Montagus, 'say _better_,') 'that the English tragedy contented itself
with fewer of these artful resources than the Athenian?' I reply, that the
object of all these things was--to unrealize the scene. The English drama,
by its metrical dress, and by other arts more disguised, unrealized
itself, liberated itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary
standards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise still higher, and
why the Grecian _did_, I will endeavor to explain. It was not that the
English tragedy was less impassioned; on the contrary, it was far more
so; the Greek being awful rather than impassioned; but the passion of each
is in a different key. It is not again that the Greek drama sought a lower
object than the English: it sought a different object. It is not imparity,
but disparity, that divides the two magnificent theatres.

Suffer me, reader, at this point, to borrow from my-self, and do not
betray me to the authorities that rule in this journal, if you happen to
know [which is not likely] that I am taking an idea from a paper which
years ago I wrote for an eminent literary journal. As I have no copy of
that paper before me, it is impossible that I should save myself any labor
of writing. The words at any rate I must invent afresh: and, as to the
idea, you never _can_ be such a churlish man as, by insisting on a new
one, in effect to insist upon my writing a false one. In the following
paragraph, therefore, I give the substance of a thought suggested by
myself some years ago.

That kind of feeling, which broods over the Grecian tragedy, and to court
which feeling the tragic poets of Greece naturally spread all their
canvas, was more nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than that of
life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and religious horror
investing the Greek theatre. But to my own feeling the different principle
of passion which governs the Grecian conception of tragedy, as compared