they alone are sufficiently important to interest us in their behalf; nor,
again, because internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed with
external dignity, to call forth our respect and admiration. The Greek
tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without any reference to
its effects on the condition of the people; they show us the man in the
king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight by their purple
mantles, they allow us to look, through their vain splendour, into a bosom
torn and harrowed with grief and passion. That the main essential was not
so much the regal dignity as the heroic costume, is evident from those
tragedies of the moderns which have been written under different
circumstances indeed, but still upon this supposed principle: such, I
mean, as under the existence of monarchy have taken their subject from
kings and courts. Prom the existing reality they dare not draw, for
nothing is less suitable for tragedy than a court and a court life.
Wherever, therefore, they do not paint an ideal kingdom, with the manners
of some remote age, they invariably fall into stiffness and formality,
which are much more fatal to boldness of character, and to depth of
pathos, than the monotonous and equable relations of private life.

A few mythological fables alone seem originally marked out for tragedy:
such, for example, as the long-continued alternation of crime, revenge,
and curses, which we witness in the house of Atreus. When we examine the
names of the pieces which are lost, we have great difficulty in conceiving
how the mythological fables (such, at least, as they are known to us,)
could have furnished sufficient materials for the compass of an entire
tragedy. It is true, the poets, in the various editions of the same story,
had a great latitude of selection; and this very fluctuation of tradition
justified them in going still farther, and making considerable alterations
in the circumstances of an event, so that the inventions employed for this
purpose in one piece sometimes contradict the story as given by the same