more value than the physical organism on which its existence depends. This very parallel suggests itself to him in his _Poetics_; but, by an almost inconceivable misjudgment, it is the plot which he likens to the soul of the piece, whereas in truth it should be compared to the body. The practice and preference of his own time may have helped to mislead him, for he argues (rather inconsistently, by the way) that plot must be more indispensable, as young writers are able to construct good stories before they are able to portray character; and more artistic, as it was developed much later in the historical evolution of tragedy. Fortunately for us, the Alexandrian critics were guided by other canons of taste, or the structurally faulty pieces of Aeschylus might have been neglected, and the ingeniously constructed pieces of Agathon preserved in their place. It is probable, however, that Aristotle’s partiality was determined more by the systematising and analytical character of his own genius than by the public opinion of his age; or rather, the same tendency was at work in philosophy and in art at the same time, and the theories of the one were unconsciously pre-adapted to the productions of the other. In both there was a decay of penetration and of originality, of life and of inspiration; in both a great development of whatever could be obtained by technical proficiency; in both an extension of surface at the expense of depth, a gain of fluency, and a loss of force. But poetry lost far more than philosophy by the change; and so the works of the one have perished while the works of the other have survived. Modern literature offers abundant materials for testing Aristotle’s theory, and the immense majority of critics have decided against it. Even among fairly educated readers few would prefer Molière’s _L’Étourdi_ to his _Misanthrope_, or Schiller’s _Maria Stuart_ to Goethe’s _Faust_, or Lord Lytton’s _Lucretia_ to George Eliot’s _Romola_, or Dickens’s _Tale of Two Cities_ to the same writer’s _Nicholas Nickleby_, or his _Great Expectations_ to his _David Copperfield_, although in each instance the work named first has the better plot of the two.