passions would awaken in real life:-but the fear of impending evil and vindictive retribution, and pity for suffering to be inflicted or incurred, are also carried farther on the theatre than in real life. Thus the consequences of strong passions are made artificially visible during their very prevalence. The rival-sympathies are called into lively action, pending a wilder degree of fury than such as is usually compatible with any foresight or circumspection; and the dramatic spectator learns, in consequence, to bear the simultaneous presence of contending strong emotions. This exercise of fear and pity, during the very whirlwind of our feelings, progressively enables us to overcome that tendency to an exclusive partial one-side view of a case, which commonly attends orgasm of excitement. Hence self-control is acquired at the theatre; and the frequenter of plays will insensibly attain a power of contemplating the different probable consequences of conduct, under a degree of internal passion which would operate on untutored persons like a blind impulse, like an over-ruling necessity. Eschylus paints every passion in the state in which it would exist among men untaught by the theatre. The earliest dramatist had observed mankind in that condition: but, already, in the characters of Sophocles, the emotions painted have lost something of their native unity and vehemence; they betray a mixture of extrinsic regards; they have been purged of their excesses by fear and pity.

A little unintelligible mysticism occurs in this lecture, chiefly derived from studying the writings of Kant; a philosopher who is valuable to the metaphysician for his originality, but is extensively subversive of good taste in writing by the neoteric jargon of scholastic terms which he introduced.

Lecture iv. disserts well on Eschylus; and the author's remarks on the trilogy deserve selection:

⚫ Among the remaining pieces of Æschylus, we have what is highly deserving of our attention, a complete trilogy. The antiquarian account of trilogies is this, that in the more early times the poet did not contend for the prize with a single piece, but with three, which however were not always connected together by their contents, and that a fourth satirical drama was also attached to them. All these were successively represented in one day. The idea which we must form of the trilogy in relation to the tragic art is this: a tragedy cannot be indefinitely lengthened and continued, like the Homeric epic poem for example, to which whole rhapsodies have been appended; for this is too independent and complete with itself. Notwithstanding this circumstance, however, several tragedies may be connected together by means of a common destiny running throughout all their actions in one great cycle. Hence the fixing on the number three admits of a satisfactory explanation. It is the thesis, the antithesis, and the connection. The advantage of this conjunction was that, in the consideration of the connected fables, a more ample degree of gratification was derived than could possibly be obtained from a single The objects of the three tragedies might be separated by a wide interval of time, or follow close upon one another.

action.

The three pieces of the trilogy of Eschylus are Agamemnon, the Choephora or Electra, and the Eumenides or Furies. The object of the first is the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, on his return from Troy. In the second, Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother: facto pius et sceleratus eodem. This deed, although perpetrated from the most powerful motives, is repugnant however to natural and moral order. Orestes as a prince was, it is true, entitled to exercise justice even on the members of his own family; but he was under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but, although Clytemnestra bas deserved death, the blood of his mother still rises up in judgment against him. This is represented in the Eumenides in the form of a contention among the gods, some of whom approve of the deed of Orestes, while others persecute him, till at last the divine wisdom, under the figure of Minerva, reconciles the opposite claims, establishes a peace, and puts an end to the long series of crimes and punishments which desolated the royal house of Atreus. A considerable interval takes place between the period of the first and second pieces, during which Orestes grows up to manhood. The second and third are connected together immediately in the order of time. Orestes takes flight after the murder of his mother to Delphi, where we find him at the commencement of the Eumenides.

'In each of the two first pieces, there is a visible reference to the one which follows. In Agamemnon, Cassandra and the chorus prophesy, at the close, to the arrogant Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus, the punishment which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In the Choephora, Orestes, immediately after the execution of the deed, finds no longer any repose; the furies of his mother begin to persecute him, and he announces his resolution of taking refuge in Delphi.

'The connection is therefore evident throughout, and we may consider the three pieces, which were connected together even in the representation, as so many acts of one great and entire drama. I mention this as a preliminary justification of Shakspeare and other modern poets, in connecting together in one representation a larger circle of human destinies, as we can produce to the critics who object to this the supposed example of the ancients.'

Shakspeare's Macbeth bears a close resemblance to this trilogy of Eschylus, which gives, in three distinct acts, a history of the house of Agamemnon. In Macbeth, also, are three acts, or deeds, distinct from each other, and separated by long intervals of time; namely, the regicide of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, and the fall of Macbeth; the first serving to show how he attained his elevation, the second how he abused it, and the third how he lost it. A chorus of supernatural beings, the witches of Shakspeare operate like the furies of Eschylus, in both these tragic poems, hovers over the fate of the hero; and, by impressing on the spectator the consciousness of an irresistible necessity, all the extenuation which the atrocities could admit is introduced. Criticism, in comparing the master-pieces of these master-poets, may be permitted to hesitate, but not to draw stakes. To the plot or fable of Shakspeare must be allowed the merit of possessing, in the higher degree, wholeness, connection, and ascending

interest. The character of Clytemnestra may be weighed without disparagement against that of Lady Macbeth: but all the other delineations are superior in our Shakspeare; his characters are more various, more marked, more consistent, more natural, more intuitive. The style of Eschylus, if distinguished for a majestic energetic simplicity, greatly preferable to the mixt metaphors and puns of Shakspeare, has still neither the richness of thought northe versatility of diction which we find displayed in the English tragedy.

M. Schlegel's extensive commentary on this trilogy of Eschylus is an admirable critical diatribe; original, classical, and just. The Suppliants are stated to form one act of a trilogy, of which the two others, intitled the Egyptians and the Danaids,' are lost. The Seven before Thebes ought to have been censured for the needless superfluity of narration; the dramatist should bring every possible incident into action before the spectator: but here every pretence is seized, as on the French stage, to transform action into epic poetry. Prometheus chained, as we have already observed, is a tragi-comedy, the entrance of Io being obviously intended for ludicrous effect; the fire-bringing Prometheus, a portion of the same trilogy, was always classed by the ancients among the satyric or comic dramas; and the catastrophe of the freed Prometheus was happy, which in pure tragedy never occurs among the Greeks. M. Schlegel's assertion is more than questionable, that the ancients did not mix tragedy and comedy.

The panegyric of Sophocles, which is pronounced in this lecture, is truly beautiful, and more strictly just than that of Eschylus. Among modern works of art, the Iphigenia in Tauris of Goethe approaches nearest to a poem of Sophocles. It is strange that, of so many pieces as he wrote, (the number is stated at one hundred and twenty,) so few have been handed down to us; viz. only seven, and one of these, the Trachinians, being of doubtful authority. Perhaps the Rhesus, printed commonly among the works of Euripides, might with greater brobability be assigned to Sophocles. At least, we have the external evidence of a preface by some ancient scholiast, which so attributes it; and we have the internal evidence of a sweet, polished, and supported style, so different from the versatile and unequal manner of the all-intuitive (avropos) Euripides. Here again is tragi-comedy; ridiculous emotions being excited in this play, when Dolon offers to disguise himself as a wolf; and, when Hector promises to him the horses of Achilles, the spectator, who expects those of Rhesus to be successfully waylaid, must experience an ironical smile. this piece, it is evident that the Greeks brought horses on their stage to increase the pageantry:" tutto il mundo e fatto come la nostra famiglia."

The grounds of internal evidence are still stronger for assigning to Sophocles the Trojan Dames. The Hecuba, a tragedy

on the same theme, is certainly a work of Euripides; the heroine, tottering on a cruch and rolling in the dust, has that ignoble raggedness with which Aristophanes reproaches this tragedian; and critics notice the piece as his composition, praising his description of the death of Polyxena, still in her last moments attentive to every decorum, and gathering the robes over her person so as to fall with decency. In the Hecuba, this sacrifice takes place on the Thracian Chersonesus: but, in the Trojan Dames, Polyxena is sacrificed under the walls of Troy. Now if these two plays had the same poet for their author, a consistent, uniform, undeviating legend would be adopted in both. The Trojan Dames, therefore, appears to be taken from Euripides; and, as the character of Hecuba in this tragedy is a noble and beautiful delineation, worthy of the taste of Sophocles, as the monotonous prolongation of the same emotion is peculiar to his manner, as the perpetual climax of feminine wo is worthy of his art and ingenuity, as the appropriate tone of the choral odes is so studiously preserved,-and as the mythological passages have none of that contemptuous impiety which marks the theology of Euripides, it seems more rational and probable to attribute this tragedy to his cotemporary and rival. Among the lost plays of Sophocles, are enumerated Athamas, Thamyris, Phryxus, Erechtheus, Nausicaa, or the Wash-women (ПXvvTpias), according to Lessing a comic or satiric piece, and Thyestes, of which, some idea may be formed from the Latin imitation preserved in the dramatic anthology of Seneca.

The fifth lecture treats of Euripides, the favourite poet of Socrates and of Milton. Yet his dramas are valued low by M. Schlegel, who considers them as indicating the decline of art. Certainly, they have not the uniform loftiness of those of Eschylus, nor the uniform beauty of those of Sophocles: but they include greater variety of character, of situation, and of emotion; they have more of nature, if they have less of stage-trick; and they abound with sentiments of a penetrating wisdom. Eschylus imprints his own heroic and unbending disposition on every one of his personages;-the poet himself speaks through each mask. His Clytemnestra is but Prometheus in petticoats; his Electra is cast in her mother's mould; and Eteocles and Antigone have the same proud courageous soul. As in Alfieri's tragedies, the author sits to himself for the principal figures in every fresh delineation.-Sophocles has less energy than his predecessor. In the character of Edipus, he has scarcely imprinted traces of that wild intemperance of feeling, which was destined to tear out his own eyes in the catastrophe. It is not by sudden sparks of passion that Sophocles touches, but by repeatedly and permanently harping on the same string; he excels in patient feminine tenderness, in refinement of feeling, and in moral beauty, but not in Aluctuations of emotion. Though his range of characters is

wider than that of Eschylus, and is made conspicuous by contrasts, yet the outlines of his personages are vague, and the marks of individuality faint; they have the average compassed features of an unappropriated bust, which the artist has shapen beautifully, but has not yet chipped and channeled into a specific portrait. He is at home only in virtuous nature, in Neoptolemos, Antigone, and Chrysothemis; his criminals have not the spirit of crime. Nor is he inventive, being obliged often to borrow from himself; Electra, for instance, when she clasps the supposed urn of Orestes, employing nearly the same sentiments which Antigone advances before Creon. On the contrary, Euripides neither casts his characters in one mould nor transplants his sentiments from play to play, but is ever various, creative, and original. His heroes may be deficient in majesty, and his plots in taste, but all his personages have the distinct individuality of nature. We trace no resemblance between his Hecuba, Andromache, Medea, Phædra, Iphigenia, Alcestes, and Electra; no repetition of the common-places of sorrow, but a deeply pathetic and strictly appropriate display of emotion at the trying instant. Characters which border on each other are still discriminated; such as Ion and Hippolytus, or the insane Hercules and the insane Orestes. Emotions almost incompatible are also made to succeed each other in a breath: thus Hercules indulges his joviality when Alcestes is dying, without spoiling the pathetic scenes; and this, though not a mark of taste, is an indication of power. If Eschylus be the Schiller, and Sophocles be the Racine, Euripides is the Shakspeare, of the Greeks; and it is inconsistent in M. Schlegel to assign to Euripides so low and to Shakspeare so high a rank. Neither of these writers pursues an ideal beauty, but both are distinguished for truth of nature. They do not aim, like Eschylus and Schiller, at a grandeur beyond reality, at a majesty more than human; they are not to be classed among the heroic or ennobling poets: they do not, like Sophocles and Racine, subdue within the limits of grace and beauty every expression of feeling or passion: nor are they to be classed among the idealizing or embellishing poets: but it is for copying the impressive phænomena of human kind with fidelity, for catching a striking likeness of men and events in a narrow compass, for giving an inherent vitality to their personages, and animating each with a soul of its own, that Euripides and Shakspeare must be applauded. If they too often sink into vulgarity, their bursts of feeling and of passion gush into the heart and thrill to the marrow; and they are omnipotent over the present impression, whether it be grave or gay.

In the sixth lecture, the author treats of comedy, which seems to have begun in the parody of tragedy. A high and (we think) a well-founded panegyric of Aristophanes is here undertaken; whose resources of fancy gave a variety to Greek comedy, of