in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that
unconnection by contradictions of the inward being, to which all folly
is owing.

The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting
down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,--of man as an animal
into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have
represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where
the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an
inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and
spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent
substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a
vehicle and fixure of light, a mean of developing its beauties, and
unfolding its wealth of various colors without disturbing its unity, or
causing a division of the parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary,
consists in the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature with
the animal, as with its ruling principle and its acknowledged regent.
The understanding and practical reason are represented as the willing
slaves of the senses and appetites, and of the passions arising out of
them. Hence we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy, as a
work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can
never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only
as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he
wrote, can consent even to palliate.

The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also
it died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more
fitly called, dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which,
nevertheless, our modern comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted) is
the genuine descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down