fatally consistent with himself. So, after we have seen a number of pictures by any one of the great masters, we recognize him again, as soon as we enter a gallery. We know him by a certain style. Inferior artists have a manner; great artists have a style; manner is born of imitation; style of originality. So, there is a special quality in every human being, if he will only allow it to unfold. The dramatic faculty recognizes this. Its knowledge of man is not a philosophy, nor a mere knowledge of human nature, but a perception of individual character. It first integrates men as human beings; then differentiates them as individuals. Play-writers, novelists, and artists who do not possess this dramatic genius cannot grow their characters from within, from a personal centre of life; but build them up from without, according to a plan. In description of nature, however, Shakespeare is, as he ought to be, subjective and lyric; he touches nature with human feelings. Take his description of a brook:—

The brook is gentle; then it becomes angry; then it is pacified and begins to sing; then it stops to kiss the sedge; then it is a pilgrim; and it walks willingly on to the ocean.

So in his sonnet:—

From Shakespeare, the marvel of dramatic genius, turn to Milton, and we find the opposite tendency unfolded.

The "Paradise Lost" is indeed dramatic in form, with different characters and dialogues, in hell, on earth, and in heaven. But in essence it is undramatic. Milton is never for a moment lost in his characters; his grand and noble soul is always appearing. Every one speaks as Milton would have spoken had Milton been in the same place, and looked at things from the same point of view. Sin and Satan, for example, both talk like John Milton. Sin is very conscientious, and before she will unlock the gate of hell she is obliged to argue herself into a conviction that it is right to do so. Satan, she says, is her father, and children ought to obey their parents; so, since he tells her to unlock the gate, she ought to do so. Death reproaches Satan, in good set terms, for his treason against the Almighty; and Satan, as we all know, utters the noblest sentiments, and talks as Milton would have talked, had Milton been in Satan's position.1

Coming down nearer to our own time, we find a duad of great English poets, usually associated in our minds,—Byron and Scott.

Scott was almost the last of the dramatic poets of England, using the word dramatic in its large sense. His plays never amounted to much; but his stories in verse and in prose are essentially dramatic. In neither does he reveal himself. In all his poetry you scarcely find a reference to his personal feelings. In the L'Envoi to the "Lady of the Lake" there is a brief allusion of this sort, touching because so unusual, and almost the only one I now recall. Addressing the "Harp of the North" he says:—

Scott, like Chaucer, brings before us a long succession of characters, from many classes, countries, and times. Scotch barons and freebooters, English kings, soldiers, gentlemen, crusaders, Alpine peasants, mediæval counts, serfs, Jews, Saxons,—brave, cruel, generous,—all sweep past us, in a long succession of pictures; but of Scott himself nothing appears except the nobleness and purity of the tone which pervades all. He is therefore eminently a dramatic or objective writer.

But Byron is the exact opposite. The mighty exuberance of his genius, which captivated his age, and the echoes of which thrill down to ours, in all its vast overflow of passion, imagination, wit,—ever sounded but one strain,—himself. His own woes, his own wrongs are the ever-recurring theme. Though he wrote many dramas, he was more undramatic than Milton. Every character in every play is merely a thinly disguised Byron. It was impossible for him to get away from himself. If Tennyson's lovely line tells the truth when he says,—

then Byron never really loved; for in his poetry the chord of self never passes out of sight.

In his plays the principal characters are Byron undiluted—as Manfred, Sardanapalus, Cain, Werner, Arnold. All the secondary characters are Byron more or less diluted,—Byron and water, may we say? Never, since the world began, has there been a poet so steeped in egotism, so sick of self-love as he; and the magnificence of his genius appears in the unfailing interest which he can give to this monotonous theme.

But he was the example of a spirit with which the whole age was filled to saturation. Almost all the nineteenth century poets of England are subjective, giving us their own experience, sentiments, reflections, philosophies. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, revolve in this enchanted and enchanting circle. Keats and Coleridge seem capable of something different. So, in the double star, made up of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the first is absolutely personal and lyric, the second sometimes objective and dramatic. And in that other double star of Shelley and Keats the same difference may be noted.

A still more striking