sense; and when we give to the new kinds of poetry the old names, and
judge of them according to the ideas conveyed by these names, the
application which we make of the authority of classical antiquity is
altogether unjustifiable. No one should be tried before a tribunal to
which he is not amenable. We may safely admit that most of the English
and Spanish dramatic works are neither tragedies nor comedies in the
sense of the ancients; they are romantic dramas. That the stage of a
people in its foundation and formation, who neither knew nor wished to
know anything of foreign models, will possess many peculiarities, and
not only deviate from, but even exhibit a striking contrast to, the
theatres of other nations who had a common model for imitation before
their eyes, is easily supposable, and we should only be astonished
were it otherwise.

[Illustration: #CAROLINE SCHLEGEL#]

But when in two nations, differing so widely as the English and
Spanish in physical, moral, political, and religious respects, the
theatres (which, without being known to one another, arose about the
same time) possess, along with external and internal diversities, the
most striking features of affinity, the attention even of the most
thoughtless cannot but be turned to this phenomenon; and the
conjecture will naturally occur that the same, or, at least, a kindred
principle must have prevailed in the development of both. This
comparison, however, of the English and Spanish theatre, in their
common contrast with every dramatic literature which has grown up out
of an imitation of the ancients, has, so far as we know, never yet
been attempted. Could we raise from the dead a countryman, a
contemporary and intelligent admirer of Shakespeare, and another of
Calderon, and introduce to their acquaintance the works of the poet to