Literary Remains, vol 2 | Page 5

unlimited jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of
all the powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of
its activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent
abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all
bounds in the exercise of the mind,--attaining its real end, as an entire
contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual wealth
squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the more
abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary will.
The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless
likewise more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim.
Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion,
contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still
the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much
according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art,
though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the
old comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one
great jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each
maintains its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the
relation in which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles, the
constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in elder
Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,--all the parts
adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the heroic
sceptre:--in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in its most
democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, rather to risk
all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the independence and
privileges of its individual constituents,--place, verse, characters, even
single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each turning on the pivot of its
own free will.
The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part of
our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and

impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his
characters by making the animal the governing power, and the
intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of
virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and
imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices
which arise out of the soul;--so neither is comedy a mere crowd of
vices and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they
are in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their
origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a
defect 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 and by many steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors
had ever done, and the passionate admiration which Menander and
Philemon expressed for him, and their open avowals that he was their
great master, entitle us to consider their dramas as of