posing these littlenesses as laws. It is stimulated by tastes rather than by necessities; it rarely introduces into its pleasures that serious and ingenuous disposition which abandons itself with transport to the impressions which it receives; and it very frequently treats genius as a servant who is bound to please it, and not as a power that is capable of governing it by the enjoyments which it can supply. Ifthe dramatic poet does not possess, in the suffrages of a larger and more simple public, the means of defending himself against the haughty taste of a select coterie—if he can not arm himself with public approbation, and rely for support upon the universal feelings which he has been able to arouse in all hearts—his liberty is lost; the caprices which he has attempted to satisfy will weigh upon him like a chain, from which he will be unable to free himself; talent, which is entitled to command all, will find itself subject to the minority, and he who ought to guide the taste of the people, will become the slave of fashion.
Such, then, is the nature of dramatic poetry that, in order to produce its most magical effects, and to preserve, during its growth, its liberty as well as its wealth, it must not separate from the people, to whom its earliest efforts were addressed. It languishes, if it is transplanted from the soil in which it first took root. Popular at its origin, it must continue to be national, and it must not cease to comprehend beneath its sway, and to charm with its productions, all classes that are capable of experiencing the emotions from which it derives its power.
All ages of society, and all states of civilization are not equally favorable to calling the people to the aid of dramatic poetry, and insuring its prosperity under their influence. It was the happy lot of Greece that the whole na-
