(_αα_) The effort of such a transfiguration is in fact a fundamental _desideratum_ of the poetical art when it, so far as its material is concerned, steps into the arena of history. It is its business in short in such a case to discover the mere ideal core and significance of an event, action, or a national type, a famous historical personality, and as decisively to brush aside aspects of contingency, everything in fact purely incidental or indifferent, which plays round such types or individuals, and stands to them in a purely relative connection. It has then to establish, in the place of the circumstances and traits it rejects, others which reveal the ideal essence of the facts in their clarity, to the intent that in this transfigured presence such shall so discover concrete truth in its fulness that the reason, which has hitherto lain concealed, though implied in them, shall now for the first time assert itself as evolved and declared in complete realization. By this means alone poetry is able in the proposed work to make its content coalesce in the secure unity of a centre, able as such to round and unfold itself in a whole. And this is possible because it not only is operative as a more effective bond between the parts, but also because, without compromising the unity of the whole, all its varied particularity is suffered to assert its claim to an independent impression. (_ββ_) Poetry may in this respect make a yet further advance, when, it accepts as its main content, in lieu of the material and significance of the historical fact, some fundamental idea, some human collision in general associated with it in a close or more remote affinity, and employs the historical _factum_ and personages, everything local in short, merely in the guise or garment of individualization. The difficulty to be encountered here is twofold: either the historically ascertained data, when appropriated by the composition, may fall out of line with the fundamental idea; or, conversely, it may be that the poet in some measure retains these data, but also too in essential features moulds them conformably to his purposes, and by doing this work fails to harmonize the element of stability with that of original design which were both essential to our conception of the poetical product. To dispel such an opposition and to reassert the accordant note able to do this is a difficult matter; it is none the less necessary, for objective reality has itself too an unquestionable title to what is essential in the character of its appearance.