drama must belong to one man, that he may pass for its author. Dramatic literature affords numerous examples of plays composed by several persons in common. It is well known that Euripides, in the execution of his pieces, availed himself of the assistance of Kephisophon, a learned servant; and he perhaps also consulted with him respecting his plots. It appears certain however that in Athens there had then been formed dramatic schools of art, of such a character as usually arise when poetical talents are called into exercise by public competition, and with great fulness and preparation: schools of art which contain scholars of such excellence and of such kindred genius, that the master may confide a part of the execution, and even the plan, to them, and yet allow the whole to pass under his name without any injury to his fame. Such were the schools of painting of the sixteenth century, and every one knows what a remarkable degree of critical acumen is necessary to discover in many of Raphael's pictures how much of them properly belongs to himself. Sophocles had educated his son Jophon to the tragic art, and he could easily therefore receive assistance from him in the execution of his pieces, especially as it was necessary that the tragedies that were to compete for the prize should be ready and got by heart by a certain day: he might also on the other hand execute occasional passages for the works originally planned by the son; and the pieces of this description, in which the hand of the master was perceivable, would be naturally attributed to the more celebrated name.

LECTURE V.

Euripides-His merits and defects Decline of tragic poetry through himComparison between the Choephora of Eschylus, the Electra of Sophocles, and that of Euripides-Character of the remaining works of the latter-The satirical drama-Alexandrian tragic poets.

WHEN We consider Euripides by himself, without any comparison with his predecessors, when we take a separate view of some of his better pieces, and detached scenes throughout the others, we cannot refuse to him an extraordinary degree of praise. But on the other hand when we place him in connexion with the history of art, when we consider his pieces as a whole, and reflect on the object which he appears in general to have had in view in all the works which have come down to us, we are compelled to bestow severe censure on him on various accounts. Of few writers may both good and evil be said with so much truth. He was a man of infinite ingenuity, and practised in the greatest variety of mental arts; but neither the sublime seriousness of mind, nor the severe wisdom, which we revere in Eschylus and Sophocles, regulated in him a luxuriant fulness of the most splendid and amiable qualities. His constant aim is to please by whatever means: and hence he is so very unequal to himself: frequently he has passages of the most overpowering beauty, and at other times he sinks into the most downright common-place. With all his errors he possesses an admirable ease and lightness, and a certain insinuating power which it is difficult to withstand.

These preliminary observations I have judged necessary, as it might otherwise be objected to me that I am at variance with myself, having a short time ago, in a small French treatise, endeavoured to show the superiority of a piece of Euripides, compared with an imitation of Racine. There I fixed my attention. on a detached drama, and that one of the best of the works of this poet; but here I consider everything from the most general points. of view, and with a reference to the highest demands of art, and must therefore justify my enthusiasm for ancient tragedy by a keen examination into the traces of its degeneracy and decline, that my predilection may not appear blind and extravagant.

We may compare a perfection in art and poetry to the summit of a steep mountain, where a load forced up with labour cannot long remain, but immediately rolls down the other side. It descends according to the laws of gravity with quickness and ease, and is seen with satisfaction; for the mass follows its natural in

clination, while the laborious ascent is in some degree a painful spectacle. Hence it happens, for example, that the paintings of periods during which art was on the decline are much more pleasing to the unlearned eye, than those which preceded the period of its perfection. The genuine connoisseur, on the other hand, will rank the pictures of a Zuccheri and others, who gave the tone when the great schools of the sixteenth century degenerated into empty and superficial mannerism, far below the works of a Mantegna, Perugino, and their contemporaries, in real and essential worth. Or let us suppose the highest perfection of art a focus: at an equal distance on the nearest and farthest side, the collected rays occupy the same space, but on this side they labour \together in producing one common effect; whereas on the other they fly asunder, till at last they are altogether lost.

We have besides a particular reason for censuring without reserve the errors of this poet: namely, that our age is infected with the same vices with those which procured for Euripides so much favour, if not real respect, from his contemporaries. In our times we have seen a number of plays which, though in substance and form far below those of Euripides, bear yet in so far a resemblance to them, that they seduce and corrupt the feelings by means of effeminate, and sometimes even tender, emotions, while their general tendency is to produce a true moral licentiousness. What I shall say on this subject will not, for the most part, possess even novelty. Although the moderns have not unfrequently preferred Euripides to his two predecessors, and have unquestionably read, admired, and imitated him much more: whether attracted by the greater affinity of views and sentiments, or led astray by an opinion of Aristotle which they have not understood; it so happens however that many of the ancients, some of them even the contemporaries of Euripides, were of the same opinion with myself. In Anacharsis we find this mixture of praise and censure at least alluded to, though the author softens everything for the sake of his object of showing the Grecian productions of every description in the most advantageous light.

We possess some cutting sayings of Sophocles respecting Euripides, though he was so far from being actuated by anything like the jealousy of authorship, that he mourned his death, and, in a piece which was shortly after exhibited, refused to his actors the ornament of the floral crown. I consider myself warranted in viewing the accusation of Plato against the tragic poets, that they gave men too much up to the dominion of the passions, and rendered them effeminate by putting extravagant lamentations in the mouths of their heroes, as directed against Euripides alone; for with respect to his predecessors the injustice of them would

have been universally evident. The derisory attacks of Aristophanes are well known, though not sufficiently understood and appreciated. Aristotle bestows on him many a severe censure, and when he calls Euripides the most tragic of poets, he by no means ascribes to him the greatest perfection in the tragic art in general, but merely alludes to the effect which is produced by unfortunate catastrophes; for he immediately adds: "although he does not regulate other things well." The Scholiast of Euripides, too, contains many a short and forcible criticism on particular pieces, among which are perhaps preserved several of the opinions of the Alexandrian critics, those critics of whom Aristarchus, one of the number, from his judgment and acuteness, has had his name handed down to posterity, as a by-word for a literary judge.

In Euripides we no longer find the essence of the ancient tragedy in its pure and unmixed state; its characteristical features are already in part extinguished. We have already placed this essence in the prevailing idea of destiny, in the ideality of the composition, and in the signification of the chorus.

Euripides inherited, it is true, the idea of destiny from his predecessors, and his belief of it was sharpened by the tragic practice; but yet in him fate is seldom the invisible spirit of the whole composition, the radical thought of the tragic world. We have seen that this idea may be exhibited under severer or milder aspects; that the obscure terror of destiny may, in the connexion of a whole trilogy, be cleared up to the signification of a wise and beneficent providence. Euripides however has drawn it down from the region of the infinite; and inevitable necessity not unfrequently degenerates in him into the caprice of accident. He can no longer therefore give it its proper and peculiar direction, namely, by contrast and opposition, to elevate the moral liberty of man. How few of his pieces turn on the constant struggle with the decrees of fate, or even on a heroic subjection to them! His characters generally suffer because they must, and not because they will.

The mutual subordination of character and passion to ideal elevation, which we find observed in the same order in Sophocles, and in the plastic artists of the Greeks, Euripides has completely reversed. Passion is the principal object with him; his next care is for character, and when these endeavours leave him still any remaining room, he occasionally seeks to connect grandeur and dignity with the more frequent display of amiable attractions.

It has been already admitted that the persons in tragedy ought not to be all equally exempt from error, as there would then be no opposition among them, and consequently no room for a plot. But Euripides has, as Aristotle observes, frequently painted his

characters in black colours without any necessity, as for example, his Menelaus in Orestes. He was warranted by the traditions sanctioned by popular belief, in attributing great crimes to many of the old heroes, but he invented besides many base and paltry traits for them of his own free inclination. It was by no means the object of Euripides to represent the race of heroes as towering above the men of his own age by their gigantic stature; he rather endeavours to fill up, or to build over, the chasm between his contemporaries and that wonderful world of old, and to surprise the gods and heroes in their undress, a mode of observation, it is usually said, of which no greatness can stand the test. He introduces his spectators to a sort of familiar acquaintance with them; he does not draw the supernatural and fabulous into the circle of humanity (which we praised in Sophocles,) but within the limits of imperfect individuality. This is the mean- ̈ ing of Sophocles, when he said that he himself painted men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they actually were. Not that his own persons are always represented as models of irreproachable behaviour; his opinion referred merely to ideal elevation and sweetness in character and manners. It seems as if Euripides was always well pleased to be enabled to say to his spectators, See! those beings were men, had exactly the same weaknesses, and acted from the same motives as yourselves, and even the lowest among you. He paints therefore with particular love and complacency the defects and moral failings of his characters, and he even allows them to make a disclosure of them in naive self-confessions. They are frequently not merely undignified, but they even boast of their imperfections.

The chorus is for the most part in him an unessential ornament: its songs are frequently wholly episodical, without any reference to the action, and more distinguished for brilliancy than for sublimity and true inspiration." We must consider the chorus," says Aristotle, "as one of the actors, and as a part of the whole; it must enter into the action: not as in Euripides, but as Sophocles has done." The ancient comic writers enjoyed the privilege of allowing the chorus occasionally to address the spectators in its own name; this was called a parabasis, and, as I shall afterwards show, was suitable to the spirit of comedy. Although the practice is by no means tragical, it was however, according to the testimony of Julius Pollux, frequently adopted by Euripides in his dramas, who so far forgot himself on some of those occasions, that, in the Danaidæ for instance, the chorus, which consisted of females, made use of grammatical inflexions which belonged only to the male sex.

This poet has thus at the same time destroyed the internal es