706 POETEY 



a poet but of a critic. He based his idea of the Universal on the 

 Poetics of Aristotle, of which he says : " I do not hesitate to acknowl- 

 edge (even if I should therefore be laughed to scorn in these en- 

 lightened times) that I consider this work as infallible as the Elements 

 of Euclid." His first impulse towards dramatic creation was accord- 

 ingly to prove that the French dramatists did not rightly understand 

 Aristotle's meaning in the Poetics, and then to build his own the- 

 atrical edifice on what he conceived to be Aristotle's first principles. 

 But this procedure was a violation of the Law of Character in Fine 

 Art, for, as I have said in a lecture on Aristotle, the rules for com- 

 position in the Poetics were generalized only from Greek examples, 

 and in many respects were not applicable to the circumstances which 

 necessarily determined the form of the modern drama. True, Les- 

 sing had no traditional forms on which to model his creations, because 

 the mediaeval drama had died out without having developed any Ger- 

 man stage. But the forms which he himself evolved a priori from his 

 critical imagination were devoid of national life and character. This 

 is particularly noticeable in what is perhaps his greatest dramatic 

 effort, Emilia GaJotti. His aim in this tragedy was to exhibit, in a 

 dramatic form, the moral effects of corrupt aristocratic manners such 

 as then prevailed in the Courts of the German princes. He thought 

 that he might effect his aim by allegorizing the story of Appius and 

 Virginia, for he hoped that the fame of that legend would enlist on 

 his behalf the sympathies of his audience. But he never considered 

 whether the action of a father stabbing his daughter to preserve her 

 chastity was characteristic of modern manners, or in accordance with 

 what Aristotle calls the law of ideal probability. Though Corneille 

 as a critic is not to be compared with Lessing, he shows himself in 

 Horace to have a more practical understanding of the fundamental 

 laws of the drama, for he takes care in that play not to offend against 

 the appearance of probability, by modernizing the facts of the story, 

 while at the same time he flatters the prejudices of his audience, by 

 pretending that the Romans -felt and spoke like Frenchmen. 



Schiller's dramas have far more life than Lessing's, because lie wrote 

 as a poet, not primarily as a critic, and so breathed his own genius and 

 ardor into his ideal creations; but he had as little conception as Les- 

 sing of the essential law of the stage. Hear what he savs in his 

 preface to the Robbers: "This play is to be regarded merelv as a 

 dramatic narrative, in which, for the purpose of working out the in- 

 nermost operations of the soul, advantage has been taken of the 

 dramatic method, without otherwise conforming to the stringent rules 

 of theatrical composition, or seeking the dubious advantage of stage 

 adaptation.'" Tn other words. Schiller wrote for the reflective reader, 

 not for spectators in the theatre absorbed by the idenl reality of action; 

 \vith him the audience is left out of account. And what is true of his 



