inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New
Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning
towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of
Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at
the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed
by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of
Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an
impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to
transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical
bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most
"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely
credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only
conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more
"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in
_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy.

For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating
poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever
unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both
great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more
value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could
have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any
such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more
the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote
Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no
sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:--

"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but
what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and
the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the