the strict observance of the unity of place, as it could not be changed
without the removal of the Chorus; an act, which could not have been done
without some available pretext. Or lastly, they have believed that the
Chorus owed its continuance from the first origin of Tragedy merely to
accident; and as it is plain that in Euripides, the last of the three
great tragic poets, the choral songs have frequently little or no
connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical
ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one
more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus
altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary
to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in
opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from
following blindly the practice which he found established, like an
intelligent artist he was able to assign reasons for his own doings.

Modern poets of the first rank have often, since the revival of the study
of the ancients, attempted to introduce the Chorus in their own pieces,
for the most part without a correct, and always without a vivid idea of
its real import. They seem to have forgotten that we have neither suitable
singing or dancing, nor, as our theatres are constructed, any convenient
place for it. On these accounts it is hardly likely to become naturalized
with us.

The Greek tragedy, in its pure and unaltered state, will always for our
theatres remain an exotic plant, which we can hardly hope to cultivate
with any success, even in the hot-house of learned art and criticism. The
Grecian mythology, which furnishes the materials of ancient tragedy, is as
foreign to the minds and imaginations of most of the spectators, as its
form and manner of representation. But to endeavour to force into that
form materials of a wholly different nature, an historical one, for