ets the romantic principle appears
more or less degenerated, or is no longer perceivable, although the
march of dramatic composition introduced by virtue of it has been,
outwardly at least, pretty generally retained. The manner in which the
different ways of thinking of the two nations, one a northern and the
other a southern, have been expressed; the former endowed with a
gloomy, the latter with a glowing imagination; the one nation
possessed of a scrutinizing seriousness disposed to withdraw within
itself, the other impelled outwardly by the violence of passion--the
mode in which all this has been accomplished will be most
satisfactorily explained at the close of this section, when we come to
institute a parallel between Shakespeare and Calderon, the only two
poets who are entitled to be called great.

Of the origin and essence of the romantic I treated in my first
Lecture, and I shall here, therefore, merely briefly mention the
subject. The ancient art and poetry rigorously separate things which
are dissimilar; the romantic delights in indissoluble mixtures; all
contrarieties--nature and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and
mirth, recollection and anticipation, spirituality and sensuality,
terrestrial and celestial, life and death, are by it blended in the
most intimate combination. As the oldest law-givers delivered their
mandatory instructions and prescriptions in measured melodies; as this
is fabulously ascribed to Orpheus, the first softener of the yet
untamed race of mortals; in like manner the whole of ancient poetry
and art is, as it were, a rhythmical _nomos_ (law), a harmonious
promulgation of the permanently established legislation of a world
submitted to a beautiful order and reflecting in itself the eternal
images of things. Romantic poetry, on the other hand, is the
expression of the secret attraction to a chaos which lies concealed in
the very bosom of the ordered universe, and is perpetually striving
after new and marvelous births; the life-giving spirit of primal love
broods here anew on the face of the waters. The former is more simple,
clear, and like to nature in the self-existent perfection of her
separate works; the latter, notwithstanding its fragmentary
appearance, approaches nearer to the secret of the universe. For
Conception can only comprise each object separately, but nothing in
truth can ever exist separately and by itself; Feeling perceives all
in all at one and the same time.

Resp