214 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES. 



human nature which our habit of mind demands for its 

 satisfaction. The fulfilment of an oracle, the anger of 

 a deity, the arbitrary doom of some blind and purpose- 

 less 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 Sopho- 

 cles which is intelligible to us only by study and reflec- 

 tion. It is not a little curious that Shakespeare should 

 have made the last of the motives we have just men- 

 tioned, and which was conclusive for 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 iife 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 Shake- 

 speare 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 " Electra " and " Hamlet " 

 is essentially the same, but what a difference between 

 the straightforward bloody-mindedness of Orestes and 

 the metaphysical punctiliousness of the Dane ! Yet each 

 was natural in his several way, and each would have 

 been luiintelligiblc to the audience for which the other 

 was intended. That Fate which the Greeks made to 

 operate from without, we recognize at work within in 

 some vice of character or hereditary predisposition. 

 Hawthorne, the most profoundly ideal genius of these 

 latter days, was continually returning, more or less 

 directly, to this theme; and his " Mai-ble Faun," whether 

 consciously or not, illustrates that invasion of the a;s- 

 thetic 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. ' 



