felt by the poet as monotonous. Four or five persons, each
representing a purpose or a passion, occupy the scene, and obviously
contribute by every word and deed to the advancement of the tragic
action; and this narrowness and rigidity of intent would be
intolerable, if the tragedies were not so brief: I do not think any of
them is much longer than a single act of one of Shakespeare's plays.
They are in all other ways equally unlike Shakespeare's plays. When
you read Macbeth or Hamlet, you find yourself in a world where the
interests and passions are complex and divided against themselves, as
they are here and now. The action progresses fitfully, as events do
in life; it is promoted by the things that seem to retard it; and it
includes long stretches of time and many places. When you read
Orestes, you find yourself attendant upon an imminent calamity, which
nothing can avert or delay. In a solitude like that of dreams, those
hapless phantasms, dark types of remorse, of cruel ambition, of
inexorable revenge, move swiftly on the fatal end. They do not grow or
develop on the imagination; their character is stamped at once, and
they have but to act it out. There is no lingering upon episodes, no
digressions, no reliefs. They cannot stir from that spot where they
are doomed to expiate or consummate their crimes; one little day is
given them, and then all is over.

Mr. Lowell, in his essay on Dryden, speaks of "a style of poetry whose
great excellence was that it was in perfect sympathy with the genius
of the people among whom it came into being", and this I conceive to
be the virtue of the Alferian poetry. The Italians love beauty of
form, and we Goths love picturesque effect; and Alfieri has little or
none of the kind of excellence which we enjoy. But while

I look and own myself a happy Goth,