Thou knowest that I have taken all knowledge to be my province, and
therefore have I oft and longingly gazed into the flowery fields of
that divine art where to-day in our much-loved England thou art
disporting thyself supremely and alone. But when I consider thy
tragedies, throughout which is diffused the inmost soul of poesy, my
crude yet labored metres seem to me as the body of a maiden, not
indeed devoid of a certain comeliness and grace, yet into whose
waiting bosom hath not yet been breathed the spirit of life.
In thy tragedies thou hast the majestic grace which in the Attic
ages belonged to Sophocles alone; thou hast the stately march and
music of Aeschylus, without in thy themes his ceaseless iteration
of predestined woe which ranks his heroes outside humanity; yet the
sombre hand of fate hath not more inflexibly driven the gentle
Iphigenia to her doom than it hath followed Macbeth to his
foreshadowed crime and end. But in thy canticles it is not an
o'ershadowing, mysterious, and tragic fate, but a gracious and
loving Providence which, as thyself hath phrased it,
"Holds in His hands the shears of destiny,
And has commandment on the pulse of life."
In comedy, Aristophanes is not thy master, yet must I greatly choose
thy tragedies as monuments of thy abiding fame.
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