. If, for
example, a man would _represent_ any impressive course or body of
historical events, the historic order and process of the thing plainly
necessitate a form very different from that of the Classic Drama: the
work must needs use considerable diversity of time and place, else
narrative and description will have to be substituted, in a great
measure, for representation; that is, the right dramatic form must be
sacrificed to what, after all, has no proper coherence or
consanguinity with the nature and genius of the work. As to which of
the two is better in itself, whether the austere and simple beauty of
the Sophoclean tragedy, or the colossal grandeur and massiveness of such a
drama as _King Lear_, this is not for me to say: for myself, however,
I cannot choose but prefer the latter; for this too has a beauty of
its own; but it is indeed an _awful_ beauty, and to my sense all the
better for being so. Be this as it may, it is certain that the human
mind had quite outgrown the formal limitations of the Classic
Drama.[14]

[14] Two thousand years lie between Shakespeare and the
flourishing period of the ancient tragedy. In this interval
Christianity laid open unknown depths of mind: the Teutonic
race, in their dispersion, filled wide spaces of the Earth; the
Crusaders opened the way to the East, voyages of discovery
revealed the West and the form of the whole globe; new spheres
of knowledge presented themselves; whole nations and periods of
time arose and passed away; a thousand forms of life, public and
private, religious and political, had come and gone; the circle
of views, ideas, experiences, and interests was immensely
enlarged, the mind thereby made deeper and broader, wants
increased, passions more various and refined, the conflict of
human endeavours more diversified and intricate, the resources
of the mind immeasurable; all in a way quite foreign to the
childish times of antiquity. This abundance of external and
internal material streamed into the sphere of Art on all sides:
poetry could not resist it without injury, and even
ruin.--GERVINUS.

But what are the conditions of building, in right artistic order, a
work of such vastness and complexity? As the mind is taken away from
the laws of time and place, it must be delivered over to the higher
laws of reason. So that the work lies under the necessity of
proceeding in such a way as t