Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/104

90 one in the former play, and it would be blasphemy to compare this illicit intrigue with the warm, true passion of Romeo and Juliet.

There is a more than stage exaggeration in his portrayal of the guilt of Catiline and his fellow-conspirators. Men, however the appetite for blood and lust may become palled and morbid from satiety, scarcely destroy and ruin from the mere love of mischief and injury; and here they speak as if they did so from a keen enjoyment of crime for crime's sake, without the further incentives of pleasure, ambition, or revenge.

The fault in Jonson's two tragedies is that there is not enough to interest flesh and blood in them, and to stir the sympathies, the hopes and fears of humanity. There is a cold, historic sublimity, which, however it may command the homage of the intellect, awakes no responsive echo in the heart. The characters are true to history; true, therefore, to human nature; and they move on in the plot with stern and terrible decision. But the harsh outline lacks those lighter pencillings, those softer colourings, in which poetry surpasses history, and without which the picture, though bold and masterly, will not chain the loving gaze of the spectator to the painter's canvas.

The subject of his two tragedies, from its very nature, compelled Jonson to depict men, not as they should be, but as they are in a state of society corrupt and abominable.

Much better had he chosen some portions of our national history; but there was something deep and gloomy in his own mind that caused him to dwell on these dark scenes of guilt and ruin.

Had he introduced the comic element, it might have created a graceful contrast, and at any rate pleased the less educated portion of his audiences. His tragedies are better fitted for the student in the closet, than the