for Sanscrit. There was no use of going so far out of the way to get an illustration. Any father of a family may find it in his own nursery. It is the most ordinary thing for children before they can speak plain to use the aspirate instead of F in beginning a word, to say honey for funny, &c. They also frequently substitute the aspirate for initial S; the converse of which is seen in aks sal, vin silva, and the like. H is capable of being articulated before S or F can be, and when the organs are imperfect as in infancy or the ruder stages of society, it is used for what afterwards becomes s or f. The Barbarians of the Spanish provinces recorrupted F into H, and it still remains as their written language, e. g. facio, Spanish hacer, &c., though the H is no longer sounded. THE AJAX OF SOPHOKLES.* IT may be unpatriotic, but it certainly is very true, to say that the man in this country who writes a book on a strictly classical subject (unless he be a College Professor, in which case he may induce his pupils to buy it) must make up his mind beforehand to pay his own expenses, and be moreover content with a very limited circle of readers. The English gentleman who compiled this convenient and useful edition of a magnificent play to which most of our students are strangers, has, thanks to his being a foreigner, come out of the affair better than a native would probably have done. Harvard found him a publisher, on the whole he may congratulate himself on having escaped so well. Such books are not read because there are not men educated to read them men who can either comprehend readily or take interest heartily in their subject. A young The Aias (Ajax) of Sophocles, with Critical and Explanatory Notes. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 1851. man in one of our great cities, with a family sufficiently wealthy to support him at the best college in the land, is clapped into a counting-house at fifteen and chained there for seven years. His work is office drudgery, his enjoyments and solaces of the earth, earthy. The Sewer, the Jacobin, and the Ine.rpressible comprise the extent of his literary researches. Derby and Pacalin are his oracles, any space which they leave in his ideas being filled up by Saracco. Delmonico suppers are his positive, a 2', 45" horse his comparative, a share in a yacht his superlative of eartly bliss. Such a man, even should he become opulent at an early period of life, can never be expected to cultivate an acquaintance with the Literæ Humaniores. It is very doubtful if he has the power, and pretty certain that he will not have the inclination to do so. An ambitious country youth is fond of books, goes to college and acquires a reputation there. He is likely to do good in the church, to shine at the bar: perhaps has visions of senatorial dignity. Alas! because facility in composition and public speaking are to be of use to him in his future career, therefore he will do nothing but speak and write from the start, before he has learned to read or think. What classics he deigns to acquire are at most a college Appointment's worth possibly not even that haps just enough to fournish him with an occasional hacknied quotation decidedly not enough to render the classical element a conspicuous one in his thoughts, studies, and tastes. When intelligent foreigners complain of our want of refinement, it is this sort of refinement they mean the critical and aesthetic sympathies of educated literary men and well-read gentlemen, not the refinement of dresses and dinners, French clothes and French dances, of which we denizens of the Atlantic cities have enough and somewhat too much. --- per Shockingly aristocratic and monarchical and unAmerican these remarks of ours! At least there will be plenty of charitable people to say so, for our popular mind has grown "tender and irritable," like that of the decadent democracy described by Plato; even as a spoiled child or a spoiled woman, it will be found fault with in nothing. You can't say a word about Bruin the niggerdealer, or Grabster of the Bath Hotel, or the Morning Sewer, but some one will raise the hue and cry after you as an enemy of "our free institutions." O blatant individual, are Bruin and Grabster and the Sewer integral parts of our government and institutions? If so, then have we institutions not altogether perfect, but imperatively demanding somewhat of reform. But we trust that they two of them at least are not institutions at all, but monstrous excrescences to be lopped off from the body social and sent to their own place. Indignant democrat, thou hast a friend or a brother perhaps, a good man and clever, respected and loved by thee above all other men. Wouldst thou, therefore, insist that everything about him shall be deemed perfect by all the world praise his snub nose, for instance, as an aquiline, and quarrel with all who shall not confess it the purest Roman? If so, thou art very blind or a sad toady. Go, take a lesson from John Bull, whose sauciness thou art wont to wax wroth with, forgetting that he is just as saucy at home. John is a patriot every inch of him, and thinks enough yea, quite enough of himself and his country; yet is he not slow to revile and ridicule the abuses thereof. Can we expect him to be more civil to us than he is to his own people? When the Times compares Lords Brougham and Campbell to a couple of Scotch terriers, is it surprising that it should speak with small respect of Senator Seward or Editor Greeley? Thackeray wrote a book on English snobs and showed up a great many of the "institutions" of his fatherland in very large type. We think we see him writing a book about the Snobs of America and some of the said snobs reading it. But all this while we are keeping you away from our play. Draw up the curtain then or rather let it down, for the classic curtain did not rise from the stage, but sank beneath it. The contest for the arms of Achilles is decided. The judges have given them to the eloquent man in preference to the brave_man. Disappointment drives the defeated candidate mad; he rushes out on the sheep and cattle of the army and slaughters them instead of the Grecian chiefs. Ulysses will play the spy on his unfortunate rival, and here the drama opens. The wily son of Laertes encounters his patron goddes near the tent of Ajax. And here let us make a note. The uninterrupted stateliness of the classical drama, its - exclusion of vulgar persons, low words, undignified ideas, are often complacently dwelt on by those who are not inclined to over admiration of the romantic school. Now, of the pseudo classic drama, as we have it in Racine and Alfieri, this may be true enough, but it certainly is not true of the old Greek drama. There is in it a great deal of the comic or semi-comic directly or indirectly developed by the inferior characters. Eschylus is sufficiently prone to magniloquence, yet with all his ρήμαθ' ιππόκρηημνα, he makes the female attendant in the Choephora talk about some very ordinary operations of life, and there are clearly comic points in the Guard's prologue to the Agamemnon. The whole run of Euripides' Alcestis-Hercules kicking up a row in the house, the supremely farcical idea of Admetus slanging his father for not offering to die instead of him, and so forth might furnish us with a still stronger case, were it not now generally agreed among scholars that the Alcestis was not a tragedy at all, but a species of genteel comedy. In this very play Ulysses makes some fun. First of all he is afraid of Ajax: "What are you about, Minerva? For God's sake don't bring him out!" And then when she taunts him for his cowardice, he tries to look big and declares that "he would not have stood out of Ajax's way even when he was in his right mind." Far enough out of it now is the poor son of Telamon, killing and torturing sheep whom he takes for the Atride and Ulysses. The goddess and her protégé retire, and the chorus (of sailors from Salamis) advance, bewailing the calamity of their chief, and seeking to investigate further the truth of the reports respecting him. Forth comes to them Tecmessa, the captive but loving mistress of Ajax. From her they learn their lord's condition. The frantic fit has left him; he sits fallen among the fallen carcases, in a state of despondency still worse than his former phrensy. Even as she speaks the inner doors are opened (ἀνοίχεται ἡ σκηνή) and the hero is seen in his tent surrounded by the slaughtered cattle. He advances; almost his first words are a prayer for death: "You are my only friends, therefore kill me." The chorus is bewildered after the usual manner of Greek choruses they "neither know how to stop him or how to let him go on." He will not be comforted; his fortune is now in accordance with his name (Alas), he may now cry at (alas!) many times. Every one hates him. Shall he go home over the Ægean sea? No, he cannot bear to behold the face of his father, Telamon. Shall he rush upon the Trojan fortifications and die fighting! No, thus he might please the Atridæ. He will do something desperate. (In this speech we note another community of conceit between the classic and romantic drama the verbal quibble, the use of the paronomasia, or in plain English, the pun. So in the Agamemnon Helen is called έλανδρος, ελέπτολις, a hell of men and cities, as it has been translated.) Tecmessa interposes. Long since deprived of a home and a father, her safety has been bound up in that of her conqueror; she begs him not to expose her and their child unprotected to the insults of enemies. He persists in taking leave of the infant, Eurysaces, whom he commends to the seamen; at length, however, the entreaties of the captive princess seem to move him; in beautifully flowing verse (would that we could translate it better!) he expresses his change of purpose: The long immeasurable lapse of time Brings forth all hidden things, conceals all known. The fearful oath, the hardened mind o'ercome. |