Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman

glish drama. They are, in fact, the stepping-stone between ancient and modern, Greek and English, drama.

As to their style, even a cursory reading reveals their extreme declamatory nature, the delight of the author in the horrible and weird, the pains he has taken to select from the Greek sources the most harrowing of all the tales as the foundation of his tragedies, the boldness with which he has broken over the time-honored rule that deeds of blood should not be done upon the stage, and his fondness for abstruse mythological allusions. Add to these features the dreary prolixity with which the author spoils many of his descriptive passages, protracting them often into veritable catalogues of places and things, also his frequent exaggerations and repetitions, and we have the chief defects of these tragedies.

And yet they have equally marked excellences. They abound in brilliant epigrams, graphic descriptions, touching pathos, magnificent passion, subtile analysis of character and motive. But whe