and complicated as
the sole legitimate channel of tragic effect; and thus tend to
withdraw the mind of the poet from the spontaneous exhibition of
pathos or imagination, to a minute diligence in the formation of a
plan. To explain our views on the subject, we will institute a short
comparison between three tragedies, the _Agamemnon_, the _Oedipus_,
and the _Bacchae_, one of each of the tragic poets, where, by
reference to Aristotle's principles, we think it will be found that
the most perfect in plot is not the most poetical.

Of these the action of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ is frequently instanced
by the critic as a specimen of judgement and skill in the selection
and combination of the incidents; and in this point of view it is
truly a masterly composition. The clearness, precision, certainty,
and vigour, with which the line of the action moves on to its
termination, is admirable. The character of Oedipus too is finely
drawn, and identified with the development of the action.

The _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus presents us with the slow and difficult
birth of a portentous secret--an event of old written in the resolves
of destiny, a crime long meditated in the bosom of the human agents.
The Chorus here has an importance altogether wanting in the Chorus of
the _Oedipus_. They throw a pall of ancestral honour over the bier of
the hereditary monarch, which would have been unbecoming in the case
of the upstart king of Thebes. Till the arrival of Agamemnon, they
occupy our attention, as the prophetic organ, not commissioned indeed
but employed by heaven, to proclaim the impending horrors. Succeeding
to the brief intimation of the watcher who opens the play, they seem
oppressed with forebodings of woe and crime which they can neither
justify nor analyse. The expression of their anxiety forms the stream
in which the plot flows--every thing, even news of joy, takes a
colouring from the depth of their gloom. On the arrival of the king,
they retire before Cassandra, a more regularly commissioned
prophetess; who, speaking first in figure, then in plain terms, only
ceases that we may hear the voice of the betrayed monarch himself,
informing us of the striking of the fatal blow. Here then the very
simplicity of the fable constitutes its especial beauty. The death of
Agamemnon is intimated at first--it is accomplished at last:
throughout we find but the growing in volume and intensity of one and
the same note--it is a working up of one mu