or to express their own way of thinking; and hence they occupy so
insignificant a place in the history of dramatic art. Among the
nations of modern Europe, the English and Spaniards alone (for the
German stage is but forming) possess as yet a theatre entirely
original and national, which, in its own peculiar shape, has
arrived at maturity.

[Illustration: #AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL#]

Those critics who consider the authority of the ancients, as models,
to be such that in poetry, as in all the other arts, there can be no
safety out of the pale of imitation, affirm that, as the nations in
question have not followed this course, they have brought nothing but
irregular works on the stage, which, though they may possess
occasional passages of splendor and beauty, must yet, as a whole, be
forever reprobated as barbarous and wanting in form. We have already,
in the introductory part of these Lectures, stated our sentiments
generally on this way of thinking; but we must now examine the subject
somewhat more closely.

If the assertion be well founded, all that distinguishes the works of
the greatest English and Spanish dramatists, a Shakespeare and a
Calderon, must rank them far below the ancients; they could in no wise
be of importance for theory, and would at most appear remarkable, on
the assumption that the obstinacy of these nations in refusing to
comply with the rules may have afforded a more ample field to the
poets to display their native originality, though at the expense of
art. But even this assumption, on a closer examination, appears
extremely questionable. The poetic spirit requires to be limited, that
it may move with a becoming liberty within its proper precincts, as