By the introduction of a metrical dialogue an important progress has been made toward the poetical Tragedy.  A few lyrical dramas have been successful on the stage, and Poetry, by its own living energy, has triumphed over prevailing prejudices.  But so long as these erroneous views are entertained little has been done—­for it is not enough barely to tolerate as a poetic license that which is, in truth, the essence of all poetry.  The introduction of the Chorus would be the last and decisive step; and if it only served this end, namely, to declare open and honorable warfare against naturalism in art, it would be for us a living wall which Tragedy had drawn around herself, to guard her from contact with the world of reality, and maintain her own ideal soil, her poetical freedom.

It is well known that the Greek tragedy had its origin in the Chorus; and though, in process of time, it became independent, still it may be said that poetically, and in spirit, the Chorus was the source of its existence, and that without these persevering supporters and witnesses of the incident a totally different order of poetry would have grown out of the drama.  The abolition of the Chorus, and the debasement of this sensibly powerful organ into the characterless substitute of a confidant, is, by no means, such an improvement in tragedy as the French, and their imitators, would have it supposed to be.

The old Tragedy, which at first only concerned itself with gods, heroes and kings, introduced the Chorus as an essential accompaniment.  The poets found it in nature, and for that reason employed it.  It grew out of the poetical aspect of real life.  In the new Tragedy it becomes an organ of art which aids in making the poetry prominent.  The modern poet no longer finds the Chorus in nature; he must needs create and introduce it poetically; that is, he must resolve on such an adaptation of his story as will admit of its retrocession to those primitive times and to that simple form of life.

The Chorus thus renders more substantial service to the modern dramatist than to the old poet—­and for this reason, that it transforms the commonplace actual world into the old poetical one; that it enables him to dispense with all that is repugnant to poetry, and conducts him back to the most simple, original, and genuine motives of action.  The palaces of kings are in these days closed-courts of justice have been transferred from the gates of cities to the interior of buildings; writing has narrowed the province of speech; the people itself—­the sensibly living mass—­when it does not operate as brute force, has become a part of the civil polity, and thereby an abstract idea in our minds; the deities have returned within the bosoms of mankind.  The poet must reopen the palaces—­he must place courts of justice beneath the canopy of heaven—­restore the gods, reproduce every extreme which the artificial frame of actual life has abolished—­throw aside every factitious influence on the mind or condition