delight and admiration on the beauties of the superstructure,-on the fine harmonious dignity of its language, the consistency of its characters, and the awful mysteriousness of its plot. And yet the catastrophe of the piece, which is nothing more than the expulsion of Edipus, is not brought about with so natural an ease as the exclusion of Lear. There is something very mechanical in making the chief incident depend on an oracle : to the Athenians, no doubt, these things appeared in a different light; but to us, who have the happiness to live out of the reach of Apollo and his oracles, it appears a very insipid resource, to rest so much on divine interference :-and we may venture to believe, that this opinion originates not merely in prejudice, but in true taste; because, if it be the province of tragedy to "come home to men's business and bosoms," this effect will be best, if not exclusively, produced by human manners, and human incidents.Horace has accordingly limited this intrusion of the deities by his 66 dignus vindice nodus ;" and we may make bold not only to exclude it from our own tragedy, but to reprobate it in the tragedies of the Athenians.-Now, by this contrivance, Edipus is conveyed out of the city: when the business of the play is over, it is wound up by the enforcement of an oracle.-Lear, on the contrary, by his own conduct, and by the most natural means, is accelerating his own degradation from the very opening of the play; every scene, and almost every speech, brings us nearer to it; the bad passions of his daughters are set at work, their desires inflamed, and their plans matured: at length the eldest of his unnatural children discloses her purpose, by refusing entertainment to his allotted number of attendants; and the old man, inflamed to the height of indignation, and assured that "yet he has left a daughter," who will receive him with filial tenderness, pronounces that bitter curse, beginning “Hear, nature, hear! dear goddess," &c. Upon afterwards experiencing from her sister the same treatment, his indignation is exhausted, and he sinks into a humility proportioned to his former warmth.-In this frame of mind, mingled with a vague and impotent determination of revenge, he wanders forth, not knowing whither he is going; he 66 abjures all roofs, and chooses To wage against the enmity o' the air, To be a comrade with the wolf and owl."-Act II. Sc. IV. All this is conducted in the most natural manner, and forms a striking contrast to the quiet composure with which Edipus retires from the city :—each event is managed in a way suitable to the respective genius of the different authors, and the different kinds of tragedy.-Edipus is dismissed by an oracle; Lear is carried carried away by the irresistible tide of events,—and of events too, which would not have been admitted by the austere taste of Sophocles. For when allowances are claimed for Sophocles on behalf of the rigid laws by which he was confined, let it be remembered, that those laws were prescribed only by the judgment of Sophocles himself, and of his fellow-tragedians. There is always this essential difference between the Greek and English tragedy; that the one is a picture of art, the other of nature. How entirely artificial is the conduct of the sufferings of Edipus! An oracle has banished him from the city, and no sooner does he arrive at the grove of the Furies in Attica, than he immediately recognizes it as the spot on which an oracle had foretold that he should perish. Thus he is introduced to us at the opening of the Edipus Coloneus in the place in which he is to die, and where he has seemingly nothing to do but to die: all the incidents, therefore, of which the drama is composed, are in some degree episodical. Such is the simplicity of a Greek tragedy,—such the utter nothingness on which their noblest pieces are grounded! Lear wanders about in misery and want, amidst cold and tempests, darkness and desolation: his mind, by perpetually ruminating on one mournful idea, the ingratitude of his daughters, is at length subdued into a settled madness, which is pourtrayed by Shakspeare with a terrible sublimity, which every one is constrained alternately to shudder at and admire.-In Edipus there is no madness; though madness might have appeared the natural result of such a series of guilt and misfortune as he had undergone: perhaps Sophocles felt conscious of his inability to do justice to all the rapid succession of images which frenzy would involve; or, perhaps, the still composure of the Grecian stage was averse to the violent agitation of passions, which the madness of such a character would have required. Certainly, Lear, with his impetuous temper and warm sensibility, was, above all other characters, likely to be inflamed into distraction; but, perhaps, Sophocles judged, that he who had been plunged into despair and misery, not by his own crimes, but by the will of destiny, would be armed by patience against this event, and rather compose himself by such complacent reflections on the irresistible decrees of the gods, and his own innocence, as the following τάχ ̓ ἄν τι μηνίουσιν εἰς γένος πάλαι.”—d. Col. v. 964-5, “τοιαῦτα μὲν τοι καὐτος εἰσέβην κακά, θεῶν ἀγόντων· οἷς ἐγὼ οὐδὲ τὴν πατρὶς ψυχὴν ἂν οἶμαι ζῶσαν αντειπεῖν ἐμοί.”- ν. 997-9. So will'd the gods, perchance, in vengeance For some unexpiated crime of old. Such crimes I've done, but all unwillingly: Reflections of this kind, which are scattered throughout all the plays of the ancient tragedy, and which have contributed in no small degree to establish its reputation for morality, are no doubt very valuable in themselves, as they are calculated to promote the great end of tragedy, by making us wiser and better men. But not all the grave sentiments of these scenic philosophers,-not all the morality, the wisdom, nor the feeling, with which the character of Edipus is adorned, is equal in value to those admirable representations of madness, with which Shakspeare has enriched his Lear. Those long declamatory speeches, in which the Athenians appear to have delighted, and which Sophocles knew how to work up with such exquisite art, and, in the present play, with no inconsiderable pathos,—are yet less admirable than those short bursts of passion, which speak the strongest language of nature and feeling, and which no poet (not even Otway himself), has used with a success at all equal to Shakspeare: "Are you our daughter ?"— "I gave you all No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall-I will do such things,― Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand, For lifting food to it?—But I will punish home ; No, I will weep no more.-In such a night To shut me out!-Pour on: I will endure ;— In such a night as this!" Nor shall we any where find so complete a picture of the antici"pated luxury of revenge, as that passage in which the old monarch bethinks him of the stratagem of "shoeing a troop of horse with > felt :" I'll put it in proof; And when I have stole upon those sons-in-law, Such are the beauties for which Shakspeare deserves to be studied as a master of feeling;—such are the excellencies which must lift him above the head of Sophocles, in the delineation of any character of complicated passion. Englishmen have been ac cused of admiring Shakspeare too much: but it is difficult to understand how such a writer can be too much admired, as long as our our prejudices do not seduce us into an admiration of his faults. His faults we do not admire; his indecencies, his occasional profaneness, his inordinate propensity to punning, we resign to unreserved condemnation; but we do maintain, and we will maintain, against all the precise formality of the French critics, that these faults are counterbalanced by such numerous and transcendent excellencies, that he is still the greatest poet the world ever possessed. Let Voltaire and his followers bring the point to the decision of feeling, the great touchstone of poetry,let them advert to the standard of imagination, the "great test of genius,”—and Shakspeare, in spite of his farcical clowns, and farcical Roman senators, is superior to all competitors ;viget quidquam simile aut secundum." 66 nec If, in the conduct of his piece, Sophocles is in some great points inferior to Shakspeare, there is yet one in which he has the advantage over him :-Edipus is accompanied in his wanderings by his two daughters, Antigone and Ismene: the presence of these two amiable females gives an additional charm and a more perfect tenderness to the interest we feel in the sufferings of the aged king. Their filial affection, too, is heightened by contrast with the unnatural behaviour of their brothers; for though neither Eteocles nor Polynices had been the actiye mover of the expulsion of Edipus, yet, as they enjoyed the benefits of it, by being elevated to his throne, he very naturally transfers to them that resentment which he could not vent on the oracle of the god; and the art with which he is represented as alternately inveighing against the barbarity of his sons, and reposing on the patient tenderness of his daughters, is every where admirable. Take, as one instance out of many, a passage in which he is per sonally addressing his elder son, Polynices : “ Οὐ κλαυστὰ δ ̓ ἐστὶν, ἀλλ' ἐμοὶ μὲν οστέα από ἄνδρες, οὐ γυναῖκες, εἰς τὸ συμπονεῖν. ὑμεῖς δ ̓ ἀπ ̓ ἄλλου, κοὐκ ἐμοῦ, πεφύκατον.”.ν. 1860-9. But what avails to weep?-These griefs are mine, And I must wear them, ever while I live, Thou hast heap'd These woes upon me, thou hast banish'd me, And were I left of daughters, as of sons, Defenceless, for thy share of filial love, If Lear's daughters are represented in a light almost too monstrous for their sex, the injuries of the sex are in some degree repaired by the daughters of Edipus. Their affection for their father does not exclude brotherly affection; and when Polynices is on the point of returning, under the curse of his father, to meet his brother in battle, Antigone entreats him with the most earnest tenderness to give up his ambitious undertakings, and avoid the conflict, in which the two unhappy brothers were destined to fall by mutual slaughter. Her ineffectual interference, with her lamentations upon the anticipation of their death,—and the firm, but mournful, resolution of Polynices, are represented in a short scene of the most touching pathos (extending from v. 1414 to v. 1446), not unworthy of Shakspeare himself. The superstition of the ancients attached great influence to curses in general, because, living under the government of deities so mercenary, it was in the power of any offended party to specify his particular curse, and then, by the sacrifice of a hecatomb to bribe this or that god (which ever tradesman he would choose to deal with), and it was executed to his taste. But the curse of Edipus was attended with unusual solemnity, being pronounced in the grove of the Furies themselves, the oval deal, whose very names were sacred and unutterable. Since, therefore, every particular of this curse was to take effect on his unhappy sons, Sophocles was necessarily confined in it by the truth of facts, which subsequently came to pass. It accordingly does not comprise so many branches as the poetical curse of Kehama; but its brevity and simplicity are compensated by its frequent repetition. It is pronounced, perhaps, with the greatest spirit and effect in the personal interview between Edipus and Polynices :— Hence, wretch despis'd! Unfather'd traitor, hence! Ne'er |