead, and the views we take of it, 

 are more complex than those of men who lived five centuries 

 before Christ. They may be better or worse, but, at any rate, 

 they are different, and irremediably so. The idea and the form 

 in which it naturally embodies itself, mutually sustaining and 

 invigorating each other, cannot be divided without endangering 

 the lives of both. For in all real poetry the form is not a 

 garment, but a body. Our very passion has become meta 

 physical, and speculates upon itself. Their simple and down 

 right way of thinking loses all its savour when we assume it to 

 ourselves by an effort of thought. Human nature, it is true, 

 remains always the same, but the displays of it change ; the 

 habits which are a second nature modify it inwardly as well as 

 outwardly, and what moves it to passionate action in one age 

 may leave it indifferent in the next. Between us and the Greeks 

 lies the grave of their murdered paganism, making our minds 

 and theirs irreconcilable. Christianity as steadily intensifies the 

 self-consciousness of man as the religion of the Greeks must 

 have turned their thoughts away from themselves to the events 

 of this life and the phenomena of nature. We cannot even 

 conceive of their conception of Phoibos with any plausible 

 assurance of coming near the truth. To take lesser matters, 

 since the invention of printing and the cheapening of books 

 have made the thought of all ages and nations the common 

 property of educated men, we cannot so dis-saturate our minds 

 of it as to be keenly thrilled in the modern imitation with those 

 commonplaces of proverbial lore in which the chorus and 



