An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times | Page 8

the spirit, and of which the end is that annihilation in collision with destiny which is but the blank side of reconciliation with it. And though his sojourn in this region be short, yet, when he falls again, the smell of the divine fire has passed upon him, and he bears about him, for a time at least, among the rank vapours of the earth, something of the freshness and fragrance of the higher air.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The actual time represented in the play has been calculated to be nine days, with intervals of a week or two between Acts II and III, scenes ii and iii of Act IV, and scenes i and ii of Act V. See New Shakespeare Society Publications, 1877-79.
[8] The phrase is Aristotle's; cf. the 'Poetics,' Chap. vi, and, for comment, Butcher's 'Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art,' Chapter vi.

I. TRAGEDY THE ELEVATION OF LIFE
9. In this sense, then, tragedy satisfies its definition as "the flight or elevation of life." The two indispensable supports which render this elevation possible, are metrical expression and great situations. "In the regeneration" the language of the market-place and the morning call may answer to the realised harmony of life; there may, indeed, be "the fifth act of a tragedy in every death-bed;" there may be no distinction of great or little, high or low. But it is an affectation to confound what shall be with what is. We cannot dissociate ordinary incidents from the petty wants out of which they ordinarily spring, nor common language from the common-place thoughts which it usually expresses. The action in tragedy must be relative to the situation; and if the situation be one which we are unable to separate from matter-of-fact associations, neither can the action be so separated except by an effort which of itself depresses the soaring spirit. Nor, again, if the action be high-wrought, above the measure of man's ordinary activity, can it find expression in the unrhythmical language[9] which corresponds to that ordinary activity. New wine must not be put in old bottles; nor must the motions of disenthralled passion be confined in vessels worn by the uses of daily life.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] The language of prose is not necessarily unrhythmical, nor is it always commonplace, as witness, for example, the more moving and imaginative passages of the English Bible. On this point consult Gummere's 'Beginnings of Poetry,' Chapter ii (Rhythm as the Essential Fact of Poetry, especially pp. 56-60); Watts's article 'Poetry' in the Encyclop?dia Britannica; and the Publications of the Modern Language Association, xx. 4.

J. CONDITIONS FAVORABLE TO TRAGEDY
10. These considerations may explain to us why the production of a great tragedy is almost an impossibility in our own time. The age most favourable to it would seem to be one in which men stand on the edge of an old and but half-known world--as Aeschylus and Sophocles stood on the edge of the mythologic, Shakespeare on that of the feudal world--an age of sufficient culture and reflection for men to be conscious of the glory they have left behind, while yet civilisation has not reached the stage of acquiescence in things as they are, and scepticism as to all beyond them. Those great situations furnished by the mysterious past, in which passion quits the earth, soon lose their charm, and with the reign of wonder that of tragedy ceases. At Athens it gives place to the new comedy, whose highest boast was to copy present life ([Greek: ? Menandre kai Bie, poteros ar' hum?n poteron apemim��sato];):[10] in modern Europe it has yielded to the novel.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] A saying of Aristophanes, the Grammarian, quoted by Syrianus on Hermogenes, IV. 101. It may be translated: "O Menander and Life! Which of you copies the other?"

II. THE NOVEL AN INFERIOR FORM OF ART

A. BEGINNINGS OF THE NOVEL
11. The novel in its proper shape did not come to the birth in England till the time of Fielding and Richardson, but it had long been in process of formation. The seventeenth century at its close had lost the tragic impulse of its youth. The ecstatic hope of a new world, combined with the sad and wondering recollection of the old, which had raised the human spirit to the height of the Shakesperian tragedy, had died out, and the age had become eminently satisfied with itself. Wits, philosophers, and poets, alike were full of the present time. While the wits complimented each other on their superiority to the weaknesses of mankind, they made no scruple of indulging those weaknesses in their own persons. It was part of their business to do so, for it was part of "life." The only difference between them and other men was that they were weak and laughed over it, while others were weak and serious. Philosophers congratulated themselves on their