SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 223 



written bj Simonides, we could not help thinking that, 

 il' 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 w^e 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 so. The idea and the form 

 in which it naturally embodies itself, mutually sustain- 

 ing and invigorating each other, cannot be divided with- 

 out endangering the lives of both. For in all real 

 poetry the form is not a garment, but a body. Our 

 very passion has become metaphysical, and speculates 

 upon itself Their simple and downright w^ay of think- 

 ing loses all its savor when we assume it to ourselves 

 by an effort of thought. Human nature, it is true, re- 

 mains always the same, but the displays of it change ; 

 the habits which are a second nature modify it inwardly 

 as well as outwardly, and what moves it to passionate 

 action in one age may leave it indifferent in the next. 

 Between us and the Greeks lies the grave of their 

 murdered paganism, making our minds and theirs iri'ec- 

 oncilable. Christianity as steadily intensifies the self- 

 consciousness of man as the religion of the Greeks must 

 have turned their thoughts away from themselves to the 

 events of this life and the phenomena of nature. We 

 cannot even conceive of their conception of Phoibos 

 wuth any plausible assurance of coming near the truth. 

 To take lesser matters, since the invention of printing 



