neither easy to understand how “purging away” is “purifying,” nor why we should “purify” what we “purge away.” Surely it is better--but we speak with all submission--to take the word in two different meanings, the one signifying the immediate effect of tragedy in its direct appeal to the passions referred to, the other not to its immediate, but to its ulterior and total effect in educating the passions thus excited. Professor Butcher, who appears to belong to the Pater School, dwells with great complacency on the fact that Aristotle “attempted to separate the function of æsthetics from that of morals,” that “he made the end of art reside in a pleasurable emotion,” that he says “nothing of any moral aim in poetry,” and that though he often takes exception to Euripides as an artist, “he attaches no blame to him for the immoral tendency in some of his dramas,” so severely censured by Aristophanes. If Professor Butcher implies, as he seems to imply by this, that Aristotle would lend any countenance to the modern art-for-art’s-sake doctrine, and proceeded on the assumption that there was no necessary connection between æsthetics and morals, he does Aristotle very great injustice, and is refuted by the _Poetics_ themselves. In the fifth chapter Aristotle lays stress on the fact that tragedy is, like epic, a representation of “superior or morally good characters” (μιμησις σπουδαιων)--that the characters are to be good (χρηστα). In the twenty-fifth chapter he says that nothing can excuse the exhibition of moral depravity (μοχθηρια), unless it be one of the things implicit in the plot; and that among the most serious objections which can be brought against a drama is that it is likely to do moral harm (βλαβερα). In the thirteenth chapter he shows,--and on moral grounds,--why the protagonist in a tragedy should not be a perfectly good man or a perfectly bad man. Indeed, the very definition of tragedy refutes Professor Butcher’s statement. It may be said, no doubt, that Aristotle maintains that the end of poetry is pleasure, but it must be “the proper pleasure,” and in the proper pleasure moral satisfaction is implied.[36] It is only by a quibble that Professor Butcher’s theory can be supported, and it is a pity to quibble on subjects which may be so mischievously misunderstood. Aristotle was, we suspect, very much nearer to Ben Jonson and Milton than to Mr. Pater in his conception of the functions and scope of poetry. In the interesting essay on Sophocles there are two statements which appear to us very questionable. It is surely not true to say that Sophocles was “the first of the Greeks who has clearly realized that suffering is not always penal.” Who could have expressed this truth more forcibly than Æschylus? To say nothing of the well-known passage in the _Agamemnon_, 167-171:-- Ζηνα ... τον φρονειν βροτους ὁδωσαντα, τον παθει μαθος θεντα κυριως εχειν. σταζει δ’ εν θ’ ὑπνω προ καρδιας μνησιπημων πονος, και παρ’ ακοντας ηλθε σωφρονειν,--