developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment
capriciously thrown in; stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded: the
light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the
riveted gaze of the spectator: until at last, when the final words
were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of
immortal beauty.

This was what a Greek critic demanded; this was what a Greek poet
endeavoured to effect. It signified nothing to what time an action
belonged; we do not find that the _Persae_ occupied a particularly
high rank among the dramas of Aeschylus, because it represented a
matter of contemporary interest: this was not what a cultivated
Athenian required; he required that the permanent elements of his
nature should be moved; and dramas of which the action, though taken
from a long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accomplish this
in a higher degree than that of the _Persae_, stood higher in his
estimation accordingly. The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their
exquisite sagacity of taste, that an action of present times was too
near them, too much mixed up with what was accidental and passing, to
form a sufficiently grand, detached, and self-subsistent object for a
tragic poem: such objects belonged to the domain of the comic poet,
and of the lighter kinds of poetry. For the more serious kinds, for
_pragmatic_ poetry, to use an excellent expression of Polybius, they
were more difficult and severe in the range of subjects which they
permitted. Their theory and practice alike, the admirable treatise of
Aristotle, and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with a
thousand tongues--'All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting
action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this
done, everything else will follow.'

But for all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they
were rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of
poetry selected, and the careful construction of the poem.

How different a way of thinking from this is ours! We can hardly at
the present day understand what Menander meant, when he told a man who
inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not
having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the
action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that
the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose
under his pen as he went along. We have poems whic