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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
of half a lemon and a small pinch of gin-
ger. Contrast with that work, and with
works of its quality, the half a hundred
tragedies and comedies which remain to
us from the Greeks of the fifth and fourth
centuries before Christ. The newest of
these plays are two thousand two hundred
years old : they are written in a dead lan-
guage; they have the atmosphere of a re-
mote land and an alien age and civilization;
yet they still receive the quick sympathy
and command the reverent admiration of
the world. The corollary of the rule for
negative prediction is obvious: The na-
tion which is producing no readable dra-
matic literature is producing no dramas of
permanent importance from the points of
view of art and life, which are indeed one
point and the same.
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