, are so restrained by conventionalities that the tragic
element which consists in concentrating all our interest in one single
individual is quite unintelligible to them. Nor do they venture to
liberate themselves from the trammels of form and give free course to
the spontaneous accents of nature which can alone awaken a tragic awe
in our hearts.

Like every conversation on elevated subjects which does not blindly
grope on the surface of a question, so the present one soon led us to
the discussion of the most mysterious depths of human nature.

Whilst Amadeus drew figures with his silver pencil in the spilt wine,
Otto warmly defended the conventionalism I had; condemned, and
maintained that even fiction should be subjected to strict moral laws.
My proposition that the drama should deal with individual, and
exceptional cases, rather than with generalities, and exalt natural
laws above social ones, seemed to him pernicious and full of danger,
for, he said, the conception of a dramatic crime would then be like the
harbouring of a demon in our bosom, instigating to the contempt and
intolerance of every thing that clashed with our individual feelings
and passions. You would thereby destroy the whole social system, which
after all must have some reason for existing, in favour of the
boundless liberty of the individual. The only merit you appear to
recognize in poetry is that which is beyond the pale of every law. I
tried to, make him understand that the point in question did not only
apply to the collision of the drama with outward forms; in a word that
heroic and noble souls were wont to solve the problems of duty,
otherwise than those timorous and commonplace formalists who are always
regained by petty customs and considerations. Highly gifted natures,
who set an example proportionate to their inward strength and
greatness, extend by their actions the limits of the moral sphere; and
just so, the artist of genius breaks through, or at least extends the
limits that confine his art.

If those noble souls are often actuated by pride and excessive
self-reliance, do they not atone for it by their tragical end? at least
in the eyes of those formalists who regard life as the most precious of
gifts, and who for that reason will never engage in any action, or be
led away by any opinion, which according to the laws of society must
end in death. Such, however, as are capable of understanding the
thoughts and feelings by which those