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"Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading.... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him."--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. _Address on the opening of the Eton Library_, 1833.
Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel.
Introduction--Spirit of True Criticism--Difference of Taste between the Ancients and Moderns--Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art--Division of Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic Poets.
Definition of the Drama--View of the Theatres of all Nations--Theatrical Effect--Importance of the Stage--Principal Species of the Drama.
Essence of Tragedy and Comedy--Earnestness and Sport--How far it is possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original Languages--Winkelmann.
Structure of the Stage among the Greeks--Their Acting--Use of Masks--False comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera--Tragical Lyric Poetry.
Essence of the Greek Tragedies--Ideality of the Representation--Idea of Fate--Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations--Import of the Chorus--The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology-- Comparison with the Plastic Arts.
Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks--Various styles of Tragic Art --Aeschylus--Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus--His remaining Works.
Life and Political Character of Sophocles--Character of his different Tragedies.
Euripides--His Merits and Defects--Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.
Comparison between the _Choephorae_ of Aeschylus, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and that of Euripides.