, is credible enough. That he, with his classical
bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most
"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely
credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only
conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more
"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in
_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy.

For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating
poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever
unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both
great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more
value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could
have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any
such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more
the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote
Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no
sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:--

"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but
what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and
the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the
other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less
it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real
difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's
telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and
a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History
of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how
it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such
circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this
that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the
Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him."

* * * * *

This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us
pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre
Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For
indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a
particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to
be ch