surprising. Those who are wont to think the dead languages, as they are called, widely, if not wholly different from the living, will be astonished to see how nearly many of the most peculiar, and, at first view, untranslateable words and turns of phrase are given in the homely but expressive idioms of our own Saxon tongue.

It cannot have failed to strike the tasteful reader that many learned commentators on the classics have been wanting in some of the qualities most necessary to a philosophical criticism. Spending their lives in the study of grammatical niceties, poring fourteen hours a day over manuscript readings, and conjectural emendations, and choral metres and allegorical interpretations, the fountains of sympathy with human feeling have been dried up in their bosoms, the majestic forins. of nature have become lifeless to their eyes, and the myriad voices, uttered from every part of God's world, have grown unmeaning to their souls. The friendly collision of mind with mind in the common intercourse of life, the genial glow of thought in conversation, the softening, refining, animating influence of cultivated society, touch no responsive chord in their hardened natures. For they,

"Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot,

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

Or man, or woman.”

They think every hour given to the calls of friendship, or the amenities of life, lost to the world because it is lost to their barren studies. They are stiff, dry, formal, pedantic; and they write over their study doors, such sage apothegms as Temporis fures amici." How can such people feel the spirit of tragedy, or understand the inspiration of the lyric muse? There have been some learned commentators, to whom these remarks will not apply. Mitscherlich's notes on Horace are touched with the delicate taste of his author. Heyne's commentary on Homer shows a fine appreciation of antique poetry, in the midst of an amazing mass of scholastic erudition. Bloomfield's Eschylus has some specimens of eloquent criticism and beautiful illustration. Arnold's Thucydides exhibits no small amount of minute learning, with a skilful application of all the resources of modern geography and topography, to the clearing up of obscure passages in the difficult text of the histo

rian. Now, in these two tragedies, there are many passages of surpassing beauty and tenderness, which Mr. Woolsey has not passed by unnoticed, like most commentators, or with a cold, anatomical dissection; but his remarks on them are animated by a feeling appreciation of their exquisite spirit, and show a profound knowledge of the niceties of Greek construction happily blended with a taste exercised in the higher criticism of sentiment, passion, and character.

The tragedy of Alcestis has been considered the most remarkable of all the plays of Euripides, for tenderness. The conception of the principal character is touching and beautiful. Admetus is doomed by the terrible decree of fate to an untimely death. Apollo has gained by some art, a hard-wrung consent to spare his life, on condition of another's dying in his stead. His friends and kindred, even his gray-haired father and mother refuse to save the ill-starred Prince. But his young and lovely wife Alcestis resolves to rescue him from his impending fate. This is the leading idea of the play. It is obvious that to carry out this idea in a consistent delineation of character, is no common effort of dramatic genius. It is obvious too that the plot has some difficulties at first sight, which are not easily gotten over. To make us look with complacency on a lovely woman laying down her life for her husband, that husband ought to be a worthy object of such self-forgetting love. But if he asks the sacrifice or even consents to it, he shows a selfish clinging to life wholly at war with that greatness of soul, which can alone bring our feelings into harmony with the action. It must be confessed that Euripides has not kept this revolting view of the plot sufficiently out of sight. The opening scene in the drama gives us the impression that Admetus has gone about among his friends to beg some one to die for him, and that when they all turn a deaf ear, he consents to the death of his wife. Of course, we despise him as a paltry, heartless coward. This impression is strengthened by the indecent language he utters, when his aged father comes to condole with him in his bereavement. But if we look a little more closely into the poem, our first impression is somewhat softened down, and the conduct of Admetus towards his father seems less hateful, on the supposition that the poet meant to represent him so overwhelmed by calamity, that he lost all self-command, and forgot, in the bitterness of sorrow, the respect due to the author of his being. The plot, however,

must still be considered faulty in these particulars. Alfieri has treated the same subject, in perhaps the most beautiful of his dramas, the Alceste Seconda. In unfolding the action, as he conceived it, the Italian poet has brought the redeeming considerations we have touched upon above, into strong relief. So far, therefore, his play is a decided improvement upon Euripides, though in some other points it falls far short of antique simplicity, both in sentiment and situation.

But setting these intrusive suggestions aside, and taking the character of Alcestis by itself, we must pronounce her one of the most exquisite creations of poetry.

"She was one made up

Of feminine affections, and her life

Was one full stream of love, from fount to sea."

She is a being with whom all thought of self is merged in an absorbing love of those to whom she is bound by conjugal and maternal ties. Her character is drawn with unsurpassed delicacy, and every word she utters is in the strictest keeping with the spirit of a noble-minded woman. The scenes between herself and Admetus, when she is about to die, are beautifully imagined. Indeed the poet had upon his hands no common task when he undertook to delineate a being so soft, yet so firm, so gentle, yet so heroical. He had to represent,

not merely a woman with the delicate lines of her moral and intellectual character, her quick perceptions, her swiftly changing shadowy trains of association, her imaginative affections, and her overwhelming sensibilities, but a woman, who, besides all these, was moved by the tenderest love of the wife and the mother; from whom a husband is about to be torn by the will of Destiny; whose children are soon to feel the evils of orphanage. Still more, the will of destiny at last relents. Her husband may be spared but she must die. This is the point where all the feelings of the woman, whose life has been blessed in the possession of a beautifully harmonized spirit, a husband's love, and a mother's joy, to whom the earth, the air, the clouds, the stars, had been perpetual ministers of happiness, sweep over her agitated soul with an overwhelming power. Her husband's life is saved; that is the grand aim of her heroical suffering. But she must leave forever the home of her happiness, and her children must lose forever a mother's love and care. She comes abroad to look for the last time on

the light of heaven. She gazes on the long familiar scenes about her, and the solemn vision of approaching death wrings from her trembling spirit some natural words of sorrow which fill her husband's heart with agony. The destiny of her son and daughter, stir anew in her bosom the tender feelings and anxious forebodings of maternal love. In her farewell to Admetus, she speaks in a tone of the utmost propriety at that sad hour, of the claim her sacrifice of life has given her upon their grateful recollection; and the reply of Admetus breathes the softest spirit of tender melancholy.

It is obvious that it requires a genius touched to the finest issues to support, consistently, the character of a delicate and lovely woman through such heart-subduing scenes, and under such conflicting feelings; and no one who reads the poem attentively will deny Euripides the praise of having completely overcome the difficulties of the problem.

This character is the more remarkable because the feelings unfolded in it are not often brought out in so strong a light by the Tragic poets. The personages of the Attic drama, it has been well observed, have more of the severe simplicity of sculpture, than of the blended harmonies of painting. The affections springing from domestic life, though several memorable examples show that they were well understood, and deeply felt, are not the ordinary groundwork of ancient tragedy. The terrible power of Destiny, which appears in a tempered form in this piece, and human strength battling against it, are the grand central ideas, around which the circle of tragic emotions mostly revolves. But yet, under every form of civil society and religious faith, the ruling feelings of the human heart, the conjugal, parental, and filial affections, and reverence for the source of all good, will from time to time, burst out in the higher creations of poetry, with a brightness that cheers and In moments of poetical enthusiasm, the kindling soul, even of the heathen bard, seems to rend asunder the veil of ignorance, weakness and doubt, and to have a sudden comprehension of those truths, dimly shadowed out by tradition, but set in broad sunlight by the christian revelation. Hence the elysium of Pagan mythology, hence the anticipation of a life to come by the hero of the Iliad, when he mourns in agony over his fallen friend, hence the assured hope uttered by Admetus, of dwelling with his wife, in that world of spirits to which she is hastening.

warms.

We venture to offer a translation of the scene already referred to. Our translation has no other merit than closeness to the original. After a dialogue between the chorus and a maidservant, in which the situation of Alcestis is pathetically described, and the reason given for her appearance, the servant adds,

"He weeps, his dear wife holding in his arms,
Beseeching her that she will not forsake him,
And asks what may not be; for she, bereft
Of strength, and wasting with disease,
Is wearing to the grave; a hapless weight
Upon her husband's arms; but yet desires,
Though scarce a feeble breath of life remains,
To look once more upon the light of day."

This is followed by a further dialogue between the two divisions of the chorus, and then the scene ensues, which the servant has sufficiently accounted for.

"Alcestis. Thou sun and light of day, And heavenly circuits of careering clouds,

Admetus. Beholding thee and me, o'erwhelm'd with wo, Guiltless of crime, yet art thou doom'd to die.

Alcestis. Thou native earth, and thou protecting roof,

Thou wed-bed, in my own Iolcos laid.

Admetus. Rise up, poor sufferer, and forsake me not,

But pray the mighty gods to pity us.

Alcestis. I see the two oar'd boat; the boatman of the dead

Is beckoning me, his hand already on the oar.

Why lingerest thou? haste on; my task brooks no delay :' Thus Charon hurrying, bids me to the realms below,

Admetus. Alas! the voyage that thou speakest of

Is full of wo to me: oh! wo is me.

Alcestis. He leads me seest thou?—to the chamber of the dead;

"Tis winged Hades, with his darkly flashing eye

Gleaming beneath the shadow of his awful brow.

What wilt thou do? oh spare me; wretched is the way I tread.
Admetus. Wretched to all, but most of all to me,

And these thy children who must share my wo.
Alcestis. Oh let me go; oh lay me down to die;
My feet are tottering, death is pressing on;
Dark night already o'er my eyelids creeps.
VOL. XLII. NO. 91.

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