The strangers prove to be Phryxus, the well-known importer of the Fleece into Colchis-here, indeed, accomplishing the adventure, with aid but of the wings of a ship, not, as in the pure fable, on the back of a flying ram, and the companions of his voyage, driven by storm of the past night upon the Colchian coast. Of the noblest Grecian blood, (thus he relates of himself to Aietes,) Jove-descended, but a fugitive from his father's house, and from envy and hate of the second marriage-bed, seeking his fortune among strangers, he came, his father's spies dodging his flight, to Delphos. In the Temple, in which he stood in the light of the evening sun, weary with the burden of his way, and with gazing on the rich wonders of the place, statues and offerings-he had sunk down in sleep. In his dreams appeared the figure of a man, surrounded with light, in naked strength, bearing in his right hand a club, with bushy beard and hair, and on his shoulders a golden ram's fleece, the very "PERONTO," in a word, whom we saw lately, and whom, for the scene does not change, we still see, guarding from his altar the Colchian shores. This illustrious personage graciously inclined himself towards the sleeper, and smiling, bade him "take with him Victory and Revenge," and, unfastening the Fleece from his shoulders, tendered it to him. Awaking at this instant, he perceived standing before him, amidst the glitter of morning sunshine, the same Form in marble, mantled with even such a Golden Fleece, and, on examination, the name "Colchis," graven on the pedestal, an ancient offering, though, it appears afterwards, not directly from the country, of the Statue of this Deity. Boldly construing the vision, or what was but the wonted fairy-work of fancy and the senses blending their play into a human dream-too small wellhead of the stream of ineffable calamity and acting his interpretationhe took off the Fleece from the shoulders of the God, and, lifting it as a banner on his spear, hastened through the temple gates, through the midst of his father's pursuers awaiting him without, the priests and the people all suddenly awe-struck, and yielding him open way to the sea. It seems his vessel and comrades lay expecting him there, for he embarked, he tells us, forthwith,

&

and, with the Fleece flying high, “ golden streamer" from his mast-head, stemmed the raging flood under wrathful skies, to Colchis.

This story, cast in good classical form, graced with something of a voluble and picturesque Greek eloquence, and very apt to the impressible and unwary speaker, is liable to this censure, that it supposes no deeper origin thàn the chance-illusion of sleep, to an Act, namely, this earliest Abreption of this famous Fleece, that carried consequences which to Greek thought involved heavenly leading and peculiar dispensations of wrath, first, an expe dition of heroes and demigods for its recovery, and, finally, the overthrow of princely houses. The story little avails the young adventurer who relates it; for it moves in the breast of his royal auditor no singular favour to himself, who is self-convicted, unless a God gave his dream, of double sacrilegeno belief, anxiously solicited, in the protection of Peronto-no misgiving of the murderous purposes, touching himself and his companions, which had found their way into the heart of Aietes, with the intelligence of their arrival. The strangers are all killed, off the stage, at the King's table; and their leader, Phryxus, who, on noti cing as his friends dropped one by one into strange sleep, the ominous looks, whispers, and gestures of the attendants, has quitted the house in alarm, is slain by the King's own hand, at the foot of his God's Altar.

The Barbarian has flattered himself, that from this slaughter and spoliation of unoffending strangers, he has removed all criminality and all violation of hospitable right, when, by having neither offered nor refused Phryxus his house's shelter and welcome, he had entangled his victim into inviting himself. But the unfortunate Greek, in the instant of his fate, re-annexes, if one may so speak, to the act this much inseparable guilt, by placing in the hands, and therewith in the cus tody, of the for one moment incautious Aietes, his property, the Fleece; thus constituting him, it appears, his Host. The poet's private faith as to the efficacy of one or the other remarkable manoeuvre, is not, indeed, as he does not speak in his own person, easily put past doubt. Yet, that he does not judge the last to have been wholly unsuccessful, and if so, then neither

wholly unrequired, we might seem left to guess, from the ingenious, if we should not almost say excessive pains which he ever afterwards takes to attach the mischiefs successively arising,

and every turn almost of his drama's varying fable, to what the reader, no doubt, will own to be now enough weighted with blood and retributionthe Golden Fleece.

The Second Part renews the history, after an interval, apparently, of years. Medea, stricken, if this can be said, with remorse of her father's crime, (in which, however in a degree minister ing to it, the poet does not consider her as participating,) bowed with agony of the deed-still more, perhaps, with the terrific foresight which haunts her of its consequences-the vision glaring in the prophetess's soul, and refusing to be dispelled, of wrath disturbed out of darkness, inexorable, inexpiable-has fled from human commerce, and shut up in an old desolate tower amongst woods, there mixing past and future in her ceaseless miserable dream, she broods over woe. Hither, by night, Aietes, with his son Absyrtus, now first introduced, comes, seek ing her counsel and succour; for the Revengers, the ARGONAUTS, claiming the spoils of the murdered Phryxus, and above all, the splendid and fatal Fleece, are on his land. Absyrtus, whose innocence of extreme youth, joined with the aspirations of dawning heroism, and with much manly tenderness of filial and brotherly affection, is very happily thought and depicted, leads, with the sprightly pride of a boy, making their way through the thicket with his newly given sword. The old King follows, full of irritation and apprehensions, incensed by the approach of his enemies, trembling at once with belief of their power, and with reflections that rise and are not to be kept down on the cause of their coming, and seeing listeners or spectres, in stones and trees. After some words which explain the posture of affairs, Medea's altered temper, and her manner of life made available by her, it appears, for the prosecution of her magical studies, Absyrtus, at the King's bidding, summons her to descend. She hesitates, till compelled by her father's will and

voice, which, either from an habitual irresistible ascendancy, parental and kingly, held by him over her-or from the sense of duty, she does not disobey. She bears a torch, which the king, whom light offends, desires her to extinguish. He then asks, by what leave, forsaking the protection of the paternal roof, and holding fellowship but with the desert and her own wild mood, she has refused compliance with a message from him, calling her to him. Her answer is in a strain, meant, doubtless, as more deeply tinged with imagination, to be the expression of a mind acting upon itself in long solitude, with vehement and extraor dinary thought. It well expresses, though perhaps too apparently in the forms of a later and different age of thought, one distinguishing constitu ent in our author's invention of his heroine's character-boldly assigned and well applied, for the most part, to support the interest of his poem-and not often much taken out of its dramatic propriety-the Moral Sensibili ty with which he has endowed her→ and to which, if the reader will add passion measureless in depth and force

self-reliance indestructible-and an understanding in comprehensiveness, insight, and clearness, of the highest order he will possess the outline of Grillparzer's Medea. Need we observe to him, that the impressions which she appears here as suffering, the consternation, from retrospect and prospect, fallen upon her spirit, evidenced indubitably in the manner we have described, and seeking utterance in her words, all tell in tragic effect, far be yond the moment of the drama in which they are made present to sight and hearing, that the gloom thus loaded upon its opening scenes, passes not along with these from the spectator's heart.

parties, as are needed to leave Medea at the point of conducting her so far triumphant lover to the cavern, where the ulterior prize of his great adventure is mysteriously and fearfully guarded. The new emotion which invades her bosom, has in a few hours wrought such alteration there, that when, on her reappearance amongst her damsels on the following morning, with which the Second Act begins, one of them, whose charge he was, comes, full of trepidation, to tell her, that, during the confusion of the night, her favourite Tiger-Horse has escaped, she answers simply that" it is well;" -and upon Peritta, whose disgrace is fresh in the reader's recollection, presenting herself to her, to implore as sistance in her distress, her husband having been made a prisoner, and their hut burnt by the strangers, Medea leans her head upon her shoulder and bursts into tears. Either she does not understand her feelings, or seeks to hide them from herself; for, in conversing with Gora (who witnesses all this mutation with surprise enough) on the transactions of the night, she communicates to her her conviction, which the shrewd old woman can by no means be brought to partake, that the stranger, whose sudden presence disturbed her ceremonies, was Heimdar, the God of Death! Heimdar, wont to manifest himself to mortals at the point of their passing under his power -who had come to set on her his seal -(we did not say that Jason, ere he yielded to retreat from the arms of Absyrtus and his followers, had placed on her lips a hasty and unresisted kiss) and presignify her approaching fate. She could know, by the annihilation of her spirit as he stood before her, that he was not of terrestrial birth; as the oppression that gathers over her, the fading away of her senses, and the desire that draws her to the grave, all give promise of her near dissolution. If she has deceived herself, she is speedily undeceived. For her father, entering with her brother, demands account of her conduct, in rescuing the bold violator of her mysteries from the sword bent to punish him, and placing it out of question that he was no God, but a Greek, taunts her quiet endurance of the insult offered her. She is overwhelmed with shame, and impatiently proffers VOL. XXIV.

herself to assist in the destruction of the invaders.

The Scene changes to an open place in the forest, with the King's tent in the background. Eight delegates of the Argonauts appear, on the King's invitation, to a conference. Whilst they await him, under some dismay, from the prolonged absence and surmised possible loss of their leader, Jason and Milo join them. Presently the King enters to the conference. Jason-in whom is fitly represented the adventurer of a desperate, almost of an impossible enterprise, that must speed, not by prudence, but out of the hope of prudence, by a will moving, rushing irresistibly to its aim, kindling at the show of opposition, and leaping, like one allured, into the arms of danger,-in a few words exchanged, so daunts and masters the spirit of the Barbarian with haughty and reckless defiance, as to betray him into acknowledging, after he had denied, his possession of the Fleece: if that information indeed, may be needed, from his mouth, by the Argonauts, who appear to have come well instructed in respect not only to the country which contains it, but the particular art and terrors by which it is secured. The King is not so, however, disarmed of his wiles. A question which he, in his turn, extorts from Jason respecting the tower in the forest, uncovers the power which he holds over him, and he sends for Medea; who brings, as on the like former occasion, the draught, by her father again required, of fatal sleep. She is veiled, but Jason recognises her habit, and though he has till now steadily refused the offer of Aietes' dangerous hospitality, giving solid and plain reasons for doing so, he instantly accepts the offered cup, and would drink, when Medea warns him of the treason mingled with it, and he throws it from him. He now plucks away her veil; and twice saved by her, begins on this plea to press with eager words, the pretensions of his passion; from which she escapes into her father's tent.

The curtain falls and rises again, the interval sufficing to transfer the audience from without to the interior of the Royal Pavilion, into which Jason is seen endeavouring to force an entrance, opposed by Aietes. The Colchian soldiers, hitherto inactive as

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