Not guilty, my Lord. Of all Dramas that ever were dramatised on the Stage of this unintelligible world, the Greek Drama is the most dramatic, saving and excepting Shakspeare’s. NORTH. Ay, wonderful, my dear Talboys, to see the holy affections demonstrated mighty on the heathen Proscenium. Antigone! Daughter and Sister. Or in another House, Orestes, Electra. TALBOYS. Macbeth murders a King, who happens to be his kinsman; but Clytemnestra murders her husband, who happens to be a King—the profounder and more interior crime. NORTH. We see how grave are the undertakings of Poetry, which engages itself to please, that it may accomplish sublimer aims. By pleasure she wins you to your greater good—to Love and Intelligence. The heathen Legislator, the heathen Philosopher, the heathen Poet, looks upon Man with love and awe. He desires and conceives his welfare—his wellbeing—HIS HAPPINESS. TALBOYS. And the Poet, you believe, sir, with intenser love—with more solemn awe—with more penetrant intuition. NORTH. I do. And he has his way clearer before him. TALBOYS. The Legislator, sir, will alchemise the most refractory of all substances—Man. His materials are in truth the lowest and grossest, and most external relations of Man’s life. NORTH. They are. TALBOYS. And these he would, with instrumentality of low, gross, outward means, subjugate or subdue under his own most spiritual intuitions. NORTH. A vain task, my dear Talboys, for an impossible. He must lower his intuition—his aim—to his means and materials. The Philosopher walks in a more etherial region. Compared to the Legislator, he is at advantage. But he has his own difficulties. He must _think Feelings_! TALBOYS. He might as well try, sir, to trace outline, and measure capacity of a mist which varies its form momently, and, without determinate boundary loses itself in the contiguous air. His work is to define the indefinite. NORTH. And then he comes from the Schools, which in qualifying disqualify also—from the Schools of the Senses—of the Physical Arts—of Natural Philosophy—of Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical Science. These have quickened, strengthened, and sharpened his wit; they have lifted him at last from emotions to notions; but—Love is understood by loving—Hate by hating—and only so! Sensations—notions—EMOTIONS! I say, Talboys, that in all these inferior schools you may understand a part by itself, and ascend by items to the Sum, the All. But in the Philosophy of the Will, you must from the centre look along the radii, and with a sweep command the circumference. You must know as it were Nothing, or All.