self, its
selection and construction, this is what is all-important. This the
Greeks understood far more clearly than we do. The radical difference
between their poetical theory and ours consists, as it appears to me,
in this: that, with them, the poetical character of the action in
itself, and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; with us,
attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and
images which occur in the treatment of an action. They regarded the
whole; we regard the parts. With them, the action predominated over
the expression of it; with us, the expression predominates over the
action. Not that they failed in expression, or were inattentive to it;
on the contrary, they are the highest models of expression, the
unapproached masters of the _grand style_: but their expression is so
excellent because it is so admirably kept in its right degree of
prominence; because it is so simple and so well subordinated; because
it draws its force directly from the pregnancy of the matter which it
conveys. For what reason was the Greek tragic poet confined to so
limited a range of subjects? Because there are so few actions which
unite in themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of
excellence: and it was not thought that on any but an excellent
subject could an excellent Poem be constructed. A few actions,
therefore, eminently adapted for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive
possession of the Greek tragic stage; their significance appeared
inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems, perpetually offered to
the genius of every fresh poet. This too is the reason of what appears
to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy; of
the triviality with which we often reproach the remarks of the
Chorus, where it takes part in the dialogue: that the action itself,
the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon, was to stand the
central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no
accessories were for a moment to distract the spectator's attention
from this; that the tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down,
in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible
old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he
entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's
mind; it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at
the end of a long and dark vista: then came the Poet, embodying
outlines,