i68 SWINBURNE S TRAGEDIES. 



native in ^Eschylus, the thoughtfully artistic in Sophocles, the 

 sentimental in F.uripides and then died. If people could only 

 learn the general applicability to periods and schools of what 

 young Mozart says of Gellert, that he had written no poetry 

 since his death ! No effort to raise a defunct past has ever led 

 to anything but just enough galvanic twitching of the limbs to 

 remind us unpleasantly of life. The romantic movement of the 

 school of German poets which succeeded Goethe and Schiller 

 ended in extravagant unreality, and Goethe himself, with his 

 unerring common-sense, has given us, in the second part of 

 * Faust/ the result of his own and Schiller s common striving 

 after a Grecian ideal. Euphorion, the child of Faust and Helen, 

 falls dead at their feet ; and Helen herself soon follows him to 

 the shades, leaving only her mantle in the hands of her lover. 

 This, he is told, shall lift him above the earth. We fancy we 

 can interpret the symbol. Whether we can or not, it is certainly 

 suggestive of thought that the only immortal production of the 

 greatest of recent poets was conceived and carried out in that 

 Gothic spirit and form from which he was all his life struggling 

 to break loose. 



CHA UCER* 



WILL it do to say anything more about Chaucer ? Can any 

 one hope to say anything, not new, but even fresh, on a 

 topic so well worn ? It may well be doubted ; and yet one is 

 always the better for a walk in the morning air a medicine 

 which may be taken over and over again without any sense of 

 sameness, or any failure of its invigorating quality. There is a 

 pervading wholesomeness in the writings of this man a vernal 

 property that soothes and refreshes in a way of which no othei 

 has ever found the secret. I repeat to myself a thousand times 



Whan that Aprils with his showres sote 



The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, 



And bathed every veine in swich licour 



Of which vertue engendered is the flour, 



* Publications of the Chaucer Society. London. 1869-70. 



Etude sur G. Chaucer considere comme imitateur des Trouveres. Par E. G. 

 SANDRAS, Agrege de I Umversite. Paris : Auguste Dusand. 1859. 8vo. pp. 298. 



Geoffrey Chaucer s Canterbury-Geschichten, iibersetzt in den Versmassen dcr 

 Urschrift, tmd durch Einleitung imd Anmerkungen erldutert. Von WILHELM 

 HERTZBERG. Hildburghausen. 1866. i2mo. pp. 674. 



Chaucer in seinen Beziehungen zur italienischen Literatur. Inaugnral-Disser* 

 tation ziir Erlangung der Doctoriyiirde. Von ALFONS JCissNER. Conn. 1867, 

 8vo. pp. 8 1. 



