general
character of a Greek tragedy; and those who care to pursue the subject
further must be referred to the text of the plays themselves.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: From "The Greek View of Life," 1909 (sixth edition). By
permission of Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co.]

[Footnote 80: From Aristophanes' "Frogs," l. 1043. Translated by Frere.]

SHAKESPEARE[81]

THOMAS CARLYLE

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically
the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its
Inner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life
of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours,
ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world,
men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in
Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe
was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us
the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us
the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent
for it, the man Shakespeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had
reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow
or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign
Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to
take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante,
deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide,
placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy
produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of producing the
other.

Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I
think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this
Shakespeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for
deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods
and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough
for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English
Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of
its own accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own
laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every
bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas
Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not
sufficiently considered: how