before we can judge, with any fairness, of a Greek dramatist: for though the passions are the same in all ages, yet how wonderfully are they modified by circumstances and superstitions. * In order to enter into the spirit of Sophocles, we must enter into the spirit of Greek antiquities; and not with a mere knowledge of facts, but with feelings and imaginations touched by the national history. In judging of the subjects of their drama, it particularly behoves us to appreciate them not merely by their intrinsic terror and pathos, but also by the accessary interest which local and religious prejudices threw around them in the fancy of a Greek. Even to ourselves, are not Shakspeare's historical plays invested, by our English associations, with a charm that would vanish from the same stories, if we considered them as pure fictions, and tried their beauty or sublimity by the abstract standard of taste? The theatrical spectacles of Greece were great commemorations of her history and mythology. Aristotle expressly says, that the old dramatists derived their subjects not from art, but from fortune-that is, from tradition. Undoubtedly there are national stories which no national predilections can justify as subjects for the stage; and I am far from believing that the Greeks did not occasionally dramatize such stories. Sophocles himself composed a tragedy on the feast of Thyestes, and Attic taste must have been at that time as perverted for the moment, as England's was when Shakspeare made Gloucester's eyes be trodden out upon the stage; but it is only little minds that will draw general conclusions from the anomalous lapses of great poets. The Greek dramatists were right in the main to keep to tradition; for, if they had coined abstracted fictions, the hearts of their audiences would have deserted them. Imperishable as the general feelings of Nature are, yet Religion, the great agent in modifying human sentiments, has so changed, that stories well suited to their stage, would ill accord with the genius of oursand we could not apply a more unfair test to their subjects than to ask what impression they would produce in our own theatres. In the tragedy of Edipus Tyrannus, an unfortunate prince discovers at the end of many years, that, under the ban of Fatality, (without intention or consciousness of consanguinity) he has slain his own father and married his mother. The blood curdles at such a narrative. Yet let it not be imagined, that Sophocles has told it without an awful and simple modesty, that shows the Greeks to have venerated the instincts of consanguinity as sacredly as ourselves. Indeed, the forfeit which Edipus pays to the broken laws of Nature, even though unconsciously broken, is agonizing and terrible beyond what our religion would prescribe. And this is the very reason why the event was a fit subject for the Greek drama, though it would be unfit for When Dr. Johnson would not suffer the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles to be praised, because it has no moral, he betrayed his being destitute of that interest in the manners of Greece, and of sympathy with the national character, which are indispensable to relishing its drama. On a religious Greek, the tragedy must have made a deep religious impression. Dr. Johnson's remark, however, is less surprising than that of Sophocles's last English translator, when he says, that the tragic situation of Antigone resolving to die rather thau suffer the dead body of her brother to be devoured by dogs, can excite neither sympathy nor commiseration in our minds. The translator ought to ve spoken in the singular number. ours. Pagan superstition devoted Edipus, innocent as he was, to retributions truly tragic, and sent him forth to wander under the malediction of Heaven. To us, such a misfortune would seem only a horrible mischance-a blunder of human ignorance, better deserving oblivion than expiation. A modern poet addressing such a subject to a modern audience, would seem to search for the horrible merely for its own sake.* To us it has no native associations; while to the Greeks it was a chapter of their history, a legend mysteriously and awfully linked with their national creed, and in the shade of their superstition its horror was changed into solemnity and terror. By no effort could a modern poet give any such effect to the subject. Should he talk to us as a Pagan, we should know his faith to be insincere, and the imagination has no sympathy with affected superstition. But in the native faith of the true poet "believing what he sung," there is a contagious charm-for the time being, the strains of Sophocles carry us back into his mythology. Nor can his skill in the execution of this tragedy, though a thousand times praised, ever be over-rated. The art with which he traces the progress of fated calamity, is perfectly illusive-so completely does he disguise the chain of necessity under the appearance of human freedom, so spontaneous appear the human actions, and so probable the incidents which lead to the most astonishing consummation, that the mind conceives how fatality might govern the world, and almost in fancy believes it. By uniting or rather identifying the marvellous and the natural, and by displaying an invisible fatality that makes a vassal even of the free human will, he perhaps gives a more appalling conception of supernatural influence than would be produced by any palpable forms. In the external improvements of the Greek stage it is not easy to adjust with exactness the respective shares of Eschylus and Sophocles. The introduction of painted scenery is, for instance, ascribed to them both by different authorities. But the influence of Sophocles was no more, than that of his great predecessor, confined to externals, and, both in heightening the art and in expanding the moral spirit of the drama, he might almost be said to have given it a second creation. In Eschylus's plots, whether they were grouped into trilogies by accident or design, it cannot be pretended that there is skilful contrivance. But in the stories of Sophocles, our curiosity is raised up and carried along with that passive mental pleasure, which, if we may compare spiritual to bodily feelings, may be likened to the sensation of gliding swiftly over a smooth or gently undulating surface. And he speaks more to our hearts as human beings than Eschylus, whose tortuous language rather grasps our supernatural fears than our earthly sympathies. Sophocles contrasts all the graceful forms of human endearment-the innocence of childhood-the amiability of woman-and the friendship and honour and hospitality of man, with the dark back-ground of tragic fatality. Tecmessa and Ajax move us- -Teucer commands our Among modern poets who have dramatized this story, Voltaire was the most eminently unhappy. He took care, indeed, to be as unlike Sophocles as possible, and (as he afterwards said by way of apology) not knowing otherwise how to fill up the time, made the hero and Jocasta talk with tender regret for the termination of their happiness. This made a Parisian audience shudder and shout with detestation even in the days of the Regency. respect-Neoptolemus gladdens us with a prototype of chivalrous truth -and Antigone is Cordelia with a loftier mien. The tragedy of Ajax powerfully exhibits the despair and suicide of a proud soldier who has lived but for martial honour, and cannot survive the loss of it. The objects that are grouped around his tragic figure, finely contrast their imploring sympathy with his inexorable grief. It is surprising to find men who have taken the pains to translate this drama into English*, among its most illiberal critics-they object to the mental aberration of Ajax, to the deed in which it vents itself, and to the share of Ulysses in the opening scene. Ajax, indignant at the Greek chiefs for disgracing him by the denial of Achilles's armour, repairs, sword in hand,. to their tents at night; but, struck with insanity by Minerva, he vents his rage upon their flocks and herds, imagining that he was slaughtering his enemies. After the deed is done, and whilst his phrenzy is still upon him, the goddess calls him out from his tent, and in the hearing of Ulysses, whom she renders invisible, makes the maniac relate and boast of his exploit. All this, we are told, savours of the ludicrous. The criticism certainly does. It is true that there is much incongruity between the pride of Ajax and the meanness of his victims; but it is this very incongruity, and the scorn and mockery that are to follow it, that make his situation truly tragic; and there is a Shakspearian power in this scene that turns the incongruous into an element of terror. As for mental aberration, do we find even its gaiety disfigure tragedy when Lear exclaims Do thy worst, blind Cupid, I will not love;" or do we not rather sympathize with Gloucester's reply, "Thou ruined piece of nature!" The unwillingness of Ulysses to see his phrenzied foe is only the caution of a wise man; but, besides this caution, the poet gives him a deep sensibility to the misery of Ajax. Before seeing him Ulysses declares, I should little dread "The sight of Ajax in his perfect mind." When he has seen him he exclaims, "Even in a foe I pity such distress!" and the manner in which he finally interposes to obtain for him the rites of sepulture, is in perfect keeping with this humane and honourable sentiment. In the description of Ajax's mind returning to a state of reason still more dreadful than its past illusions, the workings of a heart abandoned to the sense of insulted pride are skilfully and naturally delineated. His resolution to destroy himself is unalterably fixed from the moment that the light of his recovered reason discloses the prospects that surround him. Whither, indeed, could he betake himself? He had fallen among the Greeks, from the height of glory and regard, to the abyss of derision and hatred. To his father's house he could not repair, without a spoil or a trophy, and with ridicule cast on his reputation; and to throw himself on the swords of the Trojans, would be only to gratify the insolent Atridæ. Thus situated, he excites an interest in the poetry of Sophocles, which, from his character in the Iliad, we should hardly suppose it possible to attach to him. Yet he is kept true to his Homeric character; and even in his prayer to Jupiter before his death, we recognize the self-dependence and stubbornness of The Rev. Dr. Francklin and the Rev. Thomas Dale. his pride, when he tells the chief of the gods, that he had but a slight boon to implore of him. But, like Shakspeare, Sophocles is cautious of overcharging characters; and in disgrace and despair Ajax is neither inhumanly impassive nor repulsively fierce. On the contrary, he displays both the natural feelings of a man and the dignity of a hero. He gives a calm consideration to the state of those who are to survive him he calls for his boy, and embraces him with a most touching valediction: "May'st thou, my boy, be happier than thy father! To copy me. I envy thee, my child, For that thou seest not thine own wretchedness.- Of you, my friends, companions of the war, Francklin's Sophocles. The feint which he makes to have changed his purpose, in order to escape and to perpetrate it without disturbance, may seem at first sight foreign to his character; but if a little considered, it will appear a natural exception to his general habits, when he stoops for once in his life to dissimulation; being at once unshaken in his design of suicide, and anxious to accomplish it undisturbed, and yet so far touched by the tenderness of Tecmessa as to wish to spare her the horror of witnessing the deed. Accordingly before he departs, he speaks with honour and affection of bis wife. In the mean time his brother arrives in the Greek camp, and is warned by the prophet Chalcas to cause Ajax to be confined for the passing day, which the Oracles had foretold would be fatal to him. But the message arrives too late. Tecmessa and the Chorus go to search for Ajax, and his wife discovers him on the spot where he had fallen on his sword. Here the tragedy, according to modern ideas, ought to conclude; but to the rites of burial the Greeks attached an awfully religious importance: and it is not till these have been decreed to the hero, that Sophocles concludes the piece. Nor does the interest at all flag in the remainder of the tragedy. Indeed it is then, when all is over with the hero, that we feel his virtues to be told with the deepest effect-when his widow and child kneel, as suppliants to Heaven and human mercy, beside his corpse; when his spirited brother defies the threats of the Atride to deny him sepulchral honours; and when Ulysses, with politic magnanimity, interposes to prevent the mean insult being offered to his fallen enemy. By his triumph in assuaging the vindictiveness of Agamemnon, and attaching the gratitude of Teucer, the piece leaves our sympathies calmed and elevated at its conclusion. The Philoctetes, the Electra, the Edipus at Colonus, and the Antigone of this great poet, are such interesting master-pieces, that I have been tempted to take an ampler synopsis of them than it would suit my limits in this work to insert in the present Number, I shall therefore defer its insertion till the next. MRS. RADCLIFFE'S POSTHUMOUS ROMANCE.* to so many CURIOSITY has seldom been more strongly excited by any announcement than by that of Mrs. Radcliffe's new romance. The great and genuine popularity of her successive works, which peopled the imagination with so many grand and fearful pictures, and which have been "fair and innocent" novel-readers as a first love; her retirement, suddenly adopted in the height of her reputation and preserved till her death; and the strange mistakes which were so long prevalent respecting her personal history; were calculated to rivet the attention of the public to a production which her admirers had ceased to hope for. Long as the interval is since the "Italian" was published, and rich as it has been in works of fiction, "the great Enchantress of Udolpho" held lone and unquestioned supremacy over that delicious region of romance which was first disclosed at her bidding. Her popularity has stood a severe test; but, instead of fading away, has strengthened into fame. Since she ceased to write, Maturin has developed the processional magnificence for his genius, aided by startling contrasts and moral paradoxes; Miss Porter and her sister have finished a series of pictures replete with smooth, glossy, and transparent beauty; Miss Edgeworth has exhibited views of human life from the nursery to the grave, from the hovel of Irish beggars to the saloons of English noblemen, illuminated by the glancing lights of wit, and replete with splendour, which "borrowed all its rays from sense;" Mrs. Inchbald has stripped oppression of its disguises, and bade the heart bleed for others and itself; Miss Austen has displayed all the delicacy of female observation, and developed all the fervour of the female heart; and the author of Waverley has brought old histories before us instinct with present life, and filled with almost every variety of human character; yet Mrs. Radcliffe's best works have continued to excite the girl's first wonder, and to supply the last solace to her grandame's age, thumbed over, begged, borrowed, and thought of as often as ever! To the fancies of her numberless readers, she seemed to hold august sway over the springs of terror, almost as the Siddons of novelists. "It were to inquire too curiously," if we should attempt nicely to investigate how far this effect is attributable to mere intellectual power, and to what extent it may be ascribed to the charm of the subjects which the authoress selected. If the fascination was chiefly in her range of imagery, she, at least, first showed how to employ it, and has alone been able to mould and arrange its varieties so as to produce a deep and lasting impression. If she derived any hint from the farcical extravagances of the Castle of Otranto, or the insipidity of the Old * Gaston de Blondeville; or the Court of Henry III. keeping Festival in Ardenne, a Romance; St. Alban's Abbey, a Metrical Tale; with other poetical pieces. By Anne Radcliffe, author of "The Mysteries of Udolpho;" "Romance of the Forest;" &c. To which is prefixed a Memoir of the Author, with extracts |