memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and
sensuous presentment, is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the
rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would
have been regulated by the water-clock,--as indeed we are told was
formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself
is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by
reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define
the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised
within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of
probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to
good, or from good fortune to bad.



VIII

Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the Unity of
the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life
which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of
one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence, the error, as it
appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other
poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story
of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of
surpassing merit, here too--whether from art or natural genius--seems to
have happily discerned the truth. In composing the Odyssey he did not
include all the adventures of Odysseus--such as his wound on Parnassus,
or his feigned madness at the mustering of the host--incidents between
which there was no necessary or probable connection: but he made the
Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to centre round an action that in our
sense of the word is one. As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the