SWINBURNE S TRAGEDIES. 195 



Orestes, insufficient for Hamlet, who so perfectly typifies 

 the introversion and complexity of modern thought as 

 compared with ancient, in dealing with the problems of life 

 and action. It was not perhaps without intention (for who 

 may venture to assume a want of intention in the world s 

 highest poetic genius at its full maturity 1) that Shakespeare 

 brings in his hero fresh from the University of Wittenberg, 

 where Luther, who entailed upon us the responsibility of 

 private judgment, had been Professor. The dramatic 

 motive in the &quot; Electra &quot; and &quot; Hamlet &quot; is essentially the 

 same, but what a difference between the straightforward 

 bloody-mindedness of Orestes and the metaphysical punc 

 tiliousness of the Dane ! Yet each was natural in his 

 several way, and each would have been unintelligible to the 

 audience for which the other was intended. That Fate which 

 the Greeks made to operate from without, we recognise at 

 work within in some vice of character or hereditary predis 

 position. Hawthorne, the most profoundly ideal genius of 

 these latter days, was continually returning, more or less 

 directly, to this theme ; and his &quot; Marble Faun,&quot; whether 

 consciously or not, illustrates that invasion of the sesthetic 

 by the moral which has confused art by dividing its 

 allegiance, and dethroned the old dynasty without as yet 

 firmly establishing the new in an acknowledged legitimacy. 

 &quot; Atalanta in Calydon,&quot; shows that poverty of thought 

 and profusion of imagery which are at once the defect 

 and the compensation of all youthful poetry, even of 

 Shakespeare s. It seems a paradox to say that there can 

 be too much poetry in a poem, and yet this is a fault with 

 which all poets begin, and which some never get over. But 

 &quot;Atalanta&quot; is hopefully distinguished, in a rather remark 

 able way, from most early attempts, by a sense of form and 

 proportion, which, if seconded by a seasonable ripening of 

 other faculties, as we may fairly expect, gives promise of 

 rare achievement hereafter. Mr. Swinburne s power of 

 assimilating style, which is, perhaps, not so auspicious a 

 symptom, strikes us as something marvellous. The argu 

 ment of his poem, in its quaint archaism, would not need 



