time, the observance of which must either confine the drama to as few
subjects as may be counted on the fingers, or involve gross
improbabilities, far more striking than the violation would have caused.
Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a false ideal,--of aiming at
more than what is possible on the whole. What play of the ancients, with
reference to their ideal, does not hold out more glaring absurdities
than any in Shakspeare? On the Greek plan a man could more easily be a
poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a dramatist than a
poet.


[Footnote 1: A. D. 363. But I believe the prevailing opinion amongst
scholars now is, that the [Greek: Christos Paschon] is not genuine. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: See vol. i. p. 76, where this is told more at length and
attributed to Hans Sachs. Ed.]





THE DRAMA GENERALLY, AND PUBLIC TASTE.

Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long
interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I
had miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my
time, and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of
my discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the
promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects,
to be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better