I have spoken somewhat as to the motive and purpose of his intellectual labour.  It was in and for the theatre that his multitudinous genius was developed, and his works produced; there Fortune, or rather Providence, had cast his lot.  Doubtless it was his nature, in whatever he undertook, to do his best.  As an honest and true man, he would, if possible, make the temple of the Drama a noble, a beautiful, and glorious place; and it was while working quietly and unobtrusively in furtherance of this end,—­building better than he knew,—­that he approved himself the greatest, wisest, sweetest of men.

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE DRAMA IN ENGLAND.

* * * * *

The English Drama, as we have it in Shakespeare, was the slow growth of several centuries.  Nor is it clearly traceable to any foreign source:  it was an original and independent growth, the native and free product of the soil.  This position is very material in reference to the subject of structure and form; as inferring that the Drama in question is not amenable to any ancient or foreign jurisdiction; that it has a life and spirit of its own, is to be viewed as a thing by itself, and judged according to the peculiar laws under which it grew and took its shape; in brief, that it had just as good a right to differ from any other Drama as any other had from it.

The ancient Drama, that which grew to perfection, and, so far as is known, had its origin, in Greece, is universally styled the Classic Drama.  By what term to distinguish the modern Drama of Europe, writers are not fully agreed.  Within a somewhat recent period, it has received from high authorities the title of the Romantic Drama.  A more appropriate title, as it seems to me, suggested by its Gothic original, and used by earlier authorities, is that of the Gothic Drama.  Such, accordingly, is the term by which it will he distinguished in these pages.  The fitness of the name, I think, will readily be seen from the fact that the thing was an indigenous and self-determined outgrowth from the Gothic mind under Christian culture.  And the term naturally carries the idea, that the Drama in question stands on much the same ground relatively to the Classic Drama as is commonly recognized in the case of Gothic and Classic architecture; which may help us to realize how each Drama forms a distinct species, and lives free of the other so that any argument or criticism from the ancient against the modern is wholly irrelevant.

The Gothic Drama, as it fashioned itself in different nations of modern Europe, especially in England and Spain, where it grew up independently, has certain diversities.  Upon the nature and reason of these I cannot enlarge.  Suffice it to say that they do not reach beyond points of detail; their effect thus being to approve the strength of the common principles that underlie and support them.  These principles cover the whole ground of difference from the Classic Drama.  The several varieties, therefore, of the Gothic Drama may be justly regarded as bearing concurrent testimony to a common right of freedom from the jurisdiction of ancient rules.