202 &WIN&URN&S TRAGEDIES. 



Pseudo-classicism takes two forms. Sometimes, as Mr. 

 Landor has done, it attempts truth of detail to ancient 

 scenery and manners, which may be attained either by hard 

 reading and good memory, or at a cheaper rate from such 

 authors as Becker. The &quot; Moretum,&quot; once attributed to 

 Virgil, and the idyl of Theocritus lately chosen as a text by 

 Mr. Arnold, are interesting, because they describe real 

 things ; but the mock-antique, if not true, is nothing ; and 

 how true such poems are likely to be we can judge by 

 &quot; Punch s &quot; success at Yankeeisms, by all England s accurate 

 appreciation of the manners and minds of a contemporary 

 people one with herself in language, laws, religion, and 

 literature. The eye is the only note-book of the true poet \ 

 but a patchwork of second-hand memories is a laborious 

 futility, hard to write and harder to read, with about as 

 much nature in it as a dialogue of the Deipnosophists. 

 Alexander s bushel of 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 Goldsmith went to nature 

 for his &quot; Deserted Village,&quot; 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 precisely 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 



