been ascribed to the duchess of Devonshire) is a hastily dramatized sensation novel. To Coleridge (1772-1834), who gave to English literature a splendidly loose translation of Schiller's _Wallenstein_, the same poet's _Robbers_ (to which Wordsworth's only dramatic attempt, the _Borderers_, is likewise indebted) had probably suggested the subject of his tragedy of _Osorio_, afterwards acted under the title of _Remorse_. Far superior to this is his later drama of _Zapolya_, a genuine homage to Shakespeare, out of the themes of two of whose plays it is gracefully woven. Scott, who in his earlier days had translated Goethe's _Götz von Berlichingen_, gained no reputation by his own dramatic compositions. W. S. Landor, apart from those _Imaginary Conversations_ upon which he best loved to expend powers of observation and characterization such as have been given to few playwrights, cast in a formally dramatic mould studies of character of which the value is far from being confined to their wealth in beauties of detail. Of these the magnificent, but in construction altogether undramatic, _Count Julian_, is the most noteworthy. Shelley's _The Cenci_, on the other hand, is not only a poem of great beauty, but a drama of true power, abnormally revolting indeed in theme, but singularly pure and delicate in treatment. A humbler niche in the temple of dramatic literature belongs to some of the plays of C. R. Maturin,[261] Sir T. N. Talfourd,[262] and Dean Milman.[263] Divorced, except for passing moments, from the stage, English dramatic literature could during much the greater part of the 19th century hardly be regarded as a connected national growth; though, already in the last decades of the Victorian age, the revival of public interest in the theatre co-operated with a gradual change in poetic taste to awaken the hope of a future living reunion. Among English poets who lived in this period, Sir Henry Taylor probably approached nearest to the objective treatment and the amplitude of style characteristic of the Elizabethan drama.[264] R. H. Horne, long an almost solitary survivor of the romantic school, was able in at least one memorable dramatic attempt to revive something of the early Elizabethan spirit.[265] Of the chief poets of the age, Tennyson only in his later years addressed himself to a form of composition little suited to his genius, though the very fact of the homage paid by him to the national forms of the historic drama and of romantic comedy could not fail to ennoble the contemporary stage.[266] Matthew Arnold's stately revival of the traditions of classical tragedy proper, on the other hand, deliberately excluded itself from any such contact;[267] while Longfellow's refined literary culture and graceful facility of form made ready use of a quasi-dramatic medieval vesture.[268] William Morris's single "morality," too, cannot be regarded as a contribution to dramatic literature proper.[269] Of