s
it is gracefully woven. Scott, who in his earlier days had translated
Goethe's _Gutz von Berlichingen_, gained no reputation by his own
dramatic compositions. W. S. Landor, apart from those _Imaginary
Conversations_ upon which he best loved to expend powers of observation
and characterization such as have been given to few playwrights, cast
in a formally dramatic mould studies of character of which the value is
far from being confined to their wealth in beauties of detail. Of these
the magnificent, but in construction altogether undramatic, _Count
Julian_, is the most noteworthy. Shelley's _The Cenci_, on the other
hand, is not only a poem of great beauty, but a drama of true power,
abnormally revolting indeed in theme, but singularly pure and delicate
in treatment. A humbler niche in the temple of dramatic literature
belongs to some of the plays of C. R. Maturin,[261] Sir T. N.
Talfourd,[262] and Dean Milman.[263]

Divorced, except for passing moments, from the stage, English dramatic
literature could during much the greater part of the 19th century hardly
be regarded as a connected national growth; though, already in the last
decades of the Victorian age, the revival of public interest in the
theatre co-operated with a gradual change in poetic taste to awaken the
hope of a future living reunion. Among English poets who lived in this
period, Sir Henry Taylor probably approached nearest to the objective
treatment and the amplitude of style characteristic of the Elizabethan
drama.[264] R. H. Horne, long an almost solitary survivor of the
romantic school, was able in at least one memorable dramatic attempt to
revive something of the early Elizabethan spirit.[265] Of the chief
poets of the age, Tennyson only in his later years addressed himself to
a form of composition little suited to his genius, though the very fact
of the homage paid by him to the national forms of the historic drama
and of romantic comedy could not fail to ennoble the contemporary
stage.[266] Matthew Arnold's stately revival of the traditions of
classical tragedy proper, on the other hand, deliberately excluded
itself from any such contact;[267] while Longfellow's refined literary
culture and graceful facility of form made ready use of a quasi-dramatic
medieval vesture.[268] William Morris's single "morality," too, cannot
be regarded as a contribution to dramatic literature proper.[269] Of
very different importance are the excursions into dramatic co