rely _interesting_. The persons gain our
attention by following their own aims, which resemble ours; the action
advances by means of intrigue and the play of character and incident;
while wit and raillery season the whole.

At the second stage, the drama becomes _sentimental_. Sympathy is
roused with the hero and, indirectly, with ourselves. The action takes
a pathetic turn; but the end is peaceful and satisfactory.

The climax is reached with the third stage, which is the most
difficult. There the drama aims at being _tragic_. We are brought face
to face with great suffering and the storm and stress of existence;
and the outcome of it is to show the vanity of all human effort.
Deeply moved, we are either directly prompted to disengage our will
from the struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which
echoes a similar feeling.

The beginning, it is said, is always difficult. In the drama it is
just the contrary; for these the difficulty always lies in the end.
This is proved by countless plays which promise very well for
the first act or two, and then become muddled, stick or
falter--notoriously so in the fourth act--and finally conclude in a
way that is either forced or unsatisfactory or else long foreseen by
every one. Sometimes, too, the end is positively revolting, as in
Lessing's _Emilia Galotti_, which sends the spectators home in a
temper.

This difficulty in regard to the end of a play arises partly because
it is everywhere easier to get things into a tangle than to get them
out again; partly also because at the beginning we give the author
_carte blanche_ to do as he likes, but, at the end, make certain
definite demands upon him. Thus we ask for a conclusion that shall be
either quite happy or else quite tragic; whereas human affairs do not
easily take so decided a turn; and then we expect that it shall be
natural, fit and proper, unlabored, and at the same time foreseen by
no one.

These remarks are also applicable to an epic and to a novel; but the
more compact nature of the drama makes the difficulty plainer by
increasing it.

_E nihilo nihil fit_. That nothing can come from nothing is a maxim
true in fine art as elsewhere. In composing an historical picture, a
good artist will use living men as a model, and take the groundwork
of the faces from life; and then proceed to idealize them in point of
beauty or expression. A similar method, I fancy, is adopted by good
novelists. In drawing a chara