xpressed in poetic words or words of any kind, nor yet in
music or in colour, but the suggestion of it is in much poetry, if not
all, and poetry has in this suggestion, this "meaning," a great part of
its value. We do it wrong, and we defeat our own purposes when we try
to bend it to them:

We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is as the air invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not speak at our
bidding, nor answer in our language. It is not our servant; it is our
master.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: From "Oxford Lectures on Poetry," 1909. Printed by
courtesy of The Macmillan Company.]

GREEK TRAGEDY[79]

G. LOWES DICKINSON

The character of Greek tragedy was determined from the very beginning by
the fact of its connection with religion. The season at which it was
performed was the festival of Dionysus; about his altar the chorus
danced; and the object of the performance was the representation of
scenes out of the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was
thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle of legends
familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom might be allowed to the
poet in his treatment of the theme, whatever the reflections he might
embroider upon it, the speculative or ethical views, the criticism of
contemporary life, all must be subservient to the main object originally
proposed, the setting forth, for edification as well as for delight, of
some episodes in the lives of those heroes of the past who were
considered not only to be greater than their descendants, but to be the
sons of gods and worthy themselves of worship as divine.

By this fundamental condition the tragedy of the Greeks is distinguished
sharply, on the one hand from the Shakespearian drama, on the other from
the classical drama of the French. The tragedies of Shakespeare are
devoid, one might say, or at least comparatively devoid, of all
preconceptions. He was free to choose what subject he liked and to treat
it as he would; and no sense of obligation to religious or other points
of view, no feeling for traditions descended from a sacred past and not
lightly to be handled by those who were their trustees for the future,
sobered or restrained for evil or for good his half-barbaric genius. He
flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour of the discoverer
of a new contin