224 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 



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 com 

 monplaces of proverbial lore in which the chorus and 

 secondary characters are apt to indulge, though in the 

 original they may interest us as being natural and 

 characteristic. In the German-silver of the modern we 

 get something of this kind, which does not please us the 

 more by being cut up into single lines that recall the 

 outward semblance of some pages in Sophocles. We 

 find it cheaper to make a specimen than to borrow one. 



CHORUS. Foolish who bites off nose, his face to spite. 

 OUTIS. Who fears his fate, him Fate shall one day spurn. 

 CHORUS. The gods themselves are pliable to Fate. 

 OUTIS. The strong self-ruler dreads no other sway. 

 CHORUS. Sometimes the shortest way goes most about. 

 OUTIS. Why fetch a compass, having stars within? 

 CHORUS. A shepherd once, I know that stars may set. 

 OUTIS. That thou led'st sheep fits not for leading men. 

 CHORUS. To sleep-sealed eyes the wolf-dog barks in vain. 



We protest that we have read something very like this, 

 we will not say where, and we might call it the battle- 

 door and shuttlecock style of dialogue, except that the 

 players do not seem to have any manifest relation to 

 each other, but each is intent on keeping his own bit 

 of feathered cork continually in the air. 



The first sincerely popular yearning toward antiquity, 

 the first germ of Schiller's " Gotter Griechenland's " is 

 to be found in the old poem of Tanhauser, very near 

 ly coincident with the beginnings of the Reformation. 

 And if we might allegorize it, we should say that it 

 typified precisely that longing after Venus, under her 

 other name of Charis, which represents the relation in 

 which modern should stand to ancient art. It is the 

 grace of the Greeks, their sense of proportion, their dis- 



