personal disaster. And,
indeed, it is more or less impossible for him to depict them as they
would occur in real life. If we had spent long years with the hero of
the drama which has stirred us so painfully, had he been our brother,
our father, our friend, we should have probably noted, recognised,
counted one by one as they passed, all the causes of his misfortune,
which then would not only appear less extraordinary to us, but
perfectly natural even, and humanly almost inevitable. But to the
"interpreter of life" is given neither power nor occasion to acquaint
us with each veritable cause. For these causes, as a rule, are
infinitely slow in their movement, and countless in number, and slight,
and of small apparent significance. He is therefore led to adopt a
general cause, one sufficiently vast to embrace the whole drama, in
place of the real and human causes which he is unable to show us,
unable, too, himself to examine and study. And where shall a general
cause of sufficient vastness be found, if not in the two or three words
we breathe to ourselves when silence oppresses us: words like fatality,
divinity, Providence, or obscure and nameless justice?

23

The question we have to consider is how far this procedure can be
beneficial, or even legitimate; as also whether it be the mission of
the poet to present, and insist on, the distress and confusion of our
least lucid hours, or to add to the clear-sightedness of the moments
when we conceive ourselves to enjoy the fullest possession of our force
and our reason. In our own misfortunes there is something of good, and
something of good must therefore be found in the illusion of personal
misfortune. We are made to look into ourselves; our errors, our
weaknesses, are more clearly revealed; it is shown to us where we have
strayed. There falls a light on our consciousness a thousand times
more searching, more active, than could spring from many arduous years
of meditation and study. We are forced to emerge from ourselves, and
to let our eyes rest on those round about us; we are rendered more
keenly alive to the sorrows of others. There are some who will tell us
that misfortune does even more--that it urges our glance on high, and
compels us to bow to a power superior to our own, to an unseen justice,
to an impenetrable, infinite mystery. Can this indeed be the best of
all possible issues? Ah, yes, it was well, from the standpoint of
religious morality, that