T94 SWINBURNE S TRAGEDIES. 



heart as they caine from it, and are neither Greek nor 

 English, but broadly human. And yet, when we had read 

 the book through, we felt as if we were leaving a world of 

 shadows, inhabited by less substantial things than that 

 nether realm of Homer where the very eidolon of Achilles 

 is still real to us in its longings and regrets. These are not 

 characters, but outlines after the Elgin marbles in the thin 

 nest manner of Flaxman. There is not so much blood in 

 the whole of them as would warm the little finger of one of 

 Shakespeare s living and breathing conceptions. We could 

 not help thinking of those exquisite verses addressed by 

 Schiller to Goethe, in which, while he expresses a half- 

 truth so eloquently as almost to make it seem a whole one, 

 he touches unconsciously the weak point of their common 

 striving after a Grecian instead of a purely human ideal. 



&quot; Doch leicht gezimmert nur ist Thespis Wagen, 

 Und er ist gleich dem acheront schen Kahn ; 

 Nur Schatten und Idole kann er tragen, 

 Und drangt das rohe Leben sicli heran, 

 So droht das leichte Fahrzeug umzusclilagen 

 Das nur die flucht gen Ceister fassen kann ; 

 Der Scheiu soil nie die Wirklichkeit erreichen 

 Und siegt Natur, so muss die Kunst entweichen.&quot; 



The actors in the drama are unreal and shadowy, the 

 motives which actuate them alien to our modern modes of 

 thought and conceptions of character. To a Greek, the 

 element of Fate, with which his imagination was familiar, 

 while it heightened the terror of the catastrophe, would 

 have supplied the place of that impulse in mere human 

 nature which our habit of mind demands for its satisfac 

 tion. The fulfilment of an oracle, the anger of a deity, 

 the arbitrary doom of some blind and purposeless power 

 superior to man, the avenging of blood to appease an injured 

 ghost, any one of these might make that seem simply 

 natural to a contemporary of Sophocles which is intelligible 

 to us only by study and reflection. It is not a little curious 

 that Shakespeare should have made the last of the motives 

 we have just mentioned, and which was conclusive for 



