of this propensity is to be found in the comedy of Aristophanes, which not only exaggerates human folly and vanity into huge proportions, but ignores in the most daring manner the commonest physical laws. A trace of the same tendency may be detected in the delight with which we accept such combinations of fancy and humour as are to be found in the mythical comedy of Shakspeare, as for example, in the Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream.

In the Comedy of Character, on the other hand, which is best illustrated perhaps in the works of Molière, the artistic stress is laid on the minute and accurate delineation of subtle and deep-hidden human weaknesses. Hence it is this species which offers the widest field for the evolution of the forces of character. The poet who seeks to produce the main effect of his art through an exposure of human infirmities and petty blemishes, illustrates all the processes of artistic reproduction and transformation which have been so fully described above. His artistic activity finds ample scope in a selection of the most ludicrous aspects of character, in an accurate and striking pourtrayal of their characteristic effects on speech, manners, and conduct, and in a combination of circumstances, including the person's companions and society, best fitted to throw on these qualities of character a clear and brilliant light. So ample and varied is the entertainment thus provided, that a play which lacks nearly all the interest of plot may still be an effective stage-spectacle; and this is probably the single instance in which dramatic representation affords an adequate gratification by the mere exhibition of character.

Yet though the drama possesses so large a scope for the representation of character, it is greatly inferior in this respect to a newer form of artistic creation, namely, the Novel. The advantages which this form of literary art possesses, are very obvious. First of all, since it discloses its objects through an immaterial and ideal medium, it is not amenable to the limitations which circumscribe a visible play. In this particular it corresponds, in some measure, to the ancient epic, which it further resembles in the extent and scope of its representations. For this reason it does not need unity of action, but finds a sufficient artistic nexus in the enduring interest of personality. Whereas the drama has to confine itself to a single brief chain of events in human life, the novel may embrace all the interesting phases of a life. By these means it is capable of exhibiting not only a far greater quantity of character, but also a wider diversity of quality. Instead of beholding a single brief flash of inner impulse, or a few momentary phases of a human mind, one may witness in this

region of æsthetic creation the gradual development of a character as an organic whole, and the successive transformations which it undergoes with physical growth, and with the accumulated effects of experience. Indeed, this progressive aspect of human nature seems to be the exclusive possession of the novelist; and no one can fail to recognize what an enlarged area it supplies for psychological insight and representation, and for the harmonious adaptation of the inner to the outer.

Once more, the descent of Romance from the region of wild adventure and epic grandeur to the quiet plains of our common social and domestic life, appears to have involved a great advance in the pourtrayal of character. A romantic story which stirs a feverish interest by its remote adventure, its thrilling perils, and its unfamiliar scenes, can readily dispense with the attraction of a charming or imposing personality. The reader tends instinctively to realize in imagination the exciting experiences, without inquiring with whom he is thus taking part. But in following the quieter events of daily life we need some further stimulus for our sympathetic interest. And this stimulus has to be supplied, as we have already seen, in some engaging or impressive traits of individual character. The successive unfoldings even of a very common life may become deeply impressive, when the character is of a sort to attract a high degree of this personal interest. Every human existence has a certain degree of complexity and mystery, by virtue of which it is fitted to afford something of the intellectual gratification of plot and intrigue, if only our attention can be pleasingly attracted and detained. One may say, then, that in the novel the exhibition of attractive character is not only a prime end, but also a chief means to another end, namely, the gratification of those sympathetic impulses out of which springs a permanent interest in the evolution of a human life. Hence those writers of the sensational school who seek to interest their readers simply by unexpected incidents, and thrilling situations, are really overlooking the highest capabilities of their art.

It is unnecessary to enumerate all the peculiarities which distinguish the art of the novelist from that of the dramatist. One point of difference is sufficiently clear: the greater fulness and concreteness of the delineation, and the greater resemblance of the form to that of historical narrative, şerve alike to impose on the novelist a more stringent rule of conformity to nature. As it has often been remarked, a rare and exceptional sequence of events is apt to appear impossible in fiction, though the supposed disparity seems less harsh

when the result satisfies some emotional demand. These same considerations account, too, for the fact that one naturally looks for a measure of variety both in the characters and in the lives of a novel. As a large transcript of life, a fictitious story is apt to appear unnatural when its characters are uniformly good or bad. Hence, the critical objection to much of the French school of fiction as well as to the rigidly moral variety of the English novel. Hence, too, the difficulty in producing in a novel the perfectly harmonious impression of a tragedy or of a comedy.

It is not my present purpose to seek to determine the final value of the novel, as a work of art, but merely to estimate its powers of representing human character. Much has been said in disparagement of this species of artistic production, and grave German æstheticians have hesitated in admitting it into the gallery of recognized Art.* No doubt it possesses less beauty of form than a drama or a lyric poem, and less of scenic grandeur and imaginative beauty than the antique epos. Yet when one sees in the works of writers like Goethe and Thackeray, Balzac and George Eliot, what a vast scope prosefiction possesses for disclosing the deep and subtle elements of individual character, the complicated actions and reactions of social life, the varying phases of nature and their effects on human emotion, and finally the conflict, half tragic, half comic, in its aspect, which underlies every human life, one is disposed to rank it, young though it still is, very high in the hierarchy of delightful

and instructive artistic creations.

However this be, it seems sufficiently certain that the novel, as the latest development of the arts which embody character, corresponds to those deeper, wider, and more subtle intuitions of human nature, which, as we saw in the preceding essay, modern culture, together with the forms of advanced social life, has rendered possible. Whatever its whole aesthetic value may be, it clearly claims the highest dignity which belongs to the distinct and faithful pourtrayal of human feeling and action.

At the same time a high rank has been accorded the Novel by certain German writers, among others by Weisse and Vischer. Lotze has a very interesting passage on the aesthetic function of this form of art. See his Geschichte der Esthetik in Deutschland, p. 636, et seq.

LESSING'S HAMBURG DRAMATURGY.

LESSING is, perhaps, still too unfamiliar a name to English readers, in spite of reminders, by Mr. Carlyle and others, of its many claims on our attention. And of all Lessing's works none seems to have received a more scanty recognition from English writers than the Hamburg Dramaturgy. Yet, while a fragment, and devoid of systematic form, it is little if anything inferior to the Laokoon as a searching analysis of the principles of Art, while its history posesses quite as much biographical interest as that of Nathan der Weise. More than this, as a clear and masterly revelation of the powers of the drama at its best, and of the loss people unknowingly incur who accept its feebler and corrupted forms, this work is likely to preserve a lasting didactic value. At least it can hardly be looked on as obsolete in the England of to-day, where it is all but impossible to hear its greatest dramatic genius, and where the theatre is abandoned to those who thirst for some new horror, and are ready to gape in impotent wonder at every cumbrous mechanical device for representing the unrepresentable.

A very few words will serve to explain the genesis of this work. Lessing was thirty-seven years old, with an established reputation in literature, when, in 1766, he was invited to undertake the post of dramaturgist, or dramatic critic, for a new national theatre in Hamburg. A band of writers and actors, aided by the purses of a few opulent merchants, had conceived the project of founding this theatre as a school for the cultivation of a healthier taste in the public, and for the encouragement of a higher style of national dramatic literature. The services of the now famous author of the Laokoon and Minna von Barnhelm were unanimously desired as a factor in this ambitious scheme; and Lessing, whose literary merit had hitherto failed to secure him any remunerative position, was only too ready to accept a stipend in connection with an enterprise so entirely after his own heart. Although he declined to engage himself for the regular production of dramatic pieces, he consented to act as critical reviewer of the successive representations. These notices were afterwards collected into two volumes under the name, Hamburgische Dramaturgie.

It is unnecessary here to trace the history of the theatrical undertaking in all its steps. As all cynical on-lookers no doubt predicted, the project failed, just as a similar attempt at Weimar some years later is known to have failed, through the absence of the most essential element of all, the appreciative public. Other causes certainly co-operated, such as the influence of Klotz and the other leaders of conventional opinion, and the suspicious and hostile attitude towards the play still maintained by the clergy. But Lessing's own words at the close of the Dramaturgy leave us in no doubt that the indifference and actual opposition of the Hamburg public itself was the main cause of the untimely collapse of the undertaking. "Oh the amiable wish," he exclaims, "to ground a German national theatre, when we Germans are no nation! I speak not of political constitution, but simply of moral character." "The sweet dream," he adds further on, "to establish here in Hamburg a national theatre has again vanished; and, so far as I have become acquainted with the city, it is probably the very last place in which such a dream could attain its fulfilment." So little promise of success attended the early steps of the enterprise, that within nine months of its inauguration the Hamburg theatre closed its doors, and the actors removed to Hanover.

Through this event the literary plans of Lessing were completely frustrated. Not even the whole of the pieces produced at the theatre during this brief period received his criticism. The two volumes of the Dramaturgy contain only a review of the plays performed during the first fifty-two evenings. The reason of this was, as Lessing distinctly tells us, the shameful practice of piracy then carried on by German publishers and printers, a practice from which Goethe had to smart later on. But if the number of critiques is disappointingly small, the fulness and variety of their contents render them a treasure-house of dramatic principles and illustrations. Not only does the author seek to determine the aesthetic value of the productions reviewed by a reference both to ancient and to modern authorities, he frequently gives us a full account of the genesis of the work, with an inquiry into its historical data. More than this, he explores the literature of many ages and tongues in order to compare various dramatic versions of the same subject. Thus, in one place we have a pretty extensive commentary on a passage in Aristotle's Poetics; in another, an elaborate reply to an authoritative French criticism, or an interesting fragment of history from Hume and Robertson. In one instance the author gives us a