departure from recorded history. "The ancients," he says, "found it
possible to have powerful dramas without calling in the motive of love. Is it impossible with us ?" This is a criticism with which I have great sympathy. But will you allow me space : (1) To point out that Savonarola's love for Laodamia Strozzi is not, as many well-informed people have supposed, a departure from recorded history ? (See the passages of Benedetto, spoken of by Villari as recently exhumed; also Gherardi's investigations.) There is, it is true, no evidence that she crossed his path in later life. But it seems not improbable. Tho Strozzi were to the last among his adherents ; they revived his aims after his death ; one of that family it was who exchanged frocks with his sponsor at tho trial by fire ; and lastly, he would scarcely have spoken to Benedetto at length concerning a passion of his early life had nothing occurred to recall it.
(2) I would remark that not otherwise than by a love encounter did it seem possible, in this case, to reveal the hero, and develop the essential dramatic motive. The woman reveals the Iran; for we aro dealing first with a prophet against monstrous charla- tanisms and priestly corruptions, quite secondarily with a political agent. The prophet must be shown in action true. Sermons and facts impossible of dramatisation convince the student; indeed, his public life consisted wholly of sermons. But the more talker is no hero on the stage of life. City and Man were each to be exhibited under the trial crucial to each. Savonarola stood for Purity and Sincerity, under temptation,— Florence stood for Justice, under peril. Life means the trial of our stamina to the ends of spiritual beauty,—or it means nothing ; and Tragedy is defeat therein,—Comedy (in Dante's sense) conquest. For the city the trial issued in Tragedy ; for the man in divine Comedy.
Thus my conception ; and it involves a standpoint maintained against the flowing tido of dramatic sentimentalism and sensa- tionalism. Whatever my faults of performance, the aim is one in which both you and your critic are likely to sympathise ; and the more readily therefore to acquit me, in the introduction of the love scenes, of a mere catering for popular appetite, such as tho criticism might imply.
[Though we are obliged, for reasons of space, to make a rule against printing letters which are merely reviews of reviews, we are always glad to publish corrections of fact. Mr. Newman Howard's citation of the authorities certainly seems to justify his use of the love motive.—ED. Spectator.]
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