Almighty superior to repair his mischief. Indeed, it cannot be said that Milton is ordinarily successful in depicting the good and tender side of our nature, as, for example, in the loving intercourse of Adam and Eve in Paradise.*

The triumph of the evil principle is again embodied with the highest poetic power in Goethe's adaptation of the legend of Faust and the Devil. The interest in malignity is here worked to the utmost possible pitch, and rendered in some degree tolerable by sundry admixtures. The triumph of evil in the ruin of human beings is strongly represented; and requires the concurrence of our diabolical sympathies and malevolent pleasures in order to its enjoyment.

A highly accomplished, but pleasure-loving and feeblewilled man is the hero of the piece. He leagues himself to a demon, whose malignity is embodied in superhuman cunning and boundless resources. The chief incident is a love-plot, where a guileless maiden is led astray to gratify the hero's passion. She and her whole family are brought to a miserable end; and the interest of tragedy is wrought up in their dreadful fate. Faust surrenders himself to the demon, in payment for his short-lived career of sensual gratification.

The evil spirit indulges himself in numerous episodes at the expense of mankind: his satire and mockery are allowed free course.

There are, of course, as in Milton, softening and redeeming accompaniments. The love scenes are portrayed by a master's hand-to be immediately turned into mockery; and the respective characters of the ill-sorted pair of lovers are well sustained. There is inevitable pathos in the downfall of Gretchen, but not enough to redeem the gratuitous horrors of her evil fate.

We can trace no redeeming nobility of character in any of the personages: the tissue of the piece is mockery, misery and disaster. The poetry alone saves it. As happens to Milton and to many others, the author's genius is most brilliant and inventive when he reveals scenes of horror.

Unless we are prepared for glutting the malignant side. of our nature, the Fuust naturally repels more than it

"It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic style which gives such worth to Paradise Regained, and makes a great poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high." (Matthew Arnold.)

attracts. There is truth in its moral; but with enormous exaggerations. The faults of Faust and his mistress are undoubtedly punished in actual life, and sometimes severely, but seldom with such ruthless severity as Goethe's plot assumes. A great scholar that should desert his studies and plunge into dissipation, a simple maid overcome by trinkets and by the glozing tongue of a man of superior intellect, would suffer for their folly and criminality, but in ways far short of what happened to Faust and Margaret. Hence, the questions so often raised in connexion with Goethe's masterpiece-Is a poet justified in making out the world to be more devil-ridden than it actually is? Is the reader disposed to feel an interest in such a plot, and, if he is, what is the feeling in him that it principally gratifies ?

Next to the personified principle of Evil, we may rank a successful usurper, engaged in ravaging mankind on a great scale for his own aggrandisement. Many of these figure in history. Perhaps the most pronounced example of the type is Timur or Tamburlaine, who has been converted by Marlowe from a historical monster into a poetical figure.

Two plays, among the most popular of their time, are devoted by the poet to this character. The first presents Tamburlaine's successful rise, by sheer conquest, from a shepherd of Tartary to Emperor of Asia. It is an almost unrelieved scene of gratification of his naked lust of power, and what is not actual fruition is exuberant anticipation. There is no pretence that he is putting down evil rulers in the interest of better government; the one motive is, "Is it not passing brave to be a king?" The personal exultation over his enemies reaches its full height in the caging and brutal degradation of the conquered Bajazet to grace a banquet. His disregard of human misery in general is displayed when he massacres, first, with circumstances of peculiar horror, the maiden suppliants from Damascus, and, afterwards, every single inhabitant, merely to preserve his character for relentless ferocity, and "his honour, that consists in shedding blood". And at the climax of success, he gloats in idea over his own destroying energy :

Where'er I come, the Fatal Sisters sweat,
And grisly Death, by running to and fro,
To do their ceaseless homage to my sword.

THE SUCCESSFUL USURPER.

Millions of souls sit on the banks of Styx
Waiting the back-return of Charon's boat;
Hell and Elysia swarm with ghosts of men
That I have sent from sundry foughten fields,

To spread my fame through hell and up to heaven.

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There are only the slightest palliations of all this brutality. Tamburlaine gives short glimpses of a personal attractiveness, namely, courage, generosity in rewarding lieutenants, and admiration for a noble enemy; which, however, hardly interrupt the general effect. Even his love of Zenocrate ministers to the prevailing passion, and is barely touched on the tender side.

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The second play that Marlowe devoted to Tamburlaine is like the first. Where the monster is not slaying, he is railing. Zenocrate's death hardly approaches to pathos; for it only rouses him to celebrate "her sad funeral" with many cities' sacrifice". His own son is not safe from his murderous hands. His very death, though it "cuts off the progress of his pomp," is no real relief; for he keeps up the truculent tone to the end, exhorting his son and successor to" scourge and control those slaves," and his eternal farewells are dashed with an exultation in his title, scourge of God". In this second play occurs the hideous scene, where Tamburlaine rides in a chariot drawn by captive kings, and taunts them with the sarcastic brutality of "Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia," &c. Here the slight palliations of the first part are almost wholly absent.

"the

These two plays were immensely popular in Elizabethan London, as Henslowe's diary proves; and they appeal without equivocation to the most inhumane of our emotions. To-day, they would be intolerable on the stage; and, even under the less vivid realization of reading, the mind is only intermittently withheld from revolt by the splendour of the diction, the grandeur of the imagery, and the resounding energy of the metre.

In The Pleasures of Hope (I. 531), Campbell touches the same subject with his more delicate hand. He reconciles us to its horrors by scathing denunciation, by the bravery and nobleness of the martyrs that perished for their religion, and by the halo of his great theme HOPE,-through whose inspiration he endeavours to render bearable the darkest chapters in human history.

Shakespeare's masterpieces often glory in the delineation of horrors, which all his genius cannot redeem for us. (See Johnson's commentary on Lear.) Yet he was in advance of his own time; and, while necessarily studying his audience as he found it, was comparatively reserved in his employment of the grosser passions, malignity included.* One thing he carefully withheld, that is, war in its realistic horrors.

STRENGTH IN COMBAT.

The poetic handling of a Combat is governed, in the first instance, by the conditions of Maleficent Strength, and next by the laws of Plot-interest.

The description of a combat at arms unites several elements of effect. In the first place, all the varieties of Strength-physical, moral, intellectual, collective-are shown at their utmost pitch in conflict, and are signified by the most testing indications.

Next is the two-sided treat of malignancy. The combatants are met to inflict on each other as much suffering as possible; the redeeming circumstances being that they are mutually aggressive and defensive. Hence the place given to war in the literature of every age; whether as History or as Poetry-epic, dramatic and lyric-and even as Religion. Fighting has been a chief business of nations from the beginning of time; and, when not in act, imitations of it are resorted to as recreation. Such are the shows of gladiators, tournaments, games and fights for championship.

In the personification of the inanimate world, this interest is not forgotten. When the great forces of Nature are unusually active, they are said to be at 'war'. Milton (Paradise Lost, II. 898-910) employs the language of a pitched field to give the interest of combat to the 'eternal anarchy' of 'Hot, Cold, Moist and Dry' in Chaos.

The principles already enunciated for the malignant emotion are taken for granted as applicable to conflict. The more special point in the case is the superadded charm of Plot or Story, to which a well balanced hostile encounter happily lends itself.

A common form of combat is that where we are interested in the success of one side. The rival must, at the same time, be powerful, and able to cause some (not too great) anxiety as to the result. There will then be a due

"Murdoch [the Schoolmaster] brought Titus Andronicus, and, with such dominie elocution as we may suppose, began to read it aloud before this rustic audience [the Burns family], but when he had reached the passage where Tamora insults Lavinia, with one voice and in an agony of distress,' they refused to hear it to the end." (R. L. Stevenson, Familiar Studies, p. 43.)

FIGHTING INTEREST IN THE ILIAD.

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alternation of blows, with varying advantage; the indications of the ultimate success of the favourite may occasionally hang dubious, but on the whole must sustain our hopes. Pauses and retrograde movements violate the interest.

Another case is where we are not specially interested in either side, but are prepared to witness a trial of strength, and to gloat over the suffering mutually inflicted. The opposing parties, in this instance, must be so far balanced that the issue is doubtful. Each must give effective blows in turn, and the equality must be maintained for a considerable time; a slight failing in one will then foreshadow the termination, but not decide it, without several rallies; when the suspense has been sufficiently prolonged, the decisive blow will fall.

The interest is more piquant when the opposing powers excel in different ways; as when superior force is balanced by superior skill.

Of all the forms of hostile encounter, the single combat is the easiest to render interesting. It has the further advantage, of which poets gladly avail themselves, that it permits in addition a war of words between the combatants. Several notable examples are provided by Homer, from which we can gather his conception of effect.

The first contest in the Iliad is the duel of Faris and Menelaus-a mere fiasco from Paris's cowardice, for which his beauty of person is considered a sufficient excuse. The contest, however, has to be renewed in a more formal manner, and with a view to decide by single combat the quarrel that led to the war. The issue is equally unsatisfactory. Paris aims one blow without effect; Menelaus strikes twice, and seizes Paris to carry him away bodily, when the goddess of Love interferes and saves him. Conflicts of this character are necessarily devoid of interest for us.

Next Menelaus receives a wound from Pandarus unseen, there being no fight.

The terrible two days' battle, so ruinous to the Greeks in the absence of Achilles, is treated by a general description; the poet choosing as the salient feature the mingled shouts and groans of men slaying and being slain,' and vivifying it by a simile, striking in itself, but so far removed in kind as to be wanting in picturesque force: two mountain torrents, arising apart, descend and meet in the same ravine, and 'the shepherd hears the roar'. Then follows in detail a long series of single combats; such being the poet's preference throughout. They are savage in the last degree; but seldom contain any effective parrying before the fatal blow. There are many verbal encounters previous to the