Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/248

 them.' There, he says, we have all the elements of drama of the highest order—'where the huge forces of the time are as the Grecian destiny.' It is Nature's drama, not Shakespeare's, but a drama none the less.

The theory led him to a quaint dilemma in his life of St. Neot. If, he says, the story teaches a lesson, the lesson is equally good though the story be false; if it teaches nothing, it does not matter whether it be true or false. False stories, however, are apt to teach bad lessons; and at any rate, it is as well to say whether you are writing fiction or history; for a mistake of one for the other often leads to awkward consequences. Froude was probably in the ironical mood when he wrote about St. Neot: he was quite able to detect his bit of sophistry; but the view with which he plays, for he hardly means it seriously, illustrates his conception of history. Carlyle's French Revolution has given him a model. His own history is to take another great period. History is to be a sum of biographies. You are to know the real actors, Elizabeth and Drake, Philip and Mary, to make them as living and vivid as Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet. Shakespeare, of course, has his weaknesses as a