on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been no place for it since the days of Greece.  Milton confesses as much when in his preface he assails “the poet’s error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people.”  In his view tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare’s it should be all embracing.  Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said:  “The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in ’King Lear,’ universal, ideal, and sublime.”  On the whole, “Samson Agonistes” is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic, from its want of harmony with the more essential characteristics of our tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.

In one point of view, however, “Samson Agonistes” deserves to be esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has always been recognized.  Samson’s impersonation of the author himself can escape no one.  Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero.  Particular references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting:  his bitter self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance.  But, as in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in the age of Charles the Second.  His heaviest burden is his remorse, a remorse which could not weigh on Milton:—­

              “I do acknowledge and confess
    That I this honour, I this pomp have brought
    To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
    Among the heathen round; to God have brought
    Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths
    Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
    To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
    In feeble hearts, propense enough before
    To waver, to fall off, and join with idols;
    Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,
    The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
    My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest.”