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may be traced in his remaining plays, and in the consideration of the principal fragments of such as are lost to us. In the seven plays of Eschylus, three eras of his genius and his architectonic skill may not improbably be discerned. The "Persians" and the "Suppliants" belong to the first. Tragedy had then scarcely departed from the lyric drama,-the chorus was still predominant, and the dialogue in its rudiments, either direct narration, or question and response, or reciprocating speeches upon the same subject:-character and passion were the fruits of a more mature period. In the "Seven against Thebes," we have the forerunner of a new epoch, a stricter dramatic cohesion, a more elaborate diction in the choral songs, a deeper insight into stage effect, and a dramatic character in Eteocles. The remaining Prometheus, the middle piece of a Trilogy, of which the "Firebearer" and the "Unbound" are probably the opening and the close,-indicates a considerable advance in the arts of stage mechanism, and, if we may infer from the higher beauties of the lyric measures, of music also. Dramatic character is likewise more strongly marked in Prometheus and Oceanus, as well as more evenly sustained; although the mythical nature of the parts renders the improved skill of the artist less perceptible to a modern reader. It is a work of the second class. The Oresteia, the sole surviving Trilogy which has come down to us (for the two "Edipus" and "Antigone" of Sophocles do not form one,)-is the consummation of Eschylean art. It is the boundary between the age of imagination and the age of intellect, which it was reserved for Sophocles to represent, and for Euripides to misapprehend.

"The age of Pericles " is eminently, as Mr. Bulwer terms it, "the Age of Art. It was not Sophocles alone that was an "artist in that time; he was but one of the many who, in every "department, sought, in study and in science, the secrets of "the Wise or the Beautiful. Pericles and Phidias were, in "their several paths of fame, what Sophocles was in his." The perpetual felicity attributed to Sophocles, his youth remarkable for beauty and for the successful cultivation of those exercises that give strength, pliancy and grace to the form, and nourished amidst the most inspiring scenes of national greatness and glory, the intellectual triumphs of his manhood, and

his pure and majestic character as an artist, combine to invest him with something of an ideal universality, that neither genius without fortune, nor both if unaccompanied by a catholic harmony of mind and body, can produce. Like our own Milton, he stands at the close of an age,-the limitary column of a generation of statesmen, soldiers and artists, that throws into shade the insane glories of the Cæsars, the unauthorized power of the Medici, and the theatrical pageantry of the French monarchy. Like Milton, too, he survived the age to which he belonged. Other forms of excellence were reserved for the Athenian Intellect, but the symmetrical beauty of the age of Pericles completed its circle with Sophocles, its last survivor.

In his private character, however, Sophocles comes in for rather hard usage at Mr. Bulwer's hands. "In private life," he tells us, "Sophocles was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade." Even the serenity of his temper was, it seems, but a cloak for cowardice. And this imputation serves also for a great modern poet who resembled Sophocles in certain peculiarities of temper and genius. But the whole impeachment rests upon the authority of certain historians in Athenæus. Where certainty cannot be had, we are inclined to prefer even the "declamatory rhapsodies of Schlegel," which suppose a not improbable harmony between the man and the artist, to an equally apocryphal account picked out of the "scandalous chronicle" of antiquity. But the accusing spirit of mediocrity finds its consolation and support in discovering and recording that illustrious men are somewhere calumniated. And Mr. Bulwer judges less wisely than Plutarch, who forbears relating certain things which he cannot fully affirm, out of reverence to the sanctity of human nature.

"A great error," it is correctly and excellently remarked, "has been committed by those who class Eschylus and Sophocles together as belonging to the same era, and refer both to the age of Pericles, because each was living while Pericles was in power. We may as well class Dr. Johnson and Lord Byron in the same age, because both lived in the reign of George III. The Athenian rivals were formed under the influences of very different generations; and, if Æschylus lived through a considerable portion of the career of the younger Sophocles, the accident of longevity by no means warrants us to consider them the children of the same age,

the creatures of the same influences. Eschylus belonged to the race and the period from which emerged Themistocles and Aristides,-Sophocles to those which produced Phidias and Pericles. Sophocles, indeed, in the calmness of his disposition, and the symmetry and stateliness of his genius, might almost be termed the Pericles of Poetry. And as the statesman was called the Olympian, not from the headlong vehemence, but the serene majesty of his strength, so, of Sophocles also may it be said, that his power is visible in his repose, and his thunders roll from the depth of a clear sky."-Vol. ii. p. 521.

Mr. Bulwer's analysis of the Plays of Sophocles, like that which he applied to Eschylus, is a recension of the plots and situations, rather than an æsthetical examination of the tragedies considered as master-works of art. The latter method we were led by his preface to expect would have been the one preferred in a work professing to give a more ample and comprehensive view of the treasures of Greek literature than has yet been afforded to the English public. As it is, however, the author of the "Rise and Fall" has not contributed much to the instruction of the "general reader,"--the class for which these volumes are especially designed,-since from Campbell's lectures, and the English translation of A. W. Schlegel, a not very uncommon book,-nearly all that Mr. Bulwer has told us may be learnt. In his account of Sophocles there is the same want of familiarity with his subject, the same propensity to be rhetorical where clearness and simplicity are alone required, and the same feebleness of grasp in criticism, that are the besetting faults of these volumes. That the author sometimes makes amends by passages of considerable acuteness and well-placed eloquence, increases our regret, that a work-the labour of years-either from being interrupted by more seductive employments, or from the want of sound philological learning (which in such a subject no other qualifications can supply), should not have been a more valuable accession to the history of literature and art. Its chief value will be, not as an accurate guide to the literary history of Athens, nor, although the author has succeeded better in this branch of his subject, as a philosophical commentary upon Athenian politics and manners; but, after the popularity which a name so often before the public has conferred upon it shall have passed away, in its awakening the desire for a more intimate acquaintance with a people not

more remarkable for its triumphs in the field, or its intellectual and artistic pre-eminence, than deserving of respect for its naturally generous and honourable feelings, which neither the ineradicable vices of its institutions, nor its extraordinary temptations as a ruling state, suppressed or extinguished while it was yet possible to contend against the degeneracy of its neighbours and the military resources and ambition of Macedon.

It was our intention to enter somewhat more minutely into the paragraphs devoted to the Sophoclean drama; but having already overstepped our limits, we can only remark upon what strike us as two principal deficiencies in the concluding chapter of the "Rise and Fall." In the comparison of Sophocles with Eschylus, the only two dramas that have come down to us, really parallels, should have been placed in juxtaposition, thereby affording an unquestionable measure of the progress of the art, as well as of the genius of the respective artists. And if, as a learned and ingenious modern critic conjectures, the "Electra " of Sophocles be really a rifacciamento of the "Choephorae " of Æschylus, such as the Athenians permitted to younger competitors for the prize, the contrast would have been equally curious and instructive. The change in the social relations of Athenian women, to be traced in every play of Sophocles, the Philoctetes excepted, which Schlosser attributes to the influence of Aspasia, and of other highly cultivated women upon the higher circles of Athens, is not sufficiently adverted to. Neither is the altered. tone of religious and civic feeling, as expressed by the chorus, pointed out. We have, however, at the close of this chapter, some excellent remarks upon the superiority of Sophocles for representation, and upon his having called into existence the genius of the individual actor which the symmetrical grouping and the complicate evolutions of the Æschylean drama rarely employed. This is one of those redeeming passages which, in the perusal of the "Rise and Fall of Athens," have encouraged us to hope that the two remaining volumes may be more in keeping than those before us with the promises and professions of the preface, and worthier of a veteran author and of "the labour of years."

in 1836:

ARTICLE III.

The City of the Sultan: and Domestic Manners of the Turks By MISS PARDOE, author of "Traits and Traditions of Portugal." 3 vols. Second edition. H. Colburn, 1838.

ALTHOUGH Europe entertains but few correct opinions regarding the social and political condition of Turkey, yet, when we recall the universal ignorance that prevailed on every subject affecting that country and our interests in it, about ten years ago, we cannot deny that considerable progress has been made towards removing many prejudices which were then in vogue. The assertion that the Mussulmans are a race of barbarians encamped in Europe has at length been called in question. The claim to a place for them among the civilized nations of the world is no longer considered as the raving of the enthusiast; and the Sultan may now be termed our “ancient ally," without producing any of those convulsive tirades of patriotic ire which, a few years ago, made the walls of St. Stephen's resound at the imputation of such a contaminating connection. The anathema which Christendom proclaimed against the followers of the prophet, and which united our armies and navies in another crusade against the crescent, has already been regarded by our people as a disastrous stroke of policy, and the most prominent result of that league has been universally acknowledged and denominated as an “untoward event." Apathy is now succeeded by curiosity; the number of books on the East which issue from the press of every country in Europe attests with what avidity information is demanded.

Many statesmen, who saw in the Ottoman empire of the nineteenth century merely the tottering ruins of a once glorious edifice, and who (perhaps to prove themselves true prophets) had set their agents at work to hasten its fall, and dispose of its crumbling pieces in ways the most advantageous to other interests, have paused in their work of destruction, on discovering that the old structure, in spite of the ravages of art and of ignorance, still manifested a firmness at the core

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