After all, the great fact stands, that the only lasting poet of that
generation was a Puritan; one who, if he did not write dramas in
sport, at least acted dramas in earnest. For drama means,
etymologically, action and doing: and of the drama there are, and
always will be, two kinds: one the representative, the other the
actual; and for a world wherein there is no superabundance of good
deeds, the latter will be always the better kind. It is good to
represent heroical action in verse, and on the stage: it is good to
'purify,' as old Aristotle has it, 'the affections by pity and
terror.' There is an ideal tragedy, and an ideal comedy also, which
one can imagine as an integral part of the highest Christian
civilisation. But when 'Christian' tragedy sinks below the standard
of heathen Greek tragedy; when, instead of setting forth heroical
deeds, it teaches the audience new possibilities of crime, and new
excuses for those crimes; when, instead of purifying the affections
by pity and terror, it confounds the moral sense by exciting pity and
terror merely for the sake of excitement, careless whether they be
well or ill directed: then it is of the devil, and the sooner it
returns to its father the better for mankind. When, again, comedy,
instead of stirring a divine scorn of baseness, or even a kindly and
indulgent smile at the weaknesses and oddities of humanity, learns to
make a mock of sin,--to find excuses for the popular frailties which
it pretends to expose,--then it also is of the devil, and to the
devil let it go; while honest and earnest men, who have no such
exceeding love of 'Art' that they must needs have bad art rather than
none at all, do the duty which lies nearest them amid clean whitewash
and honest prose. The whole theory of 'Art, its dignity and
vocation,' seems to us at times questionable, if coarse facts are to
be allowed to weigh (as we suppose they are) against delicate
theories. If we are to judge by the example of Italy, the country