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 Atridæ 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 (puádos hôn kaтakappoμévns), we linger on, unmeaning as a dream at mid-day.'

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 moralizing 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 Yet old as they are, the spirit of song blazes lurid forth, hurrying them downsurvives; and now the fated time suggests wards; and no one hears their prayer, but the strain,-how omens met the avengers mischief hunts the man who for a toy, a on their way. And this was the rede of bird of gay plumage, transgresses. And the prophet: time will come when Troy even such a bird was Helen! Lightly she shall fall before the host; but a hostile glided from her home, leaving a legacy beinfluence darkens the future: the goddess hind her, the clash of arms and the battle of the wild-wood tribes is at the throne of stir,-bearing with her a dowry, ruin to Zeus to ask the fulfilment of the sign, Troy. . . . And he, the dishonoured, the prosperous in the main, yet deeply dashed unreproaching! Silent is he he cannot with ill (δεξιὰ μέν, κατάμομφα δέ). Heaven deem her gone: her form will haunt him forefend that she demand a horrid sacrifice yet in every hall where she has reigned as -horrid in itself, and source of future queen: all else in them is a blank; for horror, treachery, and domestic vengeance. the desire of his eyes is gone, and what is Sing woe, sing woe, and well away! (αίλινον, αἴλινον εἰπέ, τὸ δ' εὖ νικάτω) . . . A weight is on their soul, and who shall 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 naught 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

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 murmur, that it was all for one frail wife! Far off sleep the beautiful ; but whispers deepen into curses here at home,-curses which fall not to the ground; for blood will have blood; and glory overmuch is not for good, but calls heaven's lightning down. Ours be no such fortune, but rather the unenvied lot, unharmed, unharming!

Up to this point, at which the chorus seems to be interrupted by a shout of the citizens without, welcoming the arrival of the herald, we can clearly trace the idea of the drama in the lovely ode, which, for critical purposes, we have so rudely anatomized. The chorus endeavour to wake the song of triumph over Troy; but they are impressed with an undefinable though sure foreboding of evil, which always re

turns, however they may try to shake it ing. Here is a problem for the sticklers off; and so offensa resultat imago, the echo for the unity of time. Afterwards, in the of their song comes back upon them. Eumenides, the scene shifts from Delphi Every topic of triumph, by alluding to to Athens, if not also from one part of Trojan misfortunes, suggests the dangers Athens to another. So that the unities of of the Greeks. Nemesis, who waits on time and place may equally be dispensed overmuch fortune, and overweening reck- with. The technical canons of which one lessness of right, bears heavily on those has heard so much from the French school who have sacked a heaven-built city, and of expositors of Hellenic art, are not binddestroyed a sacred kingdom. There is ing upon Eschylus. Indeed, these soblood crying to heaven. There is the mut- called Greek, or rather Gallo-Grecian, unitered curse of those that dare not cry aloud. ties are but a modern forgery, foisting upon And there is a sure avenger for them that Aristotle a doctrine of which he never have no helper! And so they see but little dreamt, and for oneness of conception, for difference between the misery of victor and the living whole of creative poetry, substivanquished, master and captive; and they tuting a dead, mechanical union of parts pray to be delivered from both alike. filling up an arbitrary outline :-one inThese are intimations of evil to come, clear deed, but one as a volume, not as a work is enough to him who hears or reads; natu- one. Like other falsehoods, they are built rally more clear to him than to the chorus upon a truth; and that is, that unity is exthemselves, who are possessed, rapt into cellence, and consistency indispensable. futurity while they utter them; and who, Hence, the more perfectly a tragedy comwhen their dark hour passes, are too much bined all in detail, the more in that point it mixed up with the events to rise to the would approach perfection. Of this excelpitch of their own inspiration, or judge of lence no one was a more consummate masthe fulness of their prophecy. But it must ter than Eschylus. The whole Trilogy is be borne in mind that, even to the hearer a proof of this: for it is one in a sense in or reader, the warning does not stand so which no other dramatic poem extant can startlingly as we have represented it. It be called so. But, in the detail, all minutiæ is all there, but invested in mystery by the must be duly subordinated to the grand art of the poet, which has been taxed to whole; and one essential point in the deficlothe the skeleton which is given above, nition was, that the subject-matter must in a wondrous form of beauty and glory. be of weight and importance (πρᾶξις μέγεθος Exovca), involving therefore various interests, events, and characters, and often spreading over a considerable time, in proportion to that greatness which gives it its fitness for tragic handling. The niceties, therefore, which go by the name of the unities of time and place, will frequently interfere with the development of the plot, in exact proportion to its tragic grandeur :—that is, when the plot is a good plot,' artfully devised and complicated, there will be far more difficulty in accommodating everything to these niceties than where there is little plot or none at all. When such difficulties occur, the minor consideration should give way. In scenes of a purely domestic character, it would be comparatively easy to adhere strictly to place and punctually to time; and hence in the later comedy we usually find this done; because here the intricacies of the plot extend no further than the concerns of two neighbouring families. But it is otherwise in such dramas as we are treating of.

At this conjuncture the herald enters with a thanksgiving for his safe return. He tells of the army's sufferings and triumph; but this is not all. His most important announcement is, that the end has begun. The storm which has been hanging over the Greeks has burst; and the shipwreck of the returning warriors is the earnest of all that the chorus has foretold. In this tempest they lose sight of Menelaus. Probably, indeed, thus much is historical; but it is not introduced here merely as an historical fact. As he does not appear again in the trilogy, some scholars conjecture that this allusion was meant to connect the trilogy with the fourth drama, the Proteus. But this is not necessary to explain it. It is, as has been before hinted, a sufficient reason for his disappearance, that he was one of the two sons of Atreus (or Pleisthenes), on whom vengeance has been accumulating; and that by his being spirited away and lost sight of, the full weight of destiny is concentrated on the one head of the devoted Agamemnon.

The return of the herald follows the signal of the beacons, and is again followed by the appearance of Agamemnon, with little more than two choral odes interven

And here let not the real questions be mistaken: for mistaken it will be, if we are to inquire whether Eschylus leaves time enough to let the spectator or reader think that Agamemnon may have returned. This

nothing to remind us of any want on our own parts, or to suggest that our criticisms might arise from ignorance of the poet's real design. And yet, certainly, such would be the case; the critic of the Agamemnon, as an isolated play, would undoubtedly lay his finger on those little points which are introduced to give connection to the whole trilogy, with the assurance that here was a deficiency, and the satisfaction of thinking that it was on the poet's side and not on his own.*

Whatever our expectations of a catastrophe may have been, the nature of that which takes place, and the proclamation of Clytemnestra by herself as the Até of the family in human shape (pavrašóμevos dè yvvackì νεκροῦ τοῦδ' ὁ παλαιὸς ὁριμὺς ἀλαστωρ, κ. τ. λ., v. 1498,) is of such a nature that we are left full of horror and perplexity morally revolting-if this were all. The emotions are indeed stirred up; but it is to all appearance only a witch's caldron, Double, double, toil and trouble.' No problem in human nature is solved, nor anything done, so far, towards purifying the passions,' modifying, disciplining, or in any way turning them to use,

warn fruitlessly, or it would cease to be destiny. Yet still, with all this preparation, how startlingly does the apparition of Clytemnestra and her fearless avowal come upon us! Agamemnon's death, and all connected with it, now stand out in due proportion; so balanced, indeed, that the chorus is almost at a loss to decide,-for a moment imposed upon by the sophistry of evil passions (v. 1560, seq.) until Ægisthus comes in, and his hateful presence decides them. But are matters to stay here? Can it be supposed that Clytemnestra has really, as she endeavours to flatter herself, laid the spirit of domestic strife, and shed the last blood that is to flow? A modern plot would go no further. But the mind is revolted at this. Whatever plausibilities there were against Agamemnon are annihilated by the monstrous character of her crime; and the scale of Destiny is clearly turning. At this conjuncture there are two or three seemingly trifling incidents artfully thrown in. Ægisthus speaks of his being expelled while in his infancy, to be brought back by Justice in his manhood; and the prophecy of Cassandra and the speech of the chorus carrying us on to the So that the moral effects return of another child, similarly spirited of the single play, as above noticed, would away. In the more modern scheme, this have been bad. But there are the links would all have been lost; and more than which join it to the Choëphora, sufficient this, for the development of Clytemnestra's to suggest the turn which the plot is about character would have been lost too, unless to take, and to satisfy us that the action is the moral of the play had been the triumph tending towards a real end. In the Choëof evil: but the Greeks had too fine a sense phore we find the adulterous pair in fullof harmony to end with such a discord as blown outward prosperity; but the avenger this; and the whole conclusion of the play is at the door-Orestes has been distinctly supplies the links which unite it to that called to the duty of vengeance by the gods; which follows: all is subservient to the his commission is to slay the slayers; and grand design; and, wonderful as the Aga- this is confirmed by Clytemnestra's dream memnon is in itself, it is only to be appre- of evil augury. Still the same care is takciated indeed it is only to be rightly un- en, as in the former plays, to convey, derstood in connection with what ensues. though indistinctly, an assurance that the One can scarcely read the play without be- end is not near: there are marked indicaing taught, by this one lesson, to confess tions throughout that Orestes finds himself how imperfectly those remains of antiquity ill at ease. His whole conduct discloses it can be appreciated, which have come down-vaguely, of course, but it does disclose it to us in any degree imperfect; and how-and communicates to us his own inward much of their excellence may consist in apprehensions. He is, as it were, dragged portions which one would now scarcely miss if they were absent. Suppose that of the Orestean trilogy the Agamemnon only had been extant, as the Prometheus, or the Seven against Thebes are of their trilogies: we should still have had all the delineation of character, all the mastery over feeling and passion, all the power of language, and the essential poetry, lyric and dramatic, of the piece; in short, all the materials for the whole and though we might have complained of something apparently inarti- shall probably find a meaning in many things which

ficial, we should probably have discovered

into the arena, and worked up by the Chorus, by Electra, and finally by the oracular voice of the (probably) unseen Pylades, the representative of the Delphic oracle,t until he does the deed; and when it is done, he still remembers that she was his mother; his disquiet shows itself in bis laboured attempts at self-justification; until finally we see that this way madness lies,' and

This may suggest to us that, if we seek, we seem to us άπροςδιόνυσα in the other plays. + See Mueller.

the dread goddesses of wrath, the Erinnyes, the third play, been chased to Delphi; but appear. We say deliberately appear: for he finds there a respite; the religio loci not even Hermann can persuade us that overpowers his pursuers, and they fall into they are invisible. It is to no purpose to a slumber. Meanwhile, under the direcargue that the chorus does not see them: tion of his protector Apollo, Orestes esthe question is not whether they appear to capes to Athens, where Athena institutes Orestes alone or not; but whether they the court of Mars' Hill, presiding herself, really and externally appear to him, or are while Apollo appears in the double capacithe phantoms of his crazed brain. If they ty of witness and advocate for Orestes; and really appear to him-that is, if they are avows that the deed was done at his bidthere in actual, though not bodily presence, ding, and consequently by the authority of then the spectators must have cognizance Zeus himself—for of them. We appeal to the closet-scene in Hamlet, where the spectators see the apparition of the ghost, and hear his voice, while the Queen remarks