Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. "Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading.... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him."--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. _Address on the opening of the Eton Library_, 1833. LECTURES ON DRAMATIC ART AND LITERATURE BY AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL. CONTENTS. Preface of the Translator. Author's Preface. Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel. LECTURE I. Introduction--Spirit of True Criticism--Difference of Taste between the Ancients and Moderns--Classical and Romantic Poetry and Art--Division of Dramatic Literature; the Ancients, their Imitators, and the Romantic Poets. LECTURE II. Definition of the Drama--View of the Theatres of all Nations--Theatrical Effect--Importance of the Stage--Principal Species of the Drama. LECTURE III. Essence of Tragedy and Comedy--Earnestness and Sport--How far it is possible to become acquainted with the Ancients without knowing Original Languages--Winkelmann. LECTURE IV. Structure of the Stage among the Greeks--Their Acting--Use of Masks--False comparison of Ancient Tragedy to the Opera--Tragical Lyric Poetry. LECTURE V. Essence of the Greek Tragedies--Ideality of the Representation--Idea of Fate--Source of the Pleasure derived from Tragical Representations--Import of the Chorus--The materials of Greek Tragedy derived from Mythology-- Comparison with the Plastic Arts. LECTURE VI. Progress of the Tragic Art among the Greeks--Various styles of Tragic Art --Aeschylus--Connexion in a Trilogy of Aeschylus--His remaining Works. LECTURE VII. Life and Political Character of Sophocles--Character of his different Tragedies. LECTURE VIII. Euripides--His Merits and Defects--Decline of Tragic Poetry through him. LECTURE IX. Comparison between the _Choephorae_ of Aeschylus, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and that of Euripides. LECTURE X. Character of the remaining Works of Euripides--The Satirical Drama-- Alexandrian Tragic Poets. LECTURE XI. The Old Comedy proved to be completely a contrast to Tragedy--Parody-- Ideality of Comedy the reverse of that of Tragedy--Mirthful Caprice-- Allegoric and Political Signification--The Chorus and its Parabases. LECTURE XII.