The truth is that in reading the _Dramaturgie_[62] one cannot help remembering Carlyle’s capital complaint of Voltaire that “to him the Universe was one larger patrimony of St Peter from which it were good and pleasant to chase the Pope,” and regretting that Lessing should have thought it necessary to substitute Voltaire himself for the Holy Father. It was inevitable perhaps and necessary for the time: but the result is tedious. And unfortunately this Gallophobia in general, this Corneliophobia and Voltairiophobia in particular, affects, and very unfavourably affects, those rectifications and reconstructions of Aristotle which have given the _Dramaturgie_ its great reputation. With all his talent, all his freshness, Lessing is to a very great extent merely varying the Addisonian error—and indeed, as with all these early German critics, Addison himself had too great an influence on him. As Addison had wasted his powers on showing that Milton, whom the pseudo-Aristotelians had decried, was very Aristotelian, or at least Homeric, after all, so Lessing devotes a most unnecessary amount of energy to showing that the pseudo-Aristotelians themselves were not Aristotelian at all. It was true; it was in a sense well worth doing; but there was so much else to do! There is a famous passage at the beginning of No. 7 which itself really annihilates the whole proceeding, and laughs “boundary lines of criticism” out of court. Nor is Lessing’s aberration a mere accidental one. It comes from the fact that he had not cleared up his own mind on some important parts of the question. He says, for instance, in his criticism of _Rodogune_ (No. 31, beginning), “The revenge of an ambitious woman should never resemble that of a jealous one.” _Æternum vulnus!_ What is “_the_ revenge of _an_ ambitious woman?” “_the_ revenge of _a_ jealous one?” Show me the revenge of your jealous Amaryllis, the revenge of your ambitious Neæra; and _then_ I will tell you whether they are right or not. [Sidenote: _and typomania._]