greater scope of power, more truths, and more
feelings;--the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and especially
this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently elevated by
your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter conversation
of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the stage, too, was
advantageous,--for the drama thence became something between recitation and
a representation; and the absence or paucity of scenes allowed a freedom
from the laws of unity of place and unity of time, the observance of which
must either confine the drama to as few subjects as may be counted on the
fingers, or involve gross improbabilities, far more striking than the
violation would have caused. Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a
false ideal,--of aiming at more than what is possible on the whole. What
play of the ancients, with reference to their ideal, does not hold out
more glaring absurdities than any in Shakespeare? On the Greek plan a man
could more easily be a poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a
dramatist than a poet.

The Drama Generally, And Public Taste.

Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long
interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I had
miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my time,
and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of my
discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the
promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects to
be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better on
the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as
continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be,
gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you
pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a
sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like
affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and
witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and look
forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent results of
practice--to its intellectual maturity.

In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better term
our language may afford, of representing external nature and human
thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause th