lus

When I was a boy, I was fondest of Eschylus; in youth and middle age I preferred * Euripides; now in my declining years I admire Sophocles. I can now at length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he never rises to the sublime simplicity of Æschysimplicity of design, I mean-nor diffuses himself in the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of their dramatists: he evidently embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions, - love, conjugal affection, jealousy, and so on, which Sophocles seems to have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic drama. Certainly Euripides was a greater poet in the abstract than Sophocles. His chorusses may be faulty as chorusses, but how beautiful and affecting they are as odes and songs! I think the famous Εὐίππου, ξένε, in the dipus Coloneus, cold in comparison with many

Εὐίππου, ξένε, τᾶσδε χώρας
ἵκου τὰ κράτιστα γᾶς ἔπαυλα,
τὸν ἀργῆτα Κολωνόν — κ. τ. λ.

v. 668.

of the odes of Euripides, as that song of the chorus in the Hippolytus — Ἔρως, Ερως *, and so on; and I remember a choric ode in the Hecuba, which always struck me as exquisitely rich and finished ; — I mean, where the Chorus speaks of Troy and the night of the capture. †

*Ερως, Ερως, ὁ κατ ̓ ὀμμάτων
στάζεις πόθον, εἰσάγων γλυκεῖαν
ψυχῇ χάριν, οὓς ἐπιστρατεύσει,
μή μοι ποτὲ σὺν κακῷ φανείης,

μήδ' ἄῤῥυθμος ἔλθοις κ. τ. λ. v. 527.

I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to

the chorus,

Σὺ μὲν, ὦ πατρὶς Ιλιάς,
τῶν ἀπορθήτων πόλις
οὐκέτι λέξει· τοῖον Ελ-

λάνων νέφος ἀμφί σε κρύπτει,

δορὶ δὴ, δορὶ πέρσαν κ. τ. λ. ν. 899.

Thou, then, oh, natal Troy! no more
The city of the unsack'd shalt be,
So thick from dark Achaia's shore
The cloud of war hath covered thee.
Ah! not again

I tread thy plain

The spear - the spear hath rent thy pride;

The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide;

There is nothing very surprising in Milton's preference of Euripides, though so

Thy coronal of towers is shorn, And thou most piteous art

lorn!

most naked and for

I perish'd at the noon of night!
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye;
When the dance was o'er,

And harps no more

Rang out in choral minstrelsy.
In the dear bower of delight
My husband slept in joy;
His shield and spear
Suspended near,

Secure he slept: that sailor band

Full sure he deem'd no more should stand
Beneath the walls of Troy.

And I too, by the taper's light,

Which in the golden mirror's haze
Flash'd its interminable rays,

Bound

up the tresses of my hair,

That I Love's peaceful sleep might share.

I slept; but, hark! that war-shout dread,
Which rolling through the city spread;
And this the cry, "When, Sons of Greece,
When shall the lingering leaguer cease;

When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high,
And home return?". I heard the cry,

VOL. II.

P

unlike himself. It is very common natural

for men to like and even admire

an exhibition of power very different in kind from any thing of their own. No jealousy arises. Milton preferred Ovid too, and I dare say he admired both as a man of sensi

And, starting from the genial bed,
Veiled, as a Doric maid, I fled,
And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane,
A trembling suppliant — all in vain.

They led me to the sounding shore-
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way
My bleeding lord before me lay-
I saw I saw - and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair :-
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:

In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.

Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,

And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;

Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,

Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall."

J. T. C. ED.

bility admires a lovely woman, with a feeling into which jealousy or envy cannot enter. With Eschylus or Sophocles he might perchance have matched himself.

In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near approach to comedy, and I hardly know any writer in whom you can find such fine models of serious and dignified conversation.

THE collocation of words is so artificial in Shakspeare and Milton that you may as well think of pushing a brick out of a wall with your forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished passages.*

* "The amotion or transposition will alter the thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture." - Quarterly Review, No. CIII. p. 7.