le, he must be able to observe that other
people are badly disposed towards him, without feeling any hatred
towards them himself; nay, there is no surer sign of a great mind than
that it refuses to notice annoying and insulting expressions, but
straightway ascribes them, as it ascribes countless other mistakes, to
the defective knowledge of the speaker, and so merely observes without
feeling them. This is the meaning of that remark of Gracian, that
nothing is more unworthy of a man than to let it be seen that he is
one--_el mayor desdoro de un hombre es dar muestras de que es hombre_.

And even in the drama, which is the peculiar province of the passions
and emotions, it is easy for them to appear common and vulgar. And
this is specially observable in the works of the French tragic
writers, who set no other aim before themselves but the delineation
of the passions; and by indulging at one moment in a vaporous kind
of pathos which makes them ridiculous, at another in epigrammatic
witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their subject. I
remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart:
and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth--though she did it
very well--I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played
the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic
feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same
part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in
fact, the Italian nature, though in many respects very different from
the German, shares its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and
true in Art; herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays
that it possesses none of this feeling whatever.

The noble, in other words, the uncommon, element in the drama--nay,
what is sublime in it--is not reached until the intellect is set to
work, as opposed to the will; until it takes a free flight over all
those passionate movements of the will, and makes them subject of its
contemplation. Shakespeare, in particular, shows that this is his
general method, more especially in Hamlet. And only when intellect
rises to the point where the vanity of all effort is manifest, and the
will proceeds to an act of self-annulment, is the drama tragic in the
true sense of the word; it is then that it reaches its highest aim in
becoming really sublime.

* * * * *

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vis