to York Minster or Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with
Shakspeare; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an excellence, on
which the mind rests with complacency; in the other a multitude of
interlaced materials, great and little, magnificent and mean,
accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection,
and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual
progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose
of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent
admiration of grace.

This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be
illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;--the one
consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing
sounds,--the modern embracing harmony also, the result of combination
and the effect of a whole.

I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the genius of
Shakspeare, his judgment was at least equal to it. Of this any one will
be convinced, who attentively considers those points in which the dramas
of Greece and England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by
which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage had its origin
in the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the goat to Bacchus, whom
we most erroneously regard as merely the jolly god of wine;--for among
the ancients he was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts
without our consciousness in the vital energies of nature,--the 'vinum
mundi',--as Apollo was that of the conscious agency of our intellectual
being. The heroes of old under the influence of this Bacchic enthusiasm
performed more than human actions;--hence tales of the favorite
champions soon passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the chorus was
always before the audience; the curtain was never dropped, as we should