AI

as from its mature serenity and total freedom from the impetuosity and violence of youth we have good reason to conclude that it actually was, it affords us at once a pleasing picture of the delight and reverence which attended his concluding years. though the various accounts of his death appear fabulous, they all coincide in this, that he departed without a struggle, while employed in his art, or something connected with it, and that, like an old swan of Apollo, he breathed out his life in song. I consider also the story of the Lacedemonian general who had fortified the burying-ground of his fathers, and who, twice exhorted by Bacchus in a vision to allow Sophocles to be there interred, despatched a herald to the Athenians on the subject, with a number of other circumstances, as the strongest possible proof of the established reverence in which his name was held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I spoke in the true sense of the words; for although his works breathe the real character of ancient grandeur, sweetness, and simplicity, of all the Grecian poets he is also the individual whose feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit of our religion.

One gift alone was refused to him by nature: a voice attuned to song. He could only call forth and direct the harmonious effusions of other voices; he was therefore compelled to depart from the established practice of the poet acting a part in his own pieces, and only once (a very characteristic trait) made his appearance in the character of the blind singer Thamyris playing on the cithara.

As Eschylus, who raised tragic poetry from its rude beginnings to the dignity of the cothurnus, was his predecessor; the historical relations in which he stood to Sophocles enabled the latter to avail himself of the inventions of his original master, so that Æschylus appears as the rough designer, and Sophocles as the finished successor. The more artful construction of the dramas of the latter is easily perceived: the limitation of the chorus with respect to the dialogue, the polish of the rhythmus, and the pure Attic diction, the introduction of a greater number of characters, the increase of contrivance in the fable, the multiplication of incidents, a greater degree of developement, the more tranquil continuance of all the moments of the action, and the greater degree of theatrical effect given to incidents of a decisive nature, the more perfect rounding of the whole, even considered in a mere external point of view. But he excelled Eschylus in somewhat still more essential, and proved himself deserving of the good fortune of having such a preceptor, and of entering into competition with him in the same subjects: I mean the harmonious perfection of his mind, by which he fulfilled from in

clination every duty prescribed by the laws of beauty, and of which the impulse was in him accompanied by the most clear consciousness. It was impossible to exceed Eschylus in boldness of conception; I am inclined however to believe that Sophocles appears only less bold from his wisdom and moderation, as he always goes to work with the greatest energy, and perhaps with even a more determined severity, like a man who knows the extent of his powers, and is determined, when he does not exceed them, to stand up with the greater confidence for his rights.* As Eschylus delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the Titans, Sophocles on the other hand never avails himself of the gods but when their appearance is necessary; he formed men, according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not more moral, or exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they appeared in real life; and while he took everything in the most human signification, he was at the same time aware of their superior destination. According to all appearance he was also more moderate than Eschylus in his scenic ornaments; he displayed perhaps more taste and selection in his objects, but did not attempt the same colossal pomp.

To characterize the native sweetness and affection so eminent in this poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. Whoever is thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this property may flatter himself that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him; for the affected sentimentality of the present day, far from coinciding with him in this opinion, would both in the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the language and economy of the tragedies of Sophocles, find much of an unsupportable austerity.

When we consider the great fertility of Sophocles, for according to some he wrote a hundred and thirty pieces (of which however seventeen were pronounced spurious by Aristophanes the grammarian,) and eighty according to the most moderate account, we cannot help wondering that seven only should have come down

This idea has been so happily expressed by the greatest genius perhaps of the last century, that the translator hopes he will be forgiven for here transcribing the passage: "I can truly say that, poor and unknown as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works, as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assi duously nature's design in my formation-where the lights and shades in my character were intended.--Letter from Burns to Dr. Moore, in Currie's Life.— TRANS.

to us. Chance however has so far favoured us, that in these seven pieces we find several which were held by the ancients as his greatest works, Antigone for example, Electra, and the two Edipus; and these have also come down to us tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in their text. The first Edipus and Philoctetes have been generally, without any good reason, preferred to all the others by the modern critics: the first on account of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful catastrophe, powerfully calculated to excite our curiosity (a rare case in the Greek tragedies,) is brought about inevitably by a succession of causes, all dependent on each other; the latter on account of the masterly display of character, the beautiful contrast observable in the three leading individuals, and the simple structure of the piece, in which, with so few persons, everything proceeds from the truest motives. But the whole of the tragedies of Sophocles are conspicuous for their separate excellencies. In Antigone we have the purest display of female heroism; in Ajax the manly feeling of honour in its whole force; in the Trachiniæ (or, as we should name it, the Dying Hercules,) the female levity of Dejanira is beautifully atoned for by her death, and the sufferings of Hercules are portrayed with suitable dignity; Electra is distinguished for energy and pathos; in Edipus Coloneus there prevails the mildest emotion, and over the whole piece there is diffused the utmost sweetness. I will not undertake to weigh the respective merits of these pieces against each other: but I am free to confess that I entertain a singular predilection for the last of them, as it appears to me the most expressive of the personal feelings of the poet himself. As this piece was written for the very purpose of throwing a lustre on Athens, and the spot of his birth more particularly, he appears to have laboured it with a remarkable degree of fondness.

Ajax and Antigone are usually the least understood. We cannot conceive how these pieces should be continued so long after what we generally call the catastrophe. I shall hereafter submit an observation on this subject.

Of all the fables of the ancient mythology into which fate is made to enter, the story of Edipus is perhaps the most ingenious; but yet there are others, as for example Niobe, which without such a complication of incidents are highly calculated to afford us a simple representation of human arrogance, and the punishment suspended over it by the gods, conceived on a more colossal scale, and in a grander style. The very intrigue of Edipus detracts from its elevation of character. Intrigue in the dramatic sense is a complication arising from the crossing of purposes and events, and the fate of Edipus affords this in a high

degree, as all that is done by his parents or himself to escape the predicted horrors serve only the more to involve him. But that which gives so grand and terrible a character to this drama, is the circumstance which, for the most part, however, is overlooked; that it is the Edipus who solved the riddle of the Sphinx relating to human life, to whom his own life remains an inextricable riddle, till it is cleared up to him in the most dreadful manner when too late, and when all is irrecoverably lost. This is an admirable picture of the pretension of human wisdom, which is ever aspiring at general improvement, while the possessor knows not how to make the proper application to himself.

Notwithstanding the severe conclusion of the first Edipus, we are so far reconciled to it by the violence, suspicion, and haughtiness in the character of Edipus, that our feelings are not wrought up to the highest pitch of indignation against the cruelty of his fate. It was necessary in so far to sacrifice the character of Edipus, who raises himself however in our estimation by his fatherly care and heroic zeal for the welfare of the people, that allow him, in his honest inquiries after the author of the crime, to hasten his own destruction. It was necessary for the sake of the contrast which his future misery exhibits, to allow him to appear before Tiresias and Creon, clothed in all the pride of regal dignity. In his earlier transactions we may already remark something of suspicion and violence; in the uneasiness he still felt at the charge of being a supposititious child, notwithstanding all the assurances of Polybos, and in the bloody quarrel in which he was afterwards engaged with Laius. This character he seems to have inherited from both his parents. The arrogant levity of Jocasta, which induces her to treat the oracle with derision when she conceived it was not confirmed by the event, though it is afterwards consummated in her own sufferings, was not indeed inherited by her son: he is on the contrary conspicuous throughout for the purity of his intentions; and the care and anxiety with which he fled from the predicted crime, added naturally to the poignancy of his despair, when he found that he had nevertheless committed it. His blindness is indeed dreadful, as the explanation is so very obvious; for example, when he puts the question to Jocasta, how did Laius look? and she answers he had become gray-haired, otherwise in appearance he was not unlike Edipus. This is also another feature of her levity, that she should not have been struck with the resemblance to her husband, a circumstance that might have led her to recognize him as her son. On a closer dissection of the piece, we shall find the utmost propriety and circumspection in every feature of it. As we are however accustomed to extol the correctness of

Sophocles, and to boast more especially of the probability which prevails throughout this Edipus, I must here remark that this very piece is a proof that on this subject the ancient artists followed very different principles from those of modern critics. For, according to the way of thinking of the latter, nothing could be more improbable than that Edipus should, during such a length of time, have never inquired into the circumstances of the death of Laius, and that the scars on his feet, and even the name which he bore, should have excited no suspicion in Jocasta, &c. But the ancients did not produce their works of art for calculating and prosaic understandings; and an improbability which required dissection to be found out, and which did not appear in the course of the representation itself, passed with them for no improbability.

The diversity of character of Eschylus and Sophocles is nowhere more conspicuous than in the Eumenides and the Edipus Coloneus, as both these pieces have the same aim. This aim is to confer glory on Athens as the sacred abode of law and humanity, where the crimes of illustrious families of other countries might, by a higher mediation, be at last propitiated; and hence an ever-during prosperity was predicted to the Athenian people. The patriotic and free-minded Eschylus has recourse to a judicial, and the pious Sophocles to a religious, proceeding. The Edipus Coloneus may be styled his consecration after death; for as he was bent down by the consciousness of inevitable crimes, and lengthened misery, the gods, it would appear, were desirous of conferring on him this honour, to show that in the terrible example which they made of him, they had no intention of visiting him in particular with punishment, but merely wished to give a severe lesson to the human race. Sophocles, whose whole life might be called one continued worship of the gods, was particularly fond of adorning the last moments of existence with the splendour of a religious festival; and the emotion which he produces on such occasions is very different from that which the thought of morality is in general calculated to excite. That the tortured and exhausted Edipus should at last find peace and repose in the grove of the Furies, in the very spot from which all other mortals fled with aversion and horror, he whose misfortune consisted in having done that at which every human being must shudder, without the consciousness or warning of any inward feeling to guide him; in this there is a profound and mysterious sense.

Eschylus has given us in the person of Pallas a more majestic representation of the Attic cultivation, presence of mind, moderation, mildness, and magnanimity; but Sophocles, who was so much inclined to draw down everything divine into the province