pressed. The chorus, therefore, was the monitor of the people, as it was the friend and counsellor of the unfortunate personages who figured in the drama, with whom, by means of the Coryphæus, or leader of the chorus, which consisted usually of fifteen persons, it sustained occasionally a part in the dialogue. The songs of the chorus, interposed between those parts of the tragedy which comprised the dialogue, were accompanied with dancing and music: they retained many of the forms of the old language of Greece, and have ever been admired as the finest of poetic compositions, though it is impossible for us to appreciate the full extent of their excellence. As Æschylus was the earliest of the regular Tragedians, he had less of dialogue, and the chorus is more employed in his productions, than in those of Sophocles and Euripides. In the Agamemnon, the chorus, which is composed of aged Argives, deliver many pious and benevolent sentiments in language of great elevation and beauty. They denounce irreverence and impiety, and praise the attributes and the retributions of Divine justice. They descant on the instability of fortune, and aim to fortify the mind against the seductions of prosperity. They recount the crimes of the guilty, and prepare the minds of their auditors for the catastrophe, whether it involve the ruin of the criminal, as denounced against Clytemnestra, or the overthrow of the brave and virtuous, as in the case of Agamemnon. On moral distinctions they wanted a clearer light; and, in the absence of better knowledge, their darkened minds bow to the doctrine of fate. The fertility of genius which distinguished the Tragic poets of Athens, and the demands which were made upon their resources by the people, either for instruction, or amusement, or both, may be estimated from the number of their productions. Æschylus was the author of seventy-five tragedies. Of these, only seven have survived the barbarian ravages which have destroyed so many of the works of human genius. The Agamemnon is one of these, and would alone procure for its author the highest reputation. In its transmission to modern times, it has been less fortunate than its companions, and has sustained many serious injuries, which there can now be but little hope of seeing fully repaired. Conjectural emendations are considered as lawful in the pages of a classic author, and their felicity in many instances have given them authority ; but a conjectural reading introduced into the text, has often served no better purpose than to afford a subsequent critic an opportunity of displaying his erudition, by substituting one corruption for another. În respect to the Agamemnon, it is to be regretted that the legitimate means of correction are so scanty, few manuscripts of this tragedy being in existence. The recent edition of Dr. Blomfield has supplied a desideratum, and exhibits a text which is the result of great learning laboriously and tastefully applied, and which the admirers of Æschylus will gratefully receive. Nor would it be justice to another modern editor of this poet, to omit the name of Dr. Butler, who has done so much and so well for his author. But, with all the aids of critical emendation that have been employed, the Agamemnon is still in some places inexplicable. There are passages, the sense of which we conjecture rather than understand; and in some others, no penetration or skill is available to dissipate the obscurities of the text. Mr. Boyd considers it as the most difficult piece of Greek now extant. Be this as it may, the Agamemnon stands in need of all the elucidation which critics and commentators can impart. We are glad to notice Mr. Symmons's commendation of Schutz, to whom the readers of Æschylus are under great obligations, though his merits have not always been sufficiently appreciated by English scholars. The Agamemnon, in Potter's opinion, excels any thing that remains to us of the Grecian drama. Mr. Boyd describes it as the noblest tragedy of the sublimest poet,'— the most • sublime production of the human intellect, the loftiest triumph • of the genius of man.' An outline of a composition to which such praise has been awarded, may be gratifying to some of our readers, and we shall therefore copy so much of the Analysis of this Tragedy from Schlegel's Lectures, which Mr. Symmons has subjoined to his preface, as may be sufficient to shew the design. Mr. Boyd has prefixed no argument to his version of the tragedy, conceiving this method to be both useless and injudicious : his observations, however, at all events do not apply to us Reviewers. • The piece commences with the speech of a watchman, who supplicates the gods for a release from his toils ; as for ten long years he has been exposed to the cold dews of night, has witnessed the various changes of the stars, and looked in vain for the expected signal ; the blazing fire which was to announce at Mycenæ the capture of Troy; at the same time he laments in secret the internal ruin of the royal house. At this moment he sees the blaze of the long-wished for fires, and hastens to announce it to his mistress, Clytemnestra. A chorus of aged persons appear, and in their songs they trace back the Trojan war, throughout all its eventful changes of fortune, from its first origin, and recount all the prophecies relating to it, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia, at the expense of which the voyage of the Greeks was purchased. Clytemnestra declares the joyful cause of the sacrifice which she orders, and the herald, Talthybius, immedi : а a ately makes his appearance, who, as an eye witness, announces the fate of the conquered and plundered city, consigned as a prey to the flames, the joy of the victors and the glory of their leader. He displays with reluctance, as if unwilling to shade the brilliancy of his picture, the subsequent misfortunes of the Greeks, their dispersion, and the shipwreck suffered by many of them-an immediate symptom of the wrath of the gods. Agamemnon now comes, borne in a sort of triumphal procession; and, seated in another car, laden with booty, follows Cassandra, his prisoner of war and mistress, according to the privilege of the heroes of those days. Clytemnestra greets him with hypocritical joy and veneration ; she orders her slaves to cover the ground with the most costly embroideries of purple, that it might not be touched by the feet of the conqueror. Agamemnon, with sage moderation, refuses to receive an honour due only to the gods; at last yields to her invitations, and enters the house. The chorus then begins to utter dark forebodings. Clytemnestra returns to allure Cassandra to her destruction by the art of soft persuasion. The latter remains dumb and motionless ; but the queen is hardly gone, when seized with a prophetic rage, she breaks out into the most perplexing lamentations; afterwards unveils her prophecies more distinctly to the chorus : she sees in her mind all the enormities which have been perpetrated in that house,--the repast of Thyestes which the sun refused to look on: the shadows of the dilacerated children, appear to her on the battlements of the palace. She also sees the death prepared for her master; and, although horror-struck at the atrocious spectacle, as if seized with an overpowering fury, she rushes into the house to meet her inevitable death: we then hear bebind the scenes the sighs of the dying. Agamemnon. The palace opens : Clytemnestra stands beside the body of her king and lius, band-an undaunted criminal, who not only confesses the deed, but boasts of it as a just requital for Agamemnon's ambitious sacrifice of Iphigenia. The jealousy towards Cassandra, and the criminal union with the unworthy Ægisthus, which is first disclosed after the completion of the murder, towards the conclusion of the piece, are motives which she throws entirely into the back-ground, and hardly touches on : this was necessary to preserve the dignity of the subject.' From this outline it will be perceived, that the interest of the Agamemnon does not consist in the artful complexity of the fable. We have no series of incidents following and rising out of each other, to astonish and perplex us, and to sustain our fearful curiosity, till the development of the mysterious circumstances which have alternately awakened our hopes and fears, as in the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, that perfect model of the construction of tragic fable. In the Agamemnon, the fall of the conqueror of Troy is the catastrophe of the drama ; but the poet has not employed his genius to present us with an intricate combination of agents and instruments for prose, I but esped its accomplishment. He has skilfully contrived to prepare us for the event, by ambiguous indications and prophetic announcements, and trusts for the most powerful impressions which he intends to raise, to the strength which he puts forth in the delineation of his characters. Of the two new versions of the Agamemnon now before us, one is in prose, and one in the garb of poetry. Mr. Boyd publishes his version in prose, because he is persuaded of the impracticability of accomplishing a poetical version. • If it should be asked,' he says, 'why I have translated in answer that I am sure I could not, and I believe the cleverest man could not, make a good translation of it in verse. To produce a literal poetic version of any Latin or Greek poet, and at the same time to preserve its elegance and spirit, would, I imagine, be impossible in any case, ally in the case of a Choral Ode.' Preface, p. iv. That a good translation of a Greek tragedy into English verse is not impracticable, is clearly the opinion of Mr. Symmons, since he has published this poetic version of the Agamemnon, professedly for the purpose of exhibiting the genuine sense of the poet. To Potter he concedes but little praise. In favour of Potter's Æschylus, the public are described by Mr. Symmons as being inclined to make an exception from the condemnation which it has passed upon his versions of Sophocles and Euripides,--an exception which appears to him as • unfounded, or as arising rather out of the nature of the ori'ginal, the beauties of which were of too transcendent a na• ture to be wholly obscured, than from any great merit in the • translator.' That Potter has merit, and great merit too, as a translator, we shall continue to believe, notwithstanding this decision. He was the first translator of Æschylus, and had fewer critical aids to direct and assist him in the study of his author, than his successors have had. But, independently of this consideration, his version is an honourable monument of his learning and his taste; it is elegant, and if it fails, as unquestionably it sometimes does, in point of correctness and fidelity, its faults are neither so numerous nor so considerable as to warrant a sentence so sweeping in its condemnation. In support of his opinion, that a correct poetic version of the Agamemnon is impossible, Mr. Boyd selects three examples from Potter, in which, though he finds beautiful verses, he does not recognize Æschylus. The first of these is the following: • Fair from the spangled dew-drops, that adorn a Now all that this example proves, is, that Potter could sometimes mistake the sense of his author. He has followed Pauw in construing a word literally, instead of reading it metaphorically. Mr. Boyd, however, does not cite this and his other examples for the purpose of depreciating Potter, but only to shew how difficult it is for a man to adhere to the original when he is translating a Greek ode into English verse. The difficulty no scholar will dispute, but these instances are very insufficient proofs of the impracticability of rendering the poetry of Æschylus into English verse. The precise sense of the original may be conveyed with more exactness in a prose version, than in a poetical one ; but it does not follow, that the former will give the English reader a clearer idea of the manner and the spirit of Æschylus, than could be afforded by the very best poetical version. Mr. Boyd has chosen his own mode of translation; and though we do not perceive the force of his arguments in recommendation of its exclusive propriety, we cannot but applaud the fidelity and the elegance of his version. He is skilled in the language of his Author, and manifests an intimate acquaintance with the powers of his own, from which his nice perception and correct taste have enabled him to select the most appropriate expressions. It would not be difficult to point out faults in his version; but, altogether, it is a translation of great merit. Mr. Symmons's version is professedly an attempt to supersede Potter's : • it is a more faithful transcript, and the nu*merous errors, totally subversive of the sense, to be met with * in Potter, are avoided here. It would not be difficult to select instances in which the sense of the Poet is not very correctly elicited by the present Translator, and in which the criticism by which he endeavours to establish his readings is not conclusive; but we admit that the version is, in respect to accuracy, an improvement on Potter's. For other qualifications, Mr. Symmons must take less credit, and our commendation must be given with more reserve. That he appreciates the excellencies of his author, and has felt the force of his powerful genius, the spirit which pervades his translation sufficiently attests. Our objections apply to errors of judgement and defects in taste, of which we discern too many proofs in the volume before us. Mr. Symmons appears to us to have studied brilliancy of effect in producing his version, rather than to have aimed at the transfusion of his author's meaning into adequate expressions or perspicuous and correct language. His great fault is, a want of simplicity. He is diffuse to excess, and expands the sentiments of his original, till they run into tautology. In the choruses, he is often vigorous and |