of stage-directions. Polyxena sees Ulysses concealing his right hand under his mantle, and turning away his head lest the suppliant should be able to make use of the usual symbolical expressions of entreaty.] He need not be afraid. She is not going to supplicate. There was little reason for her to love life, who had been a princess and was now a slave. The name made her in love with death, and death would enable her to escape all the degradation it [implied. She entreats him to complete the sacrifice, and her mother to acquiesce. Altogether we have here a conception, far indeed below that of an Antigone, but still one of very considerable beauty. The scene closes with the last farewells of Polyxena and her mother, who faints away at the end, affording another example of the peculiar stage-effects on which Euripides so often depends. The choral song which succeeds is a light and graceful example of lyrical composition-an address to the gale which is wafting the maidens into captivity. Is it to Doris, or Phthia, or Delos, or Athens? and they wind up with a lament over the fall of Troy. This chorus, as is so frequently the case in Euripides, contributes nothing to the action of the piece. In the next scene, the herald Talthybius conveys to Hecuba the intelligence of her daughter's sacrifice. It is described in a manner which shows little depth of feeling, but a great deal of artistic power; and the speech of Hecuba which follows is merely a brilliant rhetorical or philosophical exercise, with hardly a pretence of expressing the feelings of a mother under the supposed circumstances. After admitting the consolation she had received from the heroism shown by her daughter at the moment of death, she runs off into a very abstract reflection on the question, how it is that inferior soil, if favoured by the seasons, may produce good grain, whilst the best soil, under the opposite conditions, yields badly; whereas among human natures the bad is always bad, and the good always good, be the circumstances what they may. It will be admitted that these ideas are redolent of the schools, and show a wonderful falling off from the simplicity and truth to be found in every page of Sophocles. They in fact spring remotely from the selfishness of his society and age, in which the writer partakes. He has not the heart to enter throughout, with the purity and earnestness of a child-like imagination, into the distresses he describes, and is therefore drawn off by any allurement that presents itself to his faculty of ratiocination. He shows-off his cleverness and subtlety, and flatters the same qualities in the minds of the audience. The rest of the play affords ample verification of the views I have hitherto put forth. Whilst preparation is being made for the funeral rites of Polyxena, the corpse of Polydorus is found on the seashore, and Hecuba appeals with passionate entreaties to Agamemnon to avenge his murder on Polymestor, or, when he refuses this out of fear of the Greeks, to allow her to take the vengeance into her own hands. Her entreaties, though disfigured as usual by the style of declamation, end in a passage of great sublimity, where she wishes she were all voice, hands and feet and dishevelled hair at once, to cling altogether at his knees till he grants her ardent desire to wreak vengeance on the murderer of her son. The king coldly allows her to do as she pleases, since the fleet must in any case be detained by the calm. Polymestor is enticed into the tent of the women, and there, after Hecuba has got him into her power, by pretending to show him a concealed treasure, she and her attendants set upon him and deprive him of sight by striking at his eyes with their shuttles. Polymestor presently appears on the stage, groping his way on all-fours, as he is turned in his agony out of the tent. The clamour calls forth Agamemnon, to whom Polymestor, first giving his own explanation of the death of Polydorus, relates at large the calamity that had been inflicted on himself. Hecuba, in a no less prolix speech, shows the falsehood of Polymestor's explanation of his crime. The king, coldly as before, decides in her favour, and against Polymestor; on which the latter predicts for Hecuba and Cassandra the disastrous fate that awaited them, and has the temerity to proceed to a similar prediction against Agamemnon himself; on which the king, suddenly interrupting him, gives orders for him to be carried off and deposited on a desert island, by way of punishing his insolence. By this time the wind rises, the fleet is ordered to get under weigh, and the play concludes in that hasty and slovenly manner which I have mentioned as one of the defects that frequently meet us in the Euripidean drama. The description I have given of this single play indicates also the prevailing feature of variety in the story. It has a certain liveliness that belongs almost to comedy, at least of the graver sort. Of cleverness there is abundance, but of this and similar qualities, only careful study of the original can afford an adequate idea. I must not omit to notice as an example of the sceptical bias that presents itself in Euripides, a remarkable passage in one of the speeches of Polymestor, where, after hypocritically complaining that nothing can be depended upon as lasting, either a good name or prosperity, he adds, "the gods throw them into confusion backwards and forwards, creating disorder, that we may worship them in ignorance." This is put into the mouth, as I before hinted, of a bad man; but it represents a dis VOL. V. DD contented tone of thought, which characterises the author in some measure, though it is not found by any means equally in all his plays. The Phoenisse is, perhaps, not one of the most favourite of the tragedies of Euripides, yet it contains much that is beautiful. The scene in which Antigone, with an aged attendant, looks down from the walls on the Argive host, and observes the array of their seven chiefs, is very fine. It falls short indeed of the grandeur of the corresponding passage in the play of Eschylus on the same subject, in reference to which I remarked the powerful effect produced by Eteocles' being suddenly carried away by his fury on hearing of his brother's appearing among the seven chiefs. But as regards the picturesque, Euripides may be said to have the advantage. I would compare with this scene the passage in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, where Rebecca, in the hero's sick chamber, describes to the impatient and wounded knight the accoutrements of the warriors whom she sees, from the window of the castle, marshalling in the plain below. Again, the scene in which Jocasta attempts to persuade the fiery and ambitious Eteocles to forego his unjust occupation of the Theban throne, is an excellent example of the talent of Euripides in representing persuasive eloquence, exhibiting perhaps also traces of imitation of the manner of Sophocles. I allude particularly to the beautiful lines where Jocasta says that the rayless eyelid of night and the light of the sun traverse equally the circle of the year, and neither of them is jealous of the other. Among the choral odes of this play I have selected, for metrical translation, part of the first, as a good specimen of the lyrical style of Euripides. The chorus is supposed to consist of captive Phoenician maidens on their way to Delphi, where they are to be devoted to the service of Apollo, but detained at Thebes in consequence of the war. I render the passage as follows: Τύριον οἶδμα λιποῦσ ̓ ἔβαν. Phan. 210. From far Phoenicia's isle, Where rolls the Tyrian wave, Came I, for Loxias a prize, For Phoebus' halls a slave. Thus was I to find a home, Unto whom my city proud Where Laius' towers their dwelling-place Yet I the wanderer, Phoebus' slave, O twofold peak, far-gleaming, O cave where the dragon haunted, O snow-crown'd holy mountain, Amidst you I would dwell! And for earth's most sacred centre, And the dells of Phoebus enter, My fearless dance to weave. I pass on to the tragedy of the Orestes. It is full of faults; though, from the stir and animation with which it abounds, it was popular on the Athenian stage. In this play Euripides has again resorted to his favourite expedient of the intervention of a deity to cut difficulties in the most unscrupulous manner. In this way Helen disappears out of the hands of Orestes and Pylades as they are about to kill her to be revenged on Menelaus-a scene which, if it had been acted instead of narrated, would have furnished an excellent subject for the machinery of Professor Pepper's ghost, had that invention been known at Athens two thousand years ago. The conclusion of the drama, when Orestes and Pylades, on the battlements of the palace, threaten to kill Hermione, and on Menelaus attempting to force his way within to rescue her, attempt to set fire to the edifice, must have had the effect of a pantomime; whilst the conclusion, in which Apollo appears to explain all complications, and to display Helen seated aloft among the gods in the clouds, shows that the Greeks in the time of Euripides must have thoroughly mastered the resources of scene-painting and stage-engineering. The characters are generally unpleasing from their monotonous badness. Still I may notice the adroitness with which the poet has thrown in a very natural and even satirical trait to assist the stage-effect, where Helen is represented as cutting off part of her hair to send as an offering to the tomb of Clytemnestra; and Electra observes that she is still the Helen of former days, as she takes care to cut off only the ends of her beautiful locks, and not to disfigure herself, even to do honour to the shade of her sister. The scene where Electra sits by the couch of the sleeping Orestes is extremely beautiful; and the passage where he awakes, his face haggard and his hair matted after his long frenzy, and the delirium caused by the Furies coming over him once more, at first resisted by him, but presently overpowering him with the frightful image of the blood-dripping and snaky-haired fiends, is worthy of Dante himself. I have endeavoured to render rhythmically into English the commencement of this scene, where Electra entreats the chorus, as she sees them approaching, to make no noise, lest they should awaken her brother from the sleep into which he has just fallen. I have found it necessary slightly to heighten the expressions, because the genius of a modern language cannot completely acquiesce in the statuesque simplicity of the Greek; still I have attempted to express the general effect which the original conveys to my own mind. It is as follows: σίγα, σίγα (ν. 140). O silence, O silence, set gently the step of your sandal; O hush ye, and break not the stillness that gathers around us. And faintly moaning. You will kill him if you stir but his eyelids' leaf, As he sleeps in a slumber so sweet and so brief. The Medea is commonly regarded as the most perfect tragedy of the Euripidean collection. It is doubtless the one which approaches the nearest to the dignity of schylus or Sophocles; and whilst it does not fail to be characterised by the usual faults of the author, such as incongruous wisdom in the mouth of inferior persons, declamation, and a preference for painting low and heartless dispositions, such as that of Jason is represented to be, still the tragedy abounds in beautiful poetry, impressive situations, and fine conceptions of character. The passage where the nurse complains that music is needlessly used as the companion of festivity and joy, when its proper office ought to be the soothing of affliction, though perhaps somewhat far-fetched and fantastic, is still sweet and fine, reminding us |