INTRODUCTION
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tion where greatness of soul and of position, greatness of accomplishment and deed, does not yet prevent the true tragic ἁμαρτία, the human frailty and failure, the "rift within the lute," from marring their total achievement almost, altogether. The faults in the two cases, though not distantly related to each other, are different; but the result upon the spectator is, as at least it seems to me, very much the same—a result of immense admiration, of general (not always detailed) comprehension, of infinite sympathy. And the names of the heroes, anticipated of course in one case, should be in both: they are Jonathan Swift and Prosper Mérimée.
2 Eton Terrace, Edinburgh,
January, 1905.
