καὶ γάρ ῥα Κλυταιμνήστρας προβέβουλα, κουριδίης ἀλόχου· ἐπεὶ οὔ ἑθεν ἐστὶ χερείων, Again, the slaughter (for in Eschylus we hear nothing of Iphigenia in Tauris) of his eldest child as the victim of his brother's uxoriousness and his own ambition, is, not unnaturally, much and variously dwelt upon; until at last the picture of the murdered maiden welcoming to the banks of Acheron the father who had sacrificed her (v. 1503), makes the student feel the triumph of the poet in having, for a moment, trimmed the balance between the parties; though there is nothing in the perplexity thus produced which can permanently pervert the judg ment. Again, let the Queen's inflated language, and the insidious pomp of Agamemnon's reception, be noticed. Here is no deviation from nature; rather, under her circumstances, it is the highest nature;-but the effect is, for the time, to throw a shade of caricature over all his greatness and his person. All is forced to such an excess as to provoke reaction. She has become bold in length of time to tell her love-tale in the public ear; and an invidious one it is of a disconsolate, deserted wife, weeping to hear story after story of her husband's death, until his body had been (said to be) thrice over drilled with eylet-wounds like a net, and himself—had he been three gentlemen at once-buried thrice deep! Forgotten and woeful matron, she had done nothing but weave herself halters, and her maidens had had their time fully occupied in cutting her down: nay, her dear Orestes had been taken from her, from some vague anticipation of his being hanged or deposed, we are not sure which. And as for tears, they must not be surprised that she sheds none; she has none left; the very fount of them is dry! But her eyes are sore, (if this will do as well) with weeping by unsnuffed candles (so we presume to translate τὰς ἀμφὶ σοῦ κλαίουσα λαμπτηρουχίας átnμeλntous diév); and the very buzzing night-flies' had kept her awake instead of hushing her to her slumbers.' But now, it is all past: Agamemnon is come! And now that he is come, what shall she say, what shall she call him? A house-dog-a cable-a pillar-an only child-a friendly shore-a fair day-a running stream! His very foot is a glorious foot, for it spurned Troy over; and it must not tread * the earth. upon All this Agamemnon *The reader can hardly have forgotten the parody on this in the Knights of Aristophanes (v. 783 seq.): ἐπὶ ταῖσι πέτραις οὐ φροντίζει σκληρῶς σε καθήμενον οὕτως, οὐχ ὡς περ ἐγὼ ῥαψάμενός σοι τουτὶ φέρω· ἀλλ ̓ ἐπαναίρου, κατα καθίζου μαλακῶς, ἵνα μὴ τρίβης τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι, VOL. LXX. NO. CXL. 'Here's Agamemnon takes meekly; protesting indeed against the splendour of his reception, as well as the length of her speech,—which latter he compares to the siege of Troy; but giving way at last, for the sake of a quiet life. It may doubtless be said that this is ludicrous; so, in itself, it undoubtedly is: but how true to nature, and how wonderfully contrived to further the poet's purpose! Let us take Macbeth: if, at least, we may be forgiven for venturing, against certain modern authorities, to retain our belief that there is a family likeness between Lady Macbeth and Clytemnestra. She, indeed, is more sparing of her rhetoric; but in her speech of welcome to Duncan there is the same frigid elaborateness: with both of them alike all is 'In every point twice done, and then done double.' In a In the same taste is that earlier speech of Clytemnestra, wherein the description of the courier flame, which announced the capture of Troy, is worked up with the most marvellous union of real excitement and perturbation, with cold and inflated bombast. modern work, which has fallen into our hands in the course of our professional labours as 'the scavengers of literature,' we have found it authoritatively remarked, that it is the orthodox custom of translators to render the dialogue of Greek plays in blank verse; but in this instance the whole animation and rapidity of the original would be utterly lost in the stiff construction and protracted rhythm of blank verse!' Alas for Shakspeare then! Alas for Eschylus, who-though the whole range of rapid' and animated' choral metres was before him-chose so unaccountably to clothe this speech in a metre adopted, as Aristotle tells us, because it was the most proselike, the most like common discourse, of all! Alas for the lyrical translator, who has to soften down into animated and rapid' phraseology such expressions as old-womanish heather' (vgaia èpɛinn), a huge beard of flame' (hoyo's μéyav πwywva), and the like, and especially that glorious description of the last beacon, οὐκ ἄπαππον Ιδαίου πυρός 'which,' to translate accurately, 6 'is not un-grandfather'd by Ida's fire!' Are we disparaging Eschylus by showing that among the fervid thoughts of this speech there are such frigid tropes intermingled? Quite the reverse; because we believe it to be natural, and that he knew it, to one in Clytemnestra's situation to use 'Here's a present you'll prize: come, arise, Sir, arise! Since Salamis' shock, what a shame the hard rock such such language, instead of the gay prettinesses of our modern Midas, who turns everything that he touches to-tinsel.* To estimate her character, we must compare her language before and after the deed was done. Afterwards there is no elaboration, no disguise, no frigidity. Every word burns,-burns with hell-fire. Public and private ills have converged on the heads of the Atrida; or rather--for the historical account of the shipwreck is ably applied to withdraw Menelaus-on the one head of Agamemnon. And she stands forth as the Até within the family, as Ægisthus from without; and this, rather than their illicit love (which, in fact, flows from it), is the bond of their unhallowed union. It This forms one means by which a catastrophe is prepared. But a still more important agent is the Chorus; and this is so employed by Æschylus as to need a more careful analysis. was not (says the fine old Platonist, Philip van Heusde) merely by the outward improvements in his art, which we learn from Horace and the archæologers, that Æschylus did his work. It was by the masterpieces of his tragedy, the deep impression which they made on the spectator, filling him now with pity, now with terror, but always with elevating emotions. And this he attained, not by action and language, but most chiefly by the influence of the chorus. The tragedian was also probably the first lyric poet of Greece; and thus by the chorus in the pauses of his dramas his aim was to work up the souls of his hearers to the pitch of the tragedy which they were hearing, and to inspire them with a capacity for the feelings which were to be called forth. It is to this chorus that we chiefly trace the higher spirit which possesses us when we study the Greek tragedy: *We cannot resist the temptation to give one more specimen of Eschylus puppy-fied. It is characterised as one of those soft passages so rare in Eschylus (!), nor less exquisite than rare :'— "Ah! soon alive, to miss and mourn, The form beyond the ocean borne, Shall start the lonely king! And thought shall fill the lost one's room, And darkly through the palace gloom Shall stalk a ghostly thing." (I. e., as a note tells us, Menelaus, as lean as a ghost!) 'Her statues meet, as round they rise, The leaden stare of sightless eyes: Where is their ancient beauty gone? Why loathe his looks the breathing stone? Hath swept the Venus from her face!' Alas! The foulness of disgrace With some difficulty we have discovered that this is meant to be a translation from Agam., vv. 414-419 (πόθῳδ ̓ ὑπερποντίας-πᾶσ ̓ ̓Αφροδίτα). z 2 'Ille 'Ille bonis faveatque, et concilietur amicis ; HOR. A. P., 196, seq. It is remarked by Schlegel, that the Greek chorus is the idealised spectator, giving the fair comments of man's judgment in the abstract upon the acts or sentiments of the characters, and so, by the impersonal character of its moralising, gently leading the audience to do the like. But this is not a sufficient description of the chorus in Eschylus. With him it is no mere external critic upon the plot; it is the plot itself. The dialogue of the Agamemnon could be dispensed with as easily as the lyric portion of it. The chorus is no critical looker-on; it is the poet soliloquising at his work, and giving vent, as in involuntary strains, to the mysterious imaginations which crowd upon his soul, while he strives to embody them in their more definite, but thus less spiritual form. Without the chorus we could no more attain to the fulness of the poet's meaning than we could attune ourselves to the harmonies in which he clothes it. The chorus is altogether rapt out of the region of reflection. It is inspired. It will be worth while to trace the clue of their strains through the earlier part of the play, from their entrance, summoned by Clytemnestra to hear the news of the triumph which has been telegraphed from Troy. This carries them back ten years, to the time when the Atride departed, shouting for vengeance on Troy, like vultures wheeling over their empty nest, 'Right sorrowfully mourning their bereaved cares.' Well! things must be as they may; and destiny and wrath will have their course; but our way of life is in the sere (Quaλdos ồn nuтanapoμέvns), we linger on, unmeaning as a dream at midday.' Yet old as they are, the spirit of song survives; and now the fated time suggests the strain,-how omens met the avengers on their way. And this was the rede of the prophet: time will come when Troy shall fall before the host; but a hostile influence darkens the future: the goddess of the wild-wood tribes is at the throne of Zeus to ask the fulfilment of the sign, prosperous in the main, yet deeply dashed with ill (δεξιά μέν, κατάμορφα δέ). Heaven forefend that she demand a horrid sacrifice-horrid in itself, and source of future horror, treachery, and domestic vengeance. Sing woe, sing woe, and well away! (avov, aidivov εἰπέ, τὸ δ ̓ εὖ νικάτω) . A weight is on their soul, and who shall relieve 6 relieve them? The ancient powers of heaven are gone by; only Zeus remains; and he has ordained that by suffering shall mortals be taught to bow beneath the rod. Thus was his hand on Agamemnon, what time the host pined away to watch day after day the refluent waters of Euripus. But the remedy was worse than all; the monarch smote the earth and cried, A sorry choice! It is hard to disobey! and how hard to shed a virgin daughter's blood! and yet I owe a duty to my comrades; and must they not demand it?' Then he bowed to the yoke of fate, and steeled himself to dare the worst; for in the first guilt madness lies, and hardens man to recklessness; and so he set at nought his daughter's prayer and appeals to a father's name; muffling the curses which might fall from that melodious tongue, which had so often charmed the guests of his palace-hall; for there she stood as if in act to speak, fair as some pictured form, darting her glances round in pitiful appeal. . . . . We saw not, dare not tell the rest; but this is sure, that prophecy will work its way, and those that will not learn, shall learn by suffering. But away with inquiries into the future. Enough that it will come, surely and speedily! After hearing what the queen has to tell them of the conquest, and her rambling strain of moralising upon it, they again take up their parable, their theme being the sin of Troy and the certainty of judgment. But mark whither this leads them! Zeus has bent his bow against the guilty. Ay, though men are found to say that the gods reck not of evil deeds, it was his doing : he shows himself in vengeance to the sons of an overweening race. Ours be the lowlier lot which knows no ill; for there is no redemption for the high and wealthy ones who spurn the altar of right. They are driven on to inevitable ill: the light within has ceased to be of heaven, but blazes lurid forth, hurrying them downwards; and no one hears their prayer, but mischief hunts the man who for a toy, a bird of gay plumage, transgresses. And even such a bird was Helen! Lightly she glided from her home, leaving a legacy behind her, the clash of arms and the battle stir, -bearing with her a dowry, ruin to Troy. . . . And he, the dishonoured, the unreproaching! Silent is he: he cannot deem her gone: her form will haunt him yet in every hall where she has reigned as queen: all else in them is a blank; for the desire of his eyes is gone, and what is loveliness to him? In dreams he snatches an empty joy, and lo the vision is gone with the slumber!... But private sorrows are not all. There is a cry of mourning through universal Greece. Men ask for their children, and what have they? Ashes and an urn! And when they tell of this man's courage and that man's death, there comes the |