Swinburne's tragedies. 219 



ent form of expression, and does not seem to have been 

 successful. Indeed, the fact that what is called the 

 legitimate drama of modern times in England, Spain, 

 and France has been strictly a growth, and not a manu- 

 facture, that in each country it took a different form, 

 and that, in all, the period of its culminating and be- 

 ginning to decline might be measured by a generation, 

 seems to point us toward some natural and inevitable 

 law of human nature, and to show that, while the prin- 

 ciples of art are immutable, their application must ac- 

 commodate itself to the material supplied them by the 

 time and by the national character and traditions. The 

 Spanish tragedy inclines more toward the lyrical, the 

 French toward the epical, the English toward the histor- 

 ical, in the representation of real life ; the Spanish and 

 English agree in the Teutonic peculiarity of admitting 

 the humorous offset of the clown, though in the one 

 case he parodies the leading motive of the drama, and 

 represents the self-consciousness of the dramatist, while 

 in the other he heightens the tragic effect by contrast, 

 (as in the grave-digging scene of Hamlet,) and suggests 

 that stolid but wholesome indifference of the general 

 life — of what, for want of abetter term, we call Nature 

 — to the sin and suffering, the weakness and misfortunes 

 of the individual man. All these nations had the same 

 ancient examples before them, had the same reverence 

 for antiquity, yet they involuntarily deviated, more or 

 less happily, into originality, success, and the freedom 

 of a living creativeness. The higher kinds of literature, 

 the only kinds that live on because they had life at the 

 start, are not, then, it should seem, the fabric of scholar- 

 ship, of criticism, diligently studying and as diligently 

 copying the best models, but are much rather born of 

 some genetic principle in the character of the people and 

 the age which produce them. One drop of ruddy human 



