like the historian by a necessary reverence for facts) is to represent characters affected by the progress of an action in a particular way, and contributing to it in a particular way, because if consistent with themselves, they must so be affected and must so act. The range of the characters from which he may choose for imitation is indeed infinite; but his choice is limited by several considerations. In the first place, the nature of the action and the consequent nature of the effect sought to be produced will impose a corresponding propriety of selection. Again, this choice is subject to those ethical and aesthetical restrictions to which all art is subject, and which it cannot ignore without becoming frivolous or monstrous. Lastly, the general psychological experience of mankind teaches that the diversity of human character groups itself in a limited number of types representing its broad differences and main aspects. Under these the drama has been accordingly wont to range its characters, though no definitely restricted system can be maintained without invention being impoverished, and artificiality substituted for the free artistic reproduction of nature.

As exhibiting human action under its necessary conditions of time and place, the characters of a drama as well as the accidents of the events represented in it must be suited, in a greater or less degree, to the condition of what we term manners. It depends altogether on the degree in which considerations of time and place affect the nature of the action, or influence the developement of the characters, whether the imitation of manners becomes a significant element in a particular play. The time and the place may be so purely imaginary as to necessitate the adoption of a wholly conventional standard; or they may be of so vanishing a significance, that the adoption of any particular standard, except that which is generally appropriate to the nature of the subject, may be legitimately left aside altogether. Where on the other hand, as more

especially in a particular kind of comedy, that which is ridiculously vicious in a particular time or place is the subject of the action, the faithful representation of manners acquires a corresponding significance. But though we may speak of a comedy of manners, as implying the prevalence in it of this element, neither this nor any other kind of drama can be exclusively occupied with the representation of manners,—for a drama of manners only would be a contradiction in terms.

Lastly, there is nothing essential to the drama in the source of the subjects which it treats or in the form of the diction which it adopts. Enquiries into the origin and history of any dramatic subject are rarely devoid of interest, and they are never altogether devoid of instruction, inasmuch as they suggest among other things means for a comparison of dramatic treatment, the sole true test of dramatic power, since, as Dryden says, 'the materia poetica is as common to all writers as the materia medica to all physicians.' As to form of diction, questions whether prose or verse, or a particular form of verse, or a combination of prose or verse, be suitably employed in a particular drama, possess a relative and not an absolute significance. The answers may occasionally depend on the manifest appropriateness of unmeasured or measured speech, or of speech measured in a particular way, to the several moods of sentiment or humour to which they are applied. In general they will have to take note of the developement which the history of particular literatures gives to the significance of these forms or measures for the ear of particular peoples. No greater critical error could here be committed than to seek to establish the same standard for different nations and for different ages. When Aristotle mentions 'the species of poetry which imitates in hexameters,' we know that he is speaking of the epic; but Theocritus might have written a comedy in hexameters, if custom and the influence of

custom had not ruled otherwise. The French long refused to tolerate tragedies in prose; and few English ears can reconcile themselves to Calderon's trochees as a dramatic metre. The criticism of the outward form of dramatic diction may therefore learn much by a comparative, it will gain little by an absolute, process.

No elaborate system of dramatic species can be consistently applied to all dramatic literatures alike. These species are in every case the results of particular antecedents, and their growth is determined by particular conditions. The literature of one nation may borrow the name, and more or less of the features, of a dramatic species from the literature of another, but may at the same time materially modify what it has borrowed. Of the various kinds of the drama attempted in our own literature I shall seek in each case to trace the origin and the progress; but I shall not think it advisable to accept even all the classifications which the English drama has at one or the other time sought to maintain. The broad distinction between the tragic and the comic drama, or between the tragic and the comic parts of any given dramatic work, lies in the nature of the actions imitated, of the characters represented, and of the effects consequently produced. The strong emotions of the mind are alone capable of exercising upon it that powerful effect which, using a bold but marvellously happy figure, Aristotle termed purification; and it is to these emotions-pity and terror -that actions and characters which we term tragic appeal. The poets we term comic address themselves to the sense of the ridiculous, and their subjects are those vices the representation of which is capable of touching the springs of laughter. Or again, as every action may be viewed in the light of a conflict, the nature of that conflict determines the question whether the action is of a tragic or of a comic kind. The view taken of a conflict is however antecedently affected by the conception of the relation between the forces

engaged. It is here that moral considerations, based on principles admitting of modification under different conditions of religion and society, must be taken into account. The struggle of free-will against destiny, and that of individuality against the world, present themselves under different aspects-to take only one obvious illustration-to Hellenic and to Christian modes of thought, feeling, and life; and the conception of the problem and the solution of a tragic conflict will vary accordingly. Furthermore,

in both the tragic and the comic drama the aesthetical idea of poetic justice-in other words, the victory of that which is noble and beautiful over impeding circumstances-must be liable to similar modifications. Yet these facts are far from precluding-they rather impose as necessary—the adoption of ethical and aesthetical standards in the judgment of dramatic works.

Ben Jonson truly observes that 'before the grammarians or philosophers found out their laws, there were many excellent poets that fulfilled them.' The historic sketch offered in these pages will seek to show how the practice of our dramatists evolved itself out of the relations between their individualities and the national life of which our drama formed part.

For the particular growth of dramatic literature to be reviewed is a national growth,-i. e. it possesses characteristics associating themselves with the developement of a nation. Now, a nation may be defined as a body of population which its proper history has made one in itself, and as such distinct from all others. The dramatist is in general more immediately subject to the influences of the national life than any other class of writer-especially in periods when the bond of national union asserts these influences as paramount, or absorbs in them to a greater or less degree the influences of other ties, such as those of language, of class, or of religion.

The existence of a branch of literature which produces

works in a dramatic form presupposes the existence of the drama itself. The elements of dramatic expression are inborn in man; but neither the drama nor dramatic literature has been reached by all peoples. A drama is the imitation (in a particular way) of an action regarded as one, and treated as complete. In the observation of the process of a complete action, and in the attempt to imitate it in accordance with such observation, must therefore be sought the beginnings of the drama. The process of a complete action consists in the stages through which it passes from beginning to end,-in other words, from cause to result. The original force which sets human action in motion most men have believed to come from without; the original cause of human action most men have sought in the operation of some Power which they have called God; and man's consciousness of this operation, whether he traces it in himself or in what surrounds him, is his religious belief. When therefore man attempts-in whatever form -to represent the divine action to his mind, he is producing what is in germ a drama; nor can the beginnings of any drama, ancient or modern, be traced further back than this; while on the other hand there is none which is primarily derived from any other source.

Now, wherever it is possible to penetrate into the historic life of peoples, we find them already living with advanced forms of religious conceptions which-whether monotheistic or not-attach to their idea of deity the idea of personality. A relation between human action and the operation of a personal divine being or beings is a hypothesis common to all historically known religions; and the consciousness of suffering and sin is the inheritance of all mankind. The conflict being thus given between the passion which obstructs1 and the action which is the final cause of the

1 Of course, as in many religious systems, there may be an active extrahuman force aiding in the obstruction. Could this force be conceived of as ever ultimately victorious, a complete action (imitable in a drama) might be VOL. I. b