antipathy to women, and every feature both of nature and education, as now described, is discoverable in his writings; his sentiments breathe the air of the schools, his images are frequently vulgar, and his female characters of an unfavourable cast; he is carping, sour, and disputatious, and though he carried away only five prizes out of seventy-five plays, he is still indignant, proud, and self-assuming; his life was full of contention and his death of horror, for he was set upon by mastiffs and killed. He was the friend of Socrates, and grossly addicted to unnatural passion. NUMBER CXXXIV. IN a scene between Xanthias the slave of Bacchus, and acus, in the comedy of the Frogs beforementioned, the latter, upon being asked why Sophocles did not put in his claim for the tragic chair, replies Not he, by Jove! In contest with Euripides.-DUNSTER'S Translation. The tragedies of Eschylus have all the marks of an original genius: his scene is cast with an awful and majestic grandeur, and he designs in the boldest style; in some situations his principal figures are painted with such terrible effect, that I can only liken them to a composition, where Spagnolet had drawn the persons of the damned in tortures, and Salvator Rosa had filled up the scenery of Hell in his strongest manner. No poet introduces his character on the scene with more dignity and stageeffect: he is in the practice of holding the spectator in suspense by a preparatory silence in his chief person, which is amongst the most refined arts of the dramatic poet: this was well understood by our Shakspeare and some others of the old school; on the French stage I conceive it is very little in use. In the introductory scene of the Prometheus, the principal character preserves a dignified silence for a considerable space of time, during which all the tremendous machinery, incidental to his tortures, is going forward under the superintendence of imaginary beings, and the vengeance of Almighty Jupiter in chaining him to a rock, there to languish for innumerable ages, is in actual execution. This is a prelude infinitely more dramatic, sublime, and affecting, than if the scene had been interwoven with lamentations, cries, and complaints, though ever so well expressed; the picture tells its own tale, and the spectacle speaks to the heart, without the vehicle of words: it is well observed by Mr. Potter, the translator of Eschylus, that there is a dignity and even sublimity in the silence of Prometheus beyond the expression of words: but as soon as the instruments of tyranny have left him, he bursts into a strain of pathetic lamentation, and invokes all nature to attest to his undeserved sufferings.' Æthereal air, and ye swift-winged winds, Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves, POTTER. The scenery and spectacle of the Prometheus, must have been the finest that poet ever devised: all ́ the characters are supernatural beings, and their language is not unworthy of Olympus. The Agamemnon is a wonderful production, and though no other tragedy but this had come down to us from the pen of the author, it would be matter of astonishment to me that any critic should be found of such proof against its beauties, as to lower its author to a comparison with Sophocles or Euripides; yet some there have been, who have reversed the decree of Bacchus, and given their preference to Sophocles, nay even to Euripides. The same management is observable in this tragedy upon the introduction of Cassandra, as we have just now remarked in the case of Prometheus: Agamemnon recommends his captive to the protection of Clytemnestra; they are. left upon the scene together; the queen of Argos solicits her to descend from her car and enter the palace; the chorus second the invitation; she makes no reply; Clytemnestra doubts if she speaks the language of Greece, and calls upon her to make some acknowledgment by signs; when this draws nothing from her, she grows exasperated and exclaims 'Tis frenzy this, the impulse of a mind She comes, and knows not how to bear the curb, But I no more waste words to be disdain'd.-POTTER. Cassandra still is silent; when upon the departure of the queen, this gloomy cloud that hung upon the foreground of the prospect at once disperses, and a scene of such dazzling splendour, and sublimity bursts forth upon the instant, as must have thrown the theatre into astonishment; seized with the prophetic fury, she breaks out into such gusts and agonies of divination, as can no otherwise be described, but with silent wonder how any human imagination could furnish such ideas, or find words to give them utterance. The chorus I confess stand the shock with wonderful presence of mind, but the phlegm and apathy of a Greek chorus is proof against every thing: though the prophetess plainly denounces the impending murder of the king by Clytemnestra, and points out the bath as the scene of his assassination, the chorus tamely answers To unfold the obscure oracles of heav'n POTTER. if I need not be reminded that incredulity was annexed by Apollo to the predictions of Cassandra, and that the plot and catastrophe would not admit of precipitation; for I must still contend that incredulity itself is a good dramatic engine, and if the chorus had not stood in his way, would have been otherwise managed by the author: but I take the character of a true Greek chorus to be such, that if Apollo himself had come in person to tell them, that the earth would open and swallow them up, they did not instantly remove from the spot on which they stood, they would have stopped to moralize, or hymn an ode, in strophe, and antistrophe, to Jupiter or Venus, or the gods below to whom they were descending, though the ground was cleaving under their feet-provided, as I before premised, that they had the true spirit of a Greek chorus in them. To have a genius like this of Eschylus encumbered with a chorus, is as if a mill-stone was tied round the pinions of an eagle. The Agamemnon was the last tragedy he wrote for the Athenian stage: the poet was then turned of sixty years: the Athenians decreed the prize to him for this inestimable performance, which has been the admiration of all ages, and will be to all posterity. The tragedy of the Persians, and that also of the Furies, are a study for poets and painters: the imagery in both these pieces is of a wonderful and surpassing sublimity. In the former of these every reader must be struck with the introduction of the ghost of Darius, and the awful rites and incantations that are preparatory to its appearance: the sudden interruption of the unfinished hymn by the royal spectre, the attitude of the prostrate Satraps, the situation of Atossa, and the whole disposition of the scene, are a combination in point of effect which no dramatic spectacle ever exceeded. In the Furies, the scene presents to the spectator the temple of the Pythian Apollo; the priestess opens the tragedy with a speech from the vestibule ; the gates are drawn back, and the interior of the fane is discovered, the god appears on the scene in person, Orestes is at his feet in a supplicating posture, and the furies, to the number of fifty, are dispersed in different attitudes, but all buried in profound sleep: Apollo addresses himself to his suppliant, and points to the sleeping furies— -See this grisly troop! Sleep has oppress'd them, and their baffled rage In loath'd virginity: nor god nor man Approach'd their bed, nor savage of the wilds; For they were born for mischiefs, and their haunts And by th' Olympian gods.-Potter. Can there be a finer, a more tremendous picture? There can but it is the genius of Eschylus must heighten it: the ghost of Clytemnestra rises on the scene, and completes the horror: stained with the blood of her husband, and gashed with wounds inflicted by the parricidal hand of her own son, she calls out to the avenging deities ་ |