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was,' says Dowden, 16 'as if Shakespeare asserted his freedom to be regular or irregular as regards the classical custom of unity of time.' In truth, Shakespeare, though more Roman than Greek in his dramatic origins, is nearer than the formalists to Aristotle and the spirit of Greek tragedy. His friend Ben Jonson, translator of the Ars Poetica of Horace, is in tragedy far more like Seneca. Jonson hardly assimilated much from the Poetics before 1611. Some time thereafter he paraphrased bits of Heinsius, in his Discoveries; here, not in the English critics between Sidney and Jonson, the Poetics begins to be understood, and we wonder what Shakespeare might have learnt from it, could he have known it as he did Ovid, or Seneca and Plautus.

The first English scholar to work systematically with the Poetics was Theodore Goulston (1572-1632), whose Latin translation appeared in 1623. As a physician he renders catharsis by 'purgans,' and then, in deference to the main tradition, adds 'expiansque.' Milton is likely to have known the book, but seems not to have been interested in the Poetics until he went to Italy (1638-9). In The Reason of Church-Government (1641)

he thinks 'that what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, I in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine.' Proposing to himself an epic poem modeled after Homer, Virgil, Tasso, and Job, Milton considers 'whether the rules of Aristotle herein are to be strictly kept, or nature to be followed, which in them that know art and use judgment is no transgression, but an enriching of art.' In his tractate Of Education (1644) he contends that, even before rhetoric one should study poetry: 'I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but hit upon before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what decorum is—which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and playwriters be, and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent, use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things.'

Milton was convinced that Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained subsequently benefited by his knowledge of Aristotle and the commentaries; the poet understood his own mind, and the gift of art to nature; modern critics, if they think that his learning warped his genius, are, not being poetically gifted, less likely to be right than he. Perhaps his best-sustained work is Samson Agonistes, a typical Renaissance tragedy in the purest English, not provincial but cosmopolitan, at once ancient, mediæval, modern, and Christian. Among his prefixed remarks, Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy, are these: 'Tragedy, as it was antiently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion; for so in physic things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors.

Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which he entitled Christ Suffering.17 This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; hap'ning through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons. . . . In the modeling. of this poem, with good reason, the Antients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more authority and fame. . . . Division into act and scene referring chiefly to the stage, to which this work never was intended, is here omitted. It suffices if the whole drama be not found produc't beyond the fift act; of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such economy or disposition of the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum, they only will best judge who are not unacquainted with Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequaled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor

to write tragedy. The circumscription of time wherein the whole drama begins and ends is, according to antient rule and best example, within the space of twenty-four hours.' The scene is unchanged throughout. Milton fluctuates between the ideas of purification and purgation; but the last line of the drama is, 'And calm of mind, all passion spent.' He had perhaps studied both Goulston and Galluzzi, and partly anticipates the modern ‘pathological' theory of the catharsis espoused by Weil and Bernays.

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