It appears therefore, that although we have few remains of the Greek tragedy, yet they are remains of the best masters. There are authorities which say that Eschylus wrote above one hundred tragedies, and the titles of all these have been collected and published by Meursius; seven only survive; the like number of Sophocles and a few more of Euripides comprize all the remains of the Greek tragedy now in our possession: but although these are highly valuable as being specimens of the best masters, it does not follow that they are the best, or amongst the best, performances of their respective authors at all events we can judge but in part from so small a proportion, and as these authors were in the habit of forming their dramas upon plots that were a continuation of the same story, it must be to the disadvantage of any one piece, that happens to come down to us disjunctively, as in the instance of the Prometheus of Eschylus, and more which might be named amongst the remains of the two other surviving poets.

We have now English translations of all the Greek tragedies, and without carrying my remarks any farther than appertains to the poet of whom I am speaking, I should feel it as an injustice to the merit of a very able and ingenious contemporary, if I could mention Eschylus and overlook his translator a work so arduous as that which Mr. Potter has executed, might claim much more indulgence than his performance will ever stand in need of; but these translations, could they be executed up to the full spirit of their originals, can never interest an English reader like his native drama? to the poet they afford a great subject for display in odes and chorusses, and relieve him at the same time from the heaviest part of his work, the labour of the plot;

but with the reader, who cannot judge of their orchestral accompaniments, they will never stand in competition with the activity of the English drama, its warm and rapid incident, transition of scene, variety of character, brevity of dialogue, busy plot and domestic fable. A man of genius, who writes for the closet, may have a curiosity to build a drama upon Greek construction, but he will hardly succeed in an attempt to naturalize it on our stage.

No translator can engage with a more difficult original than Æschylus : time has thrown some sublimities out of our sight, and many difficulties in our way by the injuries of the text: the style of his tragedy bespeaks a fiery and inflated imagination; the time in which he wrote, and his own martial habits, doubtless give a colour and character to his diction; perhaps the intemperance in which he indulged may sometimes give a heat to his fancy more than natural, and there are some passages of so figurative and metaphorical a sort, that I have been often tempted to suppose that his campaigns against the Persians might have tinctured his language with something of the Oriental tone of expression.

- Sophocles, in times more pacific, has a softer versification, and a style more sweet and feeble; of habits and education more effeminate, of a fair and comely person, we hear of him dancing naked round a trophy erected for the victory of Salamis, his lyre in his hand, and his limbs anointed with oil to increase their activity: he studied music and the dance under Lampsus, and in both arts was an adept; he danced at the performance of his own Nausicaa, and he accompanied the chorusses of his Thamyris with his voice and harp: devoted to the fair sex in the extreme, the softness of his natural character is conspicuous in his writings: his pictures of women

are flatteringly drawn, and his style is compared to the honey of the bee for sweetness: the sensibility of his mind was extreme; though he lived near an hundred years, old age did not deaden his feelings, for whilst judgment was passing on his Oedipus Coloneus, the last play he exhibited, his spirit was so agitated by the anxious suspense, that when the prize was at length decreed in his favour, the tumult of passion was too violent for his exhausted frame, and the aged poet expired with joy.

Euripides, on the other hand, was of mean birth, the son of a poor woman who sold herbs, at which circumstance Eschylus points when he says in the Frogs

O thou from rural goddess sprung!

He was educated by his father to engage as an athletic in the Eleusynian and Thesean games; he was also a student in natural philosophy under Anaxagoras, in rhetoric under Prodicus,and a pupil of Socrates in moral philosophy. When he began to study tragedy he shut himself in a cave, wild and horrid and sequestered from the world, in the island of Salamis: he is charged with having a profest 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 before mentioned, the latter, upon being asked why Sophocles did not put in his claim for the tragic chair, replies

Not he, by Jove!

When hither he came down, he instantly
Embrac'd Eschylus, shook him by the hand,
And in his favour gave up all pretensions :
And now, as by Clidemides I'm told,
He will attend the trial as third man,
Content if Eschylus victorious prove;
But otherwise, has said he'll try his skill
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

person of a squalid old woman, and whilst they are questioning who she may be, Blepsidemus cries

out

'Some fury from the scenes of Eschylus,
Some stage Erinnys; look! her very face
Is tragedy itself.'

CHREM.

'But where's her firebrand?

BLEPS.

'Oh! there's a penalty for that.'

That the poet Eschylus was of a candid mind appears from his well-known declaration, viz. 6 That his tragedies were but scraps from the magnificent repasts of Homer;' that he was of a lofty mind is from nothing more evident, than from his celebrated appeal upon a certain occasion, when the prize was voted to his competitor evidently against justice I appeal to posterity, says Eschylus, to posterity I consecrate my works, in the assurance that they will meet that reward from time, which the partiality of my contemporaries refuses to bestow.'

Though the candour of Eschylus called his tragedies fragments or scraps from Homer, and seemed to think it sufficient honour to be able to wield with tolerable grace one weapon out of the armoury of this gigantic spirit, yet I would submit to the reader's judgment, whether the tragic poem does not demand a stronger exertion of the mental faculties, within the compass of its composition, than the epic poem. In a drama, where every thing must be in action, where characters must be strongly marked and closely compressed, the passions all in arms, and the heart alternately seized by terror and subdued by pity, where the diction must never sleep