of the fabulous ages are not, if we may be allowed the expression, amenable to the tribunals of men, but consigned over to a higher jurisdiction. Some are of opinion that the Greeks, in their republican zeal, took a particular pleasure in witnessing the representation of the outrages and consequent calamities of the different royal families, and are almost disposed to consider the ancient tragedy, in general, as a satire on monarchical government. This party view would, however, have deadened the interest of the audience, and consequently destroyed the effect which it was the aim of the tragedy to produce. But we must remark, that the royal families, whose crimes and misfortunes afforded the most abundant materials for tragical pictures of a horrible description, were the Pelopidæ of Mycena, and the Labdacidæ of Thebes, families which were foreign to the Athenians, for whom the pieces were composed. We do not see that the Attic poets endeavoured to exhibit the ancient kings of their country in an odious light; on the contrary, they always hold up their national hero, Theseus, for public admiration, as a model of justice and moderation, the champion of the oppressed, the first lawgiver, and even the founder of their liberty; and it was one of their favourite modes of flattering the people, to persuade them that, even in the heroic ages, Athens was distinguished above all the other states of Greece, for obedience to the laws, humanity, and a knowledge of the rights of nations. The general revolution, by which the independent kingdoms of ancient Greece were converted into a community of free states, had separated the heroic age from the age of social cultivation, by a wide interval, beyond which the genealogy of a very few families only was attempted to be traced. This was extremely advantageous for the ideal elevation of the characters of their tragedy, as few human things will admit of a close inspection into them, wthout betraying thier imperfections. But in the very different relations of the age in which those heroes lived, the standard of mere civil and domestic morality was not applicable, and the feeling must go back to the primary ingredients of humanity. Before the existence of constitutions,-before the proper developement of law and right, the sovereigns and rulers were their own lawgivers in a world not yet subjected to order; and the fullest scope was thus given to the dominion of will for good and for bad purposes. Hereditary rule, therefore, exhibited more striking instances of sudden changes of fortune than the later times of political equality. In these respects the high rank of the principal characters was essential, or at least favourable to tragic representation, and not because, according to the idea of some moderns, those only who can occasion the happiness

or misery of numbers are sufficiently important to interest us in their behalf, nor because internal elevation of sentiment must be clothed with external dignity, to claim our honour and admiration. The Greek tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without any reference to the condition of the people; they show us the man in the king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight in their purple mantles, they allow us to look through their vain splendour, into a bosom torn and harrowed up by passions. That the regal pomp was not so necessary as the heroic costume is evident, not only from the practice of the ancients, but from the tragedies of the moderns having a reference to the throne, produced under different circumstances, namely the existence of monarchical government. They dare not draw from existing reality, for nothing is less suitable for tragedy than a court, and a court life. Where they do not therefore paint an ideal kingdom with distant manners, they fall into stiffness and formality, which are much more destructive to freedom and boldness of character, and to deep pathos, than the narrow circle of private life.

A few mythological fables only seem originally marked out for tragedy: such, for example, as the long-continued alternation of aggressions, vengeance, and maledictions, which we witness in the house of Atreus. When we examine the names of the pieces which are lost, we have great difficulty in conceiving how the mythological fables on which they are founded, as they are known to us, could afford sufficient materials for the developement of an entire tragedy. It is true, the poets, in the various relations of the same story, had a great amplitude of selection; and this very variety justified them in going still farther, and making considerable alterations in the circumstances of an event, so that the inventions added to one piece sometimes contradict the accounts given by the same poet in another. We are, however, principally to ascribe the productiveness of mythology, for the tragic art, to the principle which we observe so powerful throughout the whole historical range of Grecian cultivation; namely, that the power which preponderated for the time assimilated everything to itself. As the heroic fables, in all their deviations, were easily developed into the tranquil fulness and light variety of epic poetry, they were afterwards adapted to the object which the tragedians proposed to accomplish, by earnestness, energy, and compression; and what in this change of destination appeared inapplicable to tragedy still afforded materials for a sort of half sportive, though ideal representation, in the subordinate walk of the satirical drama.

I shall be forgiven, I hope, if I attempt to illustrate the above

reflections on the essence of the ancient tragedy, by a comparison borrowed from the plastic arts, which will, I trust, be found somewhat more than a mere fanciful allusion.

The Homeric epic is, in poetry, what half-raised workmanship is in sculpture, and tragedy the distinctly separated group.

The poem of Homer sprung from the soil of the traditionary tale, is not yet purified from it, as the figures of a bas-relief are borne by a back-ground which is foreign to them. These figures appear depressed, and in the epic poem all is painted as past and remote. In the bas-relief they are generally thrown into profile, and in the epic characterized in the most artless manner: they are, in the former, not properly grouped, but follow one another; and the Homeric heroes, in like manner, advance singly in succession before us. It has been remarked that the Iliad is not definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede and to follow. The bas-relief is equally boundless, and may be continued ad infinitum, either from before or behind, on which account the ancients preferred the selection of those objects for it, which admitted of an indefinite extension, as the trains at sacrifices, dances, and rows of combatants, &c. Hence they also exhibited bas-reliefs on round surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where the two ends are withdrawn from our sight by the curvature, and where, on our advancing, one object appears as another disappears. The reading of the Homeric poetry very much resembles such a circumgiration, as the present object alone arrests our attention, while that which precedes and follows is allowed to disappear.

But in the distinctly formed group, as in tragedy, sculpture and poetry bring before our eyes an independent and definite whole. To separate it from natural reality, the former places it on a base, as on an ideal ground. It also removes as much as possible all foreign and accidental accessaries, that the eye may wholly rest on the essential objects, the figures themselves. These figures are wrought into the most complete rounding, yet they refuse the illusion of colours, and announce by the purity and uniformity of the mass of which they are constructed, a creation not endowed with perishable life, but of a higher and more elevated character.

Beauty is the object of sculpture, and repose is most advantageous for the display of beauty. Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the figure. But a number of figures can only be connected together and grouped by one action. The group represents beauty in motion, and the object of it is to combine both in the highest degree. This can only be effected when the artist finds means, in the most violent bodily or mental anguish, to

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LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE.

moderate the expression by manly resistance, calm grandeur, or inherent sweetness, in such a manner that, with the most moving truth, the features of beauty shall yet in nowise be disfigured. The observation of Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable. He says that beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of expression, and in this sense the groups of Niobe and Laocoön are master-pieces; the one in the sublime and serious, the other in the learned and ornamental style.

The comparison with ancient tragedy is the more apposite here, as we know that both Eschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was also the author of a Laocoön. In Laocoon the conflicting sufferings and anguish of the body, and the resistance of the soul, are balanced with the most wonderful equilibrium. The children calling for help, tender objects of our compassion, and not of our admiration, draw us back to the appearance of the father, who seems to turn his eyes in vain to the gods. The convolving serpents exhibit to us the inevitable destiny which unites together the characters in so dreadful a manner. And yet the beauty of proportion, the delightful flow of the attitude, are not lost in this violent struggle; and a representation the most frightful to the senses is yet treated with a degree of moderation, while a mild breath of sweetness is diffused over the whole.

In the group of Niobe there is also the most perfect mixture of terror and pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and the mouth half open in supplication, seem to accuse the invisible wrath of Heaven. The daughter, clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her mother, in her infantine innocence can have no other fear than for herself: the innate impulse of self-preservation was never represented in a manner more tender and affecting. Can there on the other hand be exhibited to the senses a more beautiful image of self-devoting heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body forwards, that if possible she may alone receive the destructive bolt? Pride and repugnance are melted down in the most ardent maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features are the less disfigured by pain, as from the quick repetition of the shocks she appears, as in the fable, to have become insensible and motionless. But before this figure, twice transformed into stone, and yet so inimitably animated,-before this line of demarcation of all human suffering, the most callous beholder is dissolved in tears.

In all the agitation produced by the sight of these groups, there is still somewhat in them which invites us to composed contemplation; and in the same manner, the tragedy of the ancients leads us, even in the course of the representation, to the most elevated reflections on our existence, and those mysteries in our destiny which can never wholly be explained.

LECTURE IV.

Progress of the tragic art among the Greeks-Their different styles-Eschylus -Connexion in a trilogy of Eschylus-His remaining works-Life and poetical character of Sophocles-Character of his different tragedies.

Or the inexhaustible stores possessed by the Greeks in the department of tragedy, which the public competition at the Athenian festivals called into being, as the rival poets always contended for a prize, very little indeed has come down to us. We only possess works of three of their numerous tragedians, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and these in no proportion to the number of their compositions. The three authors in question were selected by the Alexandrian critics as the foundation for the study of ancient Grecian literature, not because they alone were deserving of estimation, but because they afforded the best illustration of the various styles of tragedy. Of each of the two oldest poets, we have seven remaining pieces; in these however we have, according to the testimony of the ancients, several of their most distinguished productions. Of Euripides we have a much greater number, and we might well exchange many of them for other works which are now lost; for example, the satirical dramas of Achæus, Eschylus, and Sophocles, several pieces of Phrynichus for the sake of comparison with Eschylus, or of Agathon, whom Plato describes as effeminate, but sweet and affecting, and who was a contemporary of Euripides though somewhat younger.

We leave to antiquarians the car of the strolling Thespis, the competition for a he-goat, from which the name of tragedy was derived, the visages of the first improvisatoré actors smeared over with lees, that they may ascertain the rude beginnings from which Eschylus, by one gigantic stride, gave that dignified character to tragedy under which it appears in his works, and shall proceed immediately to the consideration of the poets themselves.

The tragic style (giving to the word style the sense which it receives in the plastic arts, and not the exclusive signification in writing) of Eschylus is grand, severe, and not unfrequently hard: in the style of Sophocles we observe the most complete proportion and harmonious sweetness: the style of Euripides is soft and luxuriant; extravagant in his easy fulness, he sacrifices the general effect to brilliant passages. From the analogy which the undisturbed developement of the fine arts among the Greeks