Obscenity, which is ever
blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very
veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster
for which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food,
which it devours in secret.
The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of
expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any other,
the connection of poetry and social good is more observable in the
drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the
highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the
highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the extinction
of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is a mark of
a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain
the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political
institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should
arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And this
is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all language,
institution and form, require not only to be produced, but to be
sustained: the office and character of a poet participates in the
divine nature as regards providence, no less than as regards creation.
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