Thus Phryne, idealised by art, became Aphrodite, Anadyomene in the hands of Apelles, or Aphrodite of Cnidos in those of Praxiteles.

Childhood obtained its representative in Eros the god of love. Thus, from infancy upwards, even to old age, the human form in all its phases became the object of study to the Greek artist, not to be servilely copied, but to be idealised, to be clothed with poetry, to be divested of everything mean, gross, unspiritual, and embalmed in eternal beauty. And their success is proved by this, that, even with their works before them, modern artists have never been able satisfactorily to imitate their excellences. Of this Winkelmann^[968] mentions some examples which have not come under my own notice. “Although the best modern artists,” he says, “have striven to imitate exactly the celebrated Medusa of the Strozzi cabinet at Rome, which, nevertheless, is not a countenance of the highest beauty, an experienced antiquary will always be able to distinguish the original from the copy.” The same thing is true, he says, with respect to the Pallas of Aspasios, engraved by Natter and others. But this is perfectly intelligible. The original artist, working after his own ideas and comprehending thoroughly his own object, would impart to his creations a flexibility, a grace, a freedom, not to be reached by one whose type existed out of his own mind. For even in literature it is thus—language, malleable, expansive, obedient to control in the hands of the original writer, who breathes into it his own ideas and requires it only to drape them, becomes a stiff unmanageable mass with the imitator like a corpse put in motion by galvanism.

To be conversant with the arts of Greece, is to move among a race of gods endued with eternal youth. In the goddesses the small neck, the undeveloped bosom convey the idea of virgin innocence. The nipple shrinking inward retreats from the eye. Over the visage a radiance indescribable appears to play; the form, whether draped or undraped, suggests the idea of divine unfleeting existence—of the poetry of life and love—such as youth dreams of in its purest aspirations. For the gods our feelings are in a slight degree different. Zeus, invested with the majesty of Olympos, in the fulness of manhood, powerful, beautiful, sublime, awakens in us a mingling of reverence and love, as towards a father. Apollo towers like an elder brother above our heads. Hades, Poseidon, Ares are powers whom we do not love. Mighty they were, but strangers whom our sympathies do not cling to. But Dionysos, with his vine garland and beautiful face of friendship, with Eros and Heracles and the heroic twins and Hephæstos and Seilenos, and the Fauns, with every haunter of grove, or spring, or mountain seem familiar all and formed to inspire and repay affection. They are spirits of joy every one of them. They have lived from boyhood in our dreams, they have constituted one principal link in binding us to the past, one principal argument in favour of Grecian genius: and who can do otherwise than love them? Nay, in some measure, when we consider their manifold escapes from time and barbarism, they appear to us as Othello to Desdemona—we “love them for the dangers they have passed,”—and it asks no faith in miracles to persuade us that they “love us that we do pity them.”

Winkelmann, who on so many questions connected with art has put forward opinions highly just and philosophical, appears to have fallen short of his wonted acumen in the theory he had formed of the beauty of the goddesses. His language in fact descends to puerility where he says:—"Since on the subject of female beauty there are few observations to be made, it may be concluded that the study of it is less complicated and far easier for the artist. Nature itself appears to experience less difficulty in the formation of women than of men, if it be true that there are born fewer boys than girls."^[969] Since the direct contrary is true, this imaginary difficulty of Nature (not to hazard a more sacred word) may be dismissed with contempt; but the remark by which it is ushered in requires to be confuted. Artists are well aware, and Winkelmann himself admits, that the beau ideal of heroic beauty (that for example of Achilles or of Theseus) is merely the blending of feminine loveliness with masculine power, so as to leave it undetermined, from the countenance, to which sex it belongs. And still the beauty of the Grecian youth, where they are beautiful, consists in a near approach to that of the female, so near indeed that they might be easily mistaken for women. If, therefore, the beauty of men when highest and most perfect, consists chiefly in what it borrows from that of woman, the latter necessarily constitutes the apex of human beauty; and the artist whom this conviction guides in his creations, will be the first to rival the great masters of antiquity. Another observation which it is strange to find in the Historian of Art, is that artists draped their female figures because of the little difficulty there is in imitating the naked form. But was it the extreme facility of representing paternal grief that led Timanthes to veil the face of his Agamemnon? In draping their goddesses and heroines, artists were guided by other reasons, of which the principal was their desire to conform to the ideas of the poets and to popular belief.

From the arts the transition is natural to the literature^[970] of Greece, which in the historical period necessarily constituted the principal agent in ripening and stamping their peculiar character upon the fruits of education among the people. Literature is in fact the school-mistress of nations. In it so long as it remains entire, we may contemplate the whole character, intellectual and moral, of the race out of whose passions, yearnings, tastes, and energies it may be said to be fashioned. And this, true of all literature, is especially applicable to that of Greece, which more than any other bears the impress of nationality. Every idea, every image, every maxim, every reflection seems to emanate from one source. Nothing is foreign. Neither the inspiration, nor the spirit which regulated it and moulded it into beauty, borrowed a single impulse from anything existing beyond the circle of Hellenic thought. Greece supplied at once the matrix and the materials, the active power and that delicate sense of beauty and perfection which presided over its organisation and rendered it the delight of mankind.

In characterising this literature many singular notions have been broached. We have been told that its spirit is exclusively masculine, which means, of course, that while it abounds with strength and energy, with sublimity of speculation and impassioned and impetuous impulses, it is wanting in that sweetness, delicacy, grace, and tenderness which confer on the intellectual offspring of some modern nations a feminine aspect. Grecian literature, however, is neither masculine nor feminine, but androgynous like the son of Aphrodite and Hermes. There is no excellence of thought or language, of which, even in its present fragmentary state, it does not offer us some example. There is a predominance, doubtless, of stern grandeur and colossal elevation of thought; but, beside these, we discover frequently modifications of light and airy beauty, infantine purity of sentiment, ease, grace, felicitous negligence, and a dreamy luxury of speculation not to be outdone by the most subtile and fanciful literature existing. If there be a deficiency of any thing, it is of spirituality. The imagination of the Greeks confined itself too rigidly perhaps to this “bank and shoal of time.” Not being able to lift the veil which curtains the realms beyond the grave, it busied itself too little about those things with which the disembodied soul must converse for ever. In most Greek writers there is a visible reluctance to walk amid the forms of Hades. Their fancy will not be conducted beyond the limits of the visible universe, but shudders, rears and reverts its eyes towards the light where alone it finds firm footing for speculation. But on the other hand if it refuse to quit this earthly scene of existence, how glorious is the flood of sunshine and splendour which it pours over it! It is in these walks of literature that we discover truly the freshness and the loveliness of morning. The very clouds that hover over the landscape only add to its majesty, by diversifying the prospect and introducing those shadows and contrasts which the mind delights everywhere to discover.

Poets,^[971] it is constantly repeated, commence in every country the mental movement which evolves civilisation out of the chaos of barbarism; but it remains a mystery how and by what they themselves are moved. There may possibly be something more than a figure of speech in the old affirmation that they were inspired of heaven. Their imagination towered to so great a height that it was kindled by the lamps of the firmament, and may be regarded as that fabled Prometheus who applied the flame of science to the human clay. I do not therefore see what objection can be urged against our maintaining the old doctrine that poets partook and partake still, when their minds are pure, of a divine impulse—that to the infant nations of the earth they were teachers commissioned from on high.

The condition of the mind in those early ages when poets were the only oracles, it is difficult for men surfeited with the luxuries of a prolific literature to comprehend. Among the Arabs of the desert we may still perhaps discover something similar. Deprived of books, but enjoying much leisure, they eagerly treasure up in their memories the moral distich, the apologue, the tale which instructs while it delights, and thus mentally furnished with a few weapons they are often wiser in deliberation, more persuasive in discourse, more ready in action than persons of education in civilised countries, whose intellectual armoury is so full that in the moment of danger they know not what weapon to choose. Poets, among such a race and under such circumstances, feel that they have a high mission to fulfil; their endeavours are not by polished rhythmical trifles to amuse a few rich and noble persons, but to clothe in befitting language and marry to immortal verse those great central truths, upon which the whole system of the future world of civilisation must revolve. We find them always curiously adapting their revelations to the times. First, the great fundamental truths of religion, the basis of the social structure, are infused into the public mind. Next the rudiments of politics and legislation, the precepts of agriculture, the leading rules of the useful arts, the observances of civil life, and the first faint whispers of the passions and affections are treasured up in their lays. Then, growing bolder by degrees, they aim at subduing the whole empire of knowledge, and impetuously, with numerous charms and allurements, hurry mankind forward in a sort of orgiastic rapture to the very threshold of philosophy.

Among the earliest names in the literary traditions of Hellas are those of Olen, Pamphos, Musæos and Orpheus,^[972] who, for their wisdom, are said to be sprung from the gods. They were sacred bards, whose genius obtained for them an ascendency over the minds of their countrymen. Yet all they attempted, perhaps, was to teach the doctrine of prayer, thanksgiving, sacrifice, which, being afterwards misunderstood, caused them to be confounded with those impostors and incantation-mongers, who, in more recent times, granted absolutions and sold indulgences both to individuals and states, with a hardihood worthy of Giovanni di Medici. Musæos, older probably than Orpheus, though sometimes regarded as his disciple, is said by certain traditions to have been a teacher of ethics, who delivered a body of moral precepts in four thousand verses. His country is unknown,—for he is now represented as an Athenian, now as a Thracian,—but his name and the name of Orpheus and Eumolpos are associated with the expiations, orgies, mysteries, celebrated during many ages in honour of Demeter and Dionysos.^[973] We must rest content, however, with very imperfect notions of what they were, for, in looking back at these great men, whom we behold on the edge of the horizon, enlarged like the sun at its setting by misty exhalations, but by the same means rendered dim and obscure, we can form no just idea of their character.

These, however, and such as these, were the men who fabricated the first link in that chain of thought and beauty, which, stretching over the gulf of time and fastened to the skies, still holds up the nations of the earth from sinking into barbarism. Literature is degraded when contemplated as an art or as an amusement. It is a paradise, into which the best fruits of the soul, when arrived at their greatest maturity and beauty, are transplanted to bloom in immortal freshness and fragrance. It is the garner wherein the seeds of religion, virtue, morals, national greatness and individual happiness are preserved for the use of humanity. It is a gallery, where the likenesses of all the great and noble souls who have shed light and glory on the earth, are treasured up as the heirloom and palladium of the human race. It is impossible, therefore, for any but the most sordid minds to look back towards the venerable fathers of literature without a deep thrill of filial reverence and love, conjoined with the generous impulse and yearning desire to enlarge and add fresh brightness to the halo which encircles their names. They were not, what since too many have been, the instruments and panders to the pleasures of worldlings. Conscious of the holy mission wherewith, according to their creed, the father of gods and men had intrusted them, they stood forward as the apostles of truth, encircled by the majesty which a sense of divine inspiration must impart. They felt a harmony within their souls which, in manifesting itself, sought the aid of harmonious language; and hence the precepts of wisdom, distilling from their lips like honey from the honeycomb, moulded themselves naturally into verse, at whose sound the fountains of the great deep of knowledge were broken up, and the windows of heaven opened, and a deluge of philosophy and science and intellectual delight poured forth upon the amazed world.

In what age or province of Greece arose the first minister of this poetical revelation, it is not now possible to decide. The art of writing, however, which the Egyptian king regarded as the enemy of memory, had not passed the Ægæan. The songs men heard were wafted on the wings of music from tongue to tongue, and, by degrees, the professors of this marvellous art, by which the wisdom and the glory of the past were embalmed in the sweets of verse, embodied themselves into a distinct order called Aoidoi or Singers.^[974] The life of these men in the remote ages of antiquity is little known to us. Wanderers, however, for the most part they were, in some respects not unlike the Jongleurs and Troubadours of the middle ages, though occupying a higher station and guided by a higher aim. Their first and ostensible object was, doubtless, to delight; but it is of great importance to inspire men with a delight in lofty and ennobling conceptions,—to withdraw them for a moment from pursuits sordid or brutalising or unmanly, to the contemplation of heroic acts,—of honour, of patriotism, of friendship,—of the great and solid advantages accruing from peace and commerce, and the experience of travel and adversity.

What were the rewards they obtained it is easy to conjecture. They consisted, principally, in the rays of joy reflected back upon them by a thousand happy countenances at once. Gain they neither would nor could regard. He who renders multitudes wise and happy must be happy and wise himself; and wisdom scorns to measure its gifts against gold. The truly wise and great man, therefore, if fortune have originally befriended him, will shower his benefactions, as God his rain, liberally and without distinction upon all; and if necessity compel him to receive some return, his moderation will content itself with the least possible amount. Embraced within the circle of refinement which they themselves had created, however, they gradually became secularised, though we must be careful to distinguish them from their successors of a later age. The prodigious admiration which they and their songs excited may be learned from those passages in Homer where Phemios and Demodocos are introduced, and from that animated dialogue of Plato, in which the rhapsodist Ion describes his office and his audience. It has been justly remarked, that if this man, a mere actor, could hurry into whatever channel he pleased the affections of a whole theatre, melt them into tears, fire them with indignation, or clothe their countenances with the smiles of joy, much more would the poets themselves work upon their passions by an art far nearer nature.

Care must, no doubt, be taken not to confound the Rhapsodists with the Aoidoi who preceded them, though it be certain that the manners and condition of the later race may serve to throw considerable light on those of the earlier. Both have recently much occupied the attention of the learned; and Wolff in particular deserves credit for his defence of the Rhapsodists, into which, however, he was chiefly led by the requirements of his celebrated theory. They were certainly, at first, a remarkable order of men, whom it would be injurious to confound with their frivolous representatives in the age of Plato and Xenophon. Nevertheless, the above distinguished scholar is perhaps inclined to exaggerate their merits, since to them, in his opinion, we owe it that the great Homeric poems have come down to us. But this is taking for granted the matter in dispute between him and his opponents, who maintain that the author of the Iliad and Odyssey possessed both the knowledge and the materials for writing. He, with reason however, assumes that both theatrical and oratorical action found a way opened for them by the rhapsodic art, though its professors were neither actors nor orators, but men exercising an office connected with a peculiar state of society, and no longer existing in modern times.

It has often been supposed, grounding the opinion on a false interpretation of the word rhapsodist, that the members of this fraternity were mere compilers or patchers up of poems from fragments pilfered out of various authors. And, to augment the absurdity, the practice of a recent age has been attributed to remote antiquity, when, as some imagine, the great rhapsodists like a modern lecturer, carried about with them pictures of the subject they were upon, and pointed out to the audience with a stick^[975] the various characters or incidents they might be describing. Another error much insisted on by Wolff, is the supposition that the Homeric poems alone were chanted by the older Rhapsodists, which no doubt is contrary to the testimony of antiquity and to common sense. For, as might naturally be concluded, not only the songs of Hesiod^[976] and the whole epic race were thus publicly sung, but those likewise of the lyric and iambic poets, and the very laws of the state when the legislator happened to have composed them in verse. It must nevertheless be remarked, (though of this Wolff takes no notice,) that so much did recitations of Homer’s works predominate over all others, that Rhapsodists and Homerists were often regarded as synonymous terms;^[977] and even in later ages, when at any rate the art of writing was not unknown, Demetrius Phalereus introduced upon the stage a class of reciters, who, down to the days of Athenæus, enjoyed the name of Homerists. Still, as I have observed above, the works of other good poets were at times recited, as Hesiod, Archilochos, Mimnermos, and Phocylides. Nay, the Rhapsodist Mnasion, as Lysanias relates, used to recite the Iambics of Simonides; Cleomenes, the Purifications of Empedocles, and Hegesius the comedian, the Histories of Herodotus; that is, some portions of them I presume. Certain authors delivered their own productions in this way,^[978] as Xenophanes, who composed both epics, elegies and iambics.^[979]

It has with reason been observed that although the name of the rhapsodic art would seem to have been invented posterior to Homer, the thing itself existed long before, and was held in greater honour than at any subsequent period. In fact, the poets of those times were themselves Rhapsodists, and for many ages the only ones, if it be true that Hesiod^[980] was the first who reduced the chanting of other men’s poems into an art. Afterwards, from the age of Terpander the Lesbian (Olymp. 34) down to Cynæthos of Chios (Olymp. 69) supposed to have been the author of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and a man of distinguished genius, the Rhapsodists sometimes chanted the poems of others, sometimes their own, and occasionally perhaps interpolated new verses into the golden relics of the past, as our modern actors often foist their one-legged jokes into the stage text of Shakespeare. There appears, however, to be no foundation for the notion, that nearly every one of these chanters was likewise a clever poet, which no ancient writer, I believe, asserts, and which the assertions of fifty would not render credible, though the probability is, that of those numerous rhapsodists some were themselves poets, and others desirous, without the genius, of being thought such; so that it is quite as likely that their vanity frequently laid claim to the works of others, where detection could be escaped, as that others were suffered to rob them of their just fame.

They who contend for the flourishing of the system of castes in Greece, would probably maintain that the Rhapsodists constituted from the first a clan, as the Homeridæ are said to have been in Chios.^[981] Among the few arts which commanded the undivided time and study of numerous professors in those ages, that of the Aoidos or Poet, was certainly one, and that, too, the most honoured and revered. Doubtless their characters were pure and noble, to overcome the envy which superior abilities usually inspire. For whether at home or abroad, in their native cities no less than in the public assemblies, and at the festive boards of kings, they were regarded as dear to gods and venerable to men. The Rhapsodists likewise enjoyed the same estimation and led the same kind of life until other studies and other manners, with that most debasing of all passions, the love of gain, brought contempt on their profession and pursuits.^[982]

In the Homeric poems themselves we discover abundant proofs of the high honour in which the professors of the poetical art were held by their countrymen. They fulfilled in Greece^[983] the office performed among the Hebrews by the Schools of the Prophets,^[984] or the solitary possessors of the vaticinatory power who revealed to their countrymen the will of heaven, and taught by what practices it might be propitiated. Some institution of this kind probably existed, as I have already observed, from the very dawn of civilisation which it principally created. Most princes, like Agamemnon, Alcinoüs and Odysseus, retained in their palaces a man at once their chaplain and their laureate, who, when guests foreign or domestic assembled at their board, might administer instruction and delight, by chanting the praises of the gods, the exploits or greatness of their ancestors, or even by delivering precepts in morals or the useful arts. To a poet, also, as to the holiest of guardians, kings entrusted the care of their wives and families,^[985] when departing on distant expeditions; and so great was the veneration paid to their character, that we find Clytemnæstra banishing the poet before she dares to become the paramour of Ægisthos.

But those men of great original genius whose fame spread rapidly, and who probably found superior enjoyment in the independence of a wandering life, not content with the patronage of a single prince, or the admiration of a single people, moved perpetually from land to land, enhancing at once their glory and experience. We in fact discover in Homer, Pindar, and other original poets proofs that the flowers from which they collected the honey of their melodies grew not all on one spot. Odysseus was a type of the bard who sang his adventures, and looking still further back we find the Thracian Thamyris, whom the Muses were said to have punished for his vanity, penetrating into the obscurest parts of Peloponnesos, protected by the sanctity of his character and the reverence due to his profession.^[986]

With respect to Homer, both ancient tradition and the form and spirit of his poems, require us to consider him in this light, though there is no ground for supposing him with Payne Knight to have celebrated the different heroes of Greece for the purpose of ingratiating himself with their descendants.

Those writers who imagine the works of Homer to have been composed fortuitously by a club of poets, all actuated by a blind instinct to produce a number of parts which, when completed, should fit as well together as the several members of a statue, are necessarily desirous to establish two points: first, that the Aoidoi recited their works from memory, and that because, secondly, the art of writing was unknown. By far too much ingenuity has already been expended on this question to allow it to be any longer tempting from its novelty. Wolff and Heyne have obtained all the credit they sought by their visionary hypothesis, and the echoes of their scepticism are not yet silenced in the academies and universities. The argument, derived from the practice of the Rhapsodists, of repeating from memory, is attended by two inconveniences: first, it cannot be shown that the order arose before the art of writing was common; second, these recitations were equally made from memory, not only in the age of Pericles, but down to the latest period of their flourishing. It may, therefore, without the slightest risk to the argument, be granted the academic sceptics that the Rhapsodists recited from memory, even when we know with certainty that they learned the poems from written copies.

To render more credible the notion that the art of writing in the age of Homer was not yet known, great stress is laid on the powers of memory in certain individuals, though from these nothing can in reality be inferred, except, that when necessary, men can certainly remember a great deal. It matters little, however, for my present purpose, whether the Iliad and Odyssey were written by one man or by a hundred; the grandeur of the poetry remains, and to it as a great fountain-head may be traced several principal streams of Hellenic civilisation.

Plato, indeed, who laboured so assiduously in enlarging the empire and corroborating the powers of the human understanding, at times maintained the fancy that little benefit had been conferred on Greece by her bard. He observes, but in a manner so ironical that it is difficult to determine his meaning, that if Homer and Hesiod had possessed the gift of improving their contemporaries in virtue they would never have been suffered to wander about chanting their poems. People, he thinks, would have constrained them by benefits to remain with them, or, not succeeding in this, would have quitted their homes to attend their footsteps, as in his age many did in the case of the sophists.^[987]

At the same time he admits the general opinion to have been that Homer was the great preceptor of Hellas, who taught the sciences of politics and ethics, together with the whole discipline and economy of human life.^[988] Perhaps, notwithstanding his great wisdom and his genius, he looked upon the question from a wrong point of view, regarding poetry as the rival rather than the precursor of philosophy. The mission of the former had, however, in his time been in a great measure accomplished, as far, I mean, as concerned positive teaching; and he did not consider that as civilisation advances and materialises nations the curb of poetry is the more required to check their downward tendencies, and direct their head towards the skies. The object of poetry is to keep alive in the human breast the love of whatever is noble and beautiful, to dazzle the worldling from the worship of gold by showing him something more glorious than anything that gold can purchase, to accomplish the apotheosis of pure affection, of virtue, of disinterestedness, of great passions, of patriotism,—and in Homer all this is effected with a spontaneous energy, which like the ocean appears equal to bear the whole weight of humanity clothed with all its attributes upon its breast.

Greece has no poet worthy to be compared with our Shakespeare and our Milton but Homer, who possesses some advantages over them both. Shakespeare, buoyant and full of life as was his spirit, felt evidently the waves of his imagination lapse at times from about him and leave his mind stranded and bare on the shores of the immeasurable universe. Melancholy creeps over him, like a black vapour, concealing the Titanian head wont to tower above the region of the clouds. Even over Milton’s soul, serene in its fiery brightness as it usually is, I think I discover something which at times obscures his faith in himself and human nature, and produces a flagging of the fancy. But in Homer this never appears. Cheerfully and joyously he pursues his course with eternal sunshine on his brow, and a heart beating full and true, as if the life of all the world were within him. There is no end of his vitality. He seems as if he could never grow old. His strength is inexhaustible. Equal to whatever may happen, he nowhere seems to be hurried by his subject, or compelled to strain a nerve to accomplish what he desires. In himself he appears happy as a god, and only to sympathise in human suffering from the boundlessness of his charity. He comes forth as the sun in the morning, full of brightness, showing all the tears that sprinkle the earth and drying them too, but shedding none. We call him old, though in reality he is all youthfulness and love. Every function of life goes on harmoniously in his frame. He enjoys whatever nature brings within the circle of his experience. He drinks in with rapture the freshness of dawn,—basks smilingly in the blaze of noon,—welcomes the stillness of evening—the solemn grandeur of night. Sleep, too, has for him inexpressible charms, and on the pleasures we taste among its bowers he has bestowed every grateful, every endearing epithet. Milton is far more spiritual, and careers in a course nearer the stars. Shakespeare, in his metaphysical subtlety and yearning to pierce beyond the grave, suggests stranger thoughts, and calls up a wilder world of fancies. But Homer, as if admitted behind the veil, never doubts for a moment. Habitually, too, his thoughts are of action, of man as he is, of the virtue of the citizen, of the soldier, of the husband, of the father, of the son, of the wife. He loved the world and all that it contains. His eye could detect beauty where the atrabilious sceptic beholds nothing but deformity.

Hence the universal fame and admiration of his writings. For, wherever a well-spring of delight exists, the world will discover it and have recourse to it for ever. The tragic poets who took up his mantle differed widely from him both in temper and character. The experiment of civilisation had been tried, and been the cause of less happiness than at the outset it seemed to promise. A spirit of dissatisfaction had consequently grown up in society, which, shaken by convulsions within and assaulted from without by storms, appeared to be fast resolving into its original elements. Upon the minds of the tragic poets there accordingly fell a gloomy shadow. They looked backwards and around them, and were saddened by the view of terrible pictures which the dark pencil of Fate was constantly filling up. The inexplicable influence of events upon the inner organisation of man had caused them too, and their contemporaries equally, to delight in gloom, in slaughter, in revenge, in exhibitions of suffering, analogous in many cases to what they beheld their countrymen inflict upon each other.

Observe the creations of Æschylus:^[989] in them, pregnant all with Miltonic haughtiness, energy, grandeur, we already discover symptoms of profound discontent with the character of actual existence and an invincible yearning towards the past. He seemed desirous to haunt the imaginations of his contemporaries with gigantic phantoms, quarried out of the wrecks of a vanished ethical system, in which such greatness found congeniality and sympathy. His ideas seemed to clothe themselves spontaneously in language of massive structure, like a Cyclopean wall, such as before or since no man ever used. He projected himself by the force of meditation into the heroic spheres, conversed there with mighty shades, acquired among them stern principles of action, of thought, of belief, of composition; and with these he sought to inspire the men of his own time. His object seems less to delight than to overawe, to persuade than to command. His ideas move along the highest arch of imagination which spans the universe from pole to pole, or rise out of a sea of darkness which they illuminate for a moment like lightning flashes in their passage.

All Æschylus’s more marked characters come before us invested with marvellous attributes, and their voices awake a thrilling mysterious echo in the depths of the soul. Prometheus, for example,—who or what in poetry is like him? Some features of resemblance he may have to the Satan of “Paradise Lost,” but only in his indomitable energy, in his unconquerable will; in all other respects he stands differenced from that “archangel ruined” by qualities the most remarkable. Towards mankind he appears in the relation of supreme love. For their sake alone he braves the anger of Zeus, who, in the tempest of vengeance which he pours upon the naked form of this beneficent god, is presented to the mind as a tyrannical oppressor. Again, in the Erinnyes, what mysterious phantoms does he conjure up! The whole scene, where black and blood-dripping they rise before the fancy in the shrine of Delphi, is, beyond imagination, awe-inspiring and sublime. Like Orestes himself, the fancy is haunted, as we read, by an uneasy consciousness of their presence. They appear like the summits of the infernal world, thrust up visibly into the world of reality. They are frightful dreams endued with form and vitality, and walking abroad to scare us even while waking. Never did faith in visionary beings equal in strength the faith which he constrains us to have in these his creations. The scent of blood fills the nostrils as we read. We pant,—we shudder,—we expect to hear their footsteps on the carpet behind us. Nevertheless the effect of Æschylus’ poetry is not, like Byron’s, to humiliate or depress. On the contrary, it imparts to us its energy as we read. It fills,—it expands,—it aggrandises,—it elevates the mind.

Sophocles presents us with a wholly different type of genius. His conceptions, without being gigantic, are still great, and have a richness and roundness something like the form of woman. To him, as to Raffaelle, the world appeared pregnant on all sides with beauty. Yet, there was a vein of pensiveness in his fancy which, running through all his works, imparts to them a witchery independent of the amount of intellect displayed. He never, like Æschylus, transports us into the dim twilight of mythology amidst the nodding ruins of systems and creeds. However antique may be the subject which he treats, his invention gives it completeness, and he brings it out fresh, glossy, distinct, and beautiful as the creations of to-day. Æschylus carries us back to the past, Sophocles brings the past forward to us. By a vigorous exertion of genius he breathes life into things dead; melts away from about them by his warm touch the hoar of antiquity; fills up the outline; freshens the colours; converts them into contemporary existencies. All his sympathies, healthy and true, cling to the things around him: the religion, the form of polity, the climate, the soil of Attica, invested with the beauty which they assumed in his plastic vision, satisfied his desires. What he found not in realities he bestowed upon them. He idealised his contemporaries. His poetry is sunny as the Ægæan in spring, and a breeze as healthful and refreshing breathes over it. Like the nightingale, whose music he loved, it comes to us full of forgotten harmonies, re-awakening all the associations, all the delights, all the hopes and aspirations of youth. Sweet and musical, and replete with tenderness, are his marvellous chorusses. They burst upon the heart like the first note of the cuckoo^[990] in the depths of a forest, curling round the mossy trunks of the meditative old trees upon the ear.