Besides, we are still far from having effected all that perhaps might be achieved; I know not yet of any altogether commendable translation of a Greek tragedian. But suppose the translation were ever so perfect, the discrepancy between the original and the copy as slight as possible, still the reader, from want of acquaintance with the other works of the Greeks, is disturbed by the foreignness of the subject-matter, the national peculiarities, and the numberless allusions which it requires some scholarship to apprehend; and thus distracted by the details he cannot arrive at a pure impression of the work as a whole. So long as there are difficulties to contend with, there can be no true enjoyment of a work of art. To feel the ancients in their own way, one needs to have become naturalized and domesticated among them, to have, as it were, breathed Grecian

air.

What then is the best means of winning one's way into the spirit of the Greeks, without acquaintance with their language? I say it without hesitation: the study of the antiques, which, if not in the originals, at least in the casts, now common, are in some degree accessible to all. The archetypes

of the human form need no commentator; their sublime meaning is imperishable, and cannot fail of being recognized through all vicissitudes of times, and in every region under heaven, wherever there exists a noble race of mankind akin to the Grecian race (as the Europeans unquestionably are); in short, wherever unkind nature has not depressed the human features too much below the pure standard, so that, habituated to their own deformity, men have become unsusceptible to genuine beauty of person. Concerning the unattainable excellence of the antiques, in the few extant remains of the first rank, there is but one voice in all civilized Europe; if ever it was not recognized, it was in times when the modern arts of design had sunk to the lowest grade of mannerism. All intelligent artists, nay all men of feeling, bow with entranced veneration to the master-works of ancient sculpture.

The best key to open to us into this sanctuary of the beautiful, in a way of profound abstracted contemplation, is our immortal Winkelmann's History of Art. In the details, indeed, it leaves much to be desired, nay, is full of material errors; but the inmost spirit of Grecian art none ever fathomed

so deeply. Winkelmann had quite transformed himself into an ancient, and did but seem to live in his own century, untouched by its influences.

His work treats proximately only of the arts of sculpture and painting, nevertheless it contains important hints concerning the other branches of Grecian culture, and is excellently adapted to serve as an introduction to the understanding of its poetry also. Especially dramatic poetry; for as this was destined for ocular exhibition to spectators, whose eye undoubtedly exacted the highest requisitions even of the stage, there cannot be a better means of appreciating the entire dignity of the tragic spectacles, and of theatrically realizing them in our own conceptions, than to keep these forms of gods and heroes ever present to the fancy. It may sound strangely at present, but I hope to set the assertion in a clearer light in the sequel -it is in contemplating the groups of the Niobe and Laocoon that we first learn to understand the tragedies of Sophocles.

We still want a work in which the entire poetic, artistic, scientific, and social culture of the Greeks, considered as a great harmonious whole, a very artist-work of nature, pervaded by a wondrous symmetry of the parts, should be delineated and traced through its connected development in the same spirit as Winkelmann has brought to the contemplation of one of its aspects. An attempt has indeed been made in a popular book which is in everybody's hands, I mean "The Travels of Anacharsis the Younger." This book is estimable in point of scholarship, and may be very useful to diffuse a knowledge of antiquities; but, not to censure the failure in its garb, it bespeaks more good-will to do justice to the Greeks, than competency to penetrate into their spirit. In this respect, many of its statements are drawn from the mere surface of things, nay, garbled to fall in with modern notions. These are not the travels of a young Scythian, but of an old Parisian.

As before said, it is in these works of art that the preeminency of the Greeks is most incontestably recognized. Enthusiasm for their literature prevails most in England and Germany, in which countries, be it observed, the study of the Greek language has been most zealously pursued. It is strange that the French critics, although they have been most concerned in erecting the extant remains of Grecian criticism,

Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, &c. into the one only and absolute rule of taste, distinguish themselves above all others in speaking disparagingly of the poetical compositions of the Greeks; and of their dramatic literature most especially. Do but look into that much-read book, Laharpe's Cours de Littérature. On the French Theatre it contains many fine remarks; but whoever should think to learn the Greeks from it would be ill-advised: its author was as deficient in wellgrounded acquaintance with them, as in the sense and feeling for the study. Voltaire, likewise, often speaks in a tone of decision about the Greek Drama that does not become him; he extols or depreciates, just as it comes into his head, and according to his purpose at the moment, of influencing the opinion of the public this way or that. So I remember to have read a cursory critique of Metastasio's upon the Greek tragedies, in which he takes these authors to task like schoolboys. Racine is much more modest, and has not sinned in this respect, simply because he was the best acquainted of them all with the Greeks. The mainsprings of these unfriendly critiques may be easily divined. National and personal vanity has a hand in the matter: the authors want to do better things than the ancients, and embolden themselves to come forward with suchlike assertions, because the works of the dramatic poets have come down to us in a dead language, accessible only to scholars, and without the living accompaniment of recitation, music, scenery, costume, an acting at once ideal and truly plastic; all which were unquestionably so harmonized together on the Attic stage, and in a manner so worthy of the compositions themselves, that could all this be now reproduced to eye and ear, these premature cavillings of an affected cleverness would be struck dumb. In respect of the theatre, they talk about "the infancy" of the art: because these poets lived some two thousand years before us, they conceit that we must have made great progress since. With this taunt poor schylus especially is dismissed. Now really if this be the infancy of the Drama, it was the infancy of a Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle.

While I protest against that superstitious regard for the authority of the ancients, which apprehends their excellence only as frigid faultlessness, and erects them into models in

such a way as to bar all possibility of further progress, and so constrain us to abandon the practice of art as altogether fruitless, I nevertheless do cherish an enthusiastic veneration for the Greeks as a people by nature gifted above all others with the most finished genius for art; in the consciousness of which they themselves called all other nations of their acquaintance barbarians, as compared with themselves, and were in some sort justified in so doing. I would fain not be like certain voyagers, who on their return from a country to which their readers cannot travel after them, give exaggerated descriptions, relate sheer wonders, and so hazard their character for veracity. Rather will I endeavour to characterize them according to truth, as oft-repeated study has led me to discover the same, and without suppression of their defects; but especially to realize the Grecian stage and scenes to the eyes of my audience.

We shall treat first of the Tragedy of the Greeks, then of the Elder Comedy, and lastly of the Newer Comedy which thence resulted.

All these departments had in common the same theatrical arrangements; we must therefore give a cursory glance at the theatre, its architecture and decoration, that we may be enabled to form a clear conception of the mode of performance.

The stage art of the Greeks had likewise many peculiarities, common to both departments of the Drama; for example, the use of masks, though the tragic and comic were otherwise quite contrasted, the former being ideal, the latter, in the Elder Comedy at least, in the nature of caricature.

Under the head of Tragedy, we shall first speak of that which forms its generic distinction among the ancients; the ideal nature of its representation, the idea of destiny which predominates in it, and the chorus; lastly, of mythology as the materials of tragic poetry. Then we shall characterize, in the three extant tragedians, the different styles; that is to say, necessary and essential epochs in the history of tragic art.

THIRD LECTURE.

Structure and arrangements of the Greek Theatre and Stage. Their theatrical Art. Use of Masks. Mistaken comparison of the ancient Tragedy with the modern Opera. The Lyric element of Tragedy. Essential nature of the Greek Tragedy. Its characters, ideal. Destiny, how to be understood. Source of the pleasure derived from Tragic representations. The Chorus, its meaning and purpose. Mythology, the

materials of Greek Tragedy. Comparison with Sculpture.

THE term Theatre, naturally leads us to think of our own play-houses; yet nothing can be more distinct from our theatre in its entire structure than that of the Greeks was. And if we read the Greek plays thinking of a stage and scenes like our own, this alone will be sufficient to set these compositions altogether in a false light, and warp our conceptions of the entire proceeding.

The principal authority on the subject of the Ancient Theatre, in accuracy of detail, is Vitruvius, who likewise clearly marks the important distinctions there were between the Greek and Roman theatres. But these and other statements of the ancients have been somewhat twisted out of shape by architects unacquainted with the ancient dramatists'; and philologists, in their turn, have blundered sadly for want of a knowledge of architecture. The ancient dramatists, therefore, still greatly desiderate that kind of illustration which treats of scenic arrangements. In some tragedies I think I have a tolerably clear conception of the matter; others present difficulties of no easy solution: but of all perplexities the greatest is to imagine how Aristophanes was acted; that witty poet seems to have brought his strange fancies before the eyes of the spectators in a manner alike adventurous and startling. Even Barthelemy's description of the Greek stage is not a little confused, and his annexed ground-plan materially incorrect; where he attempts to describe the acting of a play, as the Antigone and the Ajax, he goes completely astray. For this reason

1. A remarkable instance is the "Ancient Theatre" of Palladio at Vicenza. Herculaneum, it is true, was not then discovered, and it is difficult to understand the ruins of the ancient theatres without having seen a complete one.