My object in making a version of these plays has been to present them to the public in such a shape that may prove interesting even to those who are not conversant with the originals.-The principle on which I set out was one laid down by a great authority, that the aim of a translator should be the full and entire sense, and not a servile adherence to forms or expressions. After all the attention I have consciensciously bestowed on this subject, I may perchance hear that I have not sufficiently preserved the sharpness of outline in this old master; that much of the richness of his colouring is lost; that I have not traced him line for line: and if in our language could be found words that are exact synonymes to his, and a correspondent idiomatic phraseology, then indeed, not to be literal, would be little less than sacrilege. It would be equally desirable that the beautiful compound words, with which this writer abounds beyond all others, should be invariably represented in the copy; but what would have been

* Nam adeo verba non curo exprimere, ut ne sensum ubique reddam, quam licentiam in poetis reddendis usurpare mihi conveniens videtur....Nam dum ita anxie se allegant, ut interpretatio кará móda esse videatur, paulo duriusculos versus fecerunt. ERASMUS.

the effect of such an endeavour; to produce a clumsy mosaic instead of painting,* to involve my meaning in twofold darkness, to render my verses hard, dry, and inharmonious, and my work a sealed book to all but the initiated.

I shall not enumerate the different editions I consulted in the progress of this undertaking. None are implicitly to be trusted: I do not speak of the Prometheus, but of the Agamemnon and the rest; nor shall I do more than allude to the correspondence that I have long held with a modern Greek and other learned foreigners on the doubtful passages. Besides which, I possessed the advantage of studying these Tragedies with of the most elegant, not to say the best scholars I have ever known. One thing I still lament, that the Escurial MSS. had not been collated before I began my imperfect and unworthy labours.

two

* There is a German translation of Æschylus, verse for text, by Voss, who is looked upon as infallible by Mr. Kennedy. [The German is an admirable language for mystification.] Potter's Choruses are any thing but Æschylean, his dialogue is undramatic, and he does not always give the right, seldom the entire meaning. It is much to be lamented that we have only got one play by Symonds. He was a scholar and a poet; though occasionally fanciful and paraphrastic; but had I been aware of his Agamemnon, when I began my translation, I should not have exposed myself to a dangerous comparison. There are very many passages in which we differ however; and another version of that inimitable tragedy may not be thought undesirable.

+ Shelley, and Prince Mavrocordato.

Mr. Fedor is now occupied in this undertaking, from which much may be expected. There have been discovered, in the Escurial, several MSS. of the Agamemnon, and I believe of some of the other plays, which it is hoped

Always to point out where I have ventured on a new reading, and my reasons for so doing, would be the province of an editor rather than a translator. I must admit, however, that I have not hesitated in many instances to adopt the better sense rather than the better construction, as an excuse for which it must be remembered, that this author was obscure to the Athenians themselves; hence we may well be allowed to claim for ourselves the latitude of more than one interpretation of him, as the Italians do of Dante, and the Persians of Hafiz, at the present day.

It is a source of inexhaustible regret that, of seventy or ninety plays, only seven should have survived. In them will be found more sublime ideas and images, more real wisdom and eloquence, and, notwithstanding the nature of the subjects, more morality than all the imaginative productions of this age can boast. I am daily more and more convinced that the unexhausted mine of all that is really great in poetical conception must be sought for in the works of the Greek dramatists. So superior indeed is their lyrical poetry to that

will clear up much of that obscurity that every subsequent Edition only serves to increase. These long mislaid MSS. came from the Arabs, and their history is a singular one. They are said to have been stolen from the Library at Constantinople, and taken in a wrecked pirate vessel.

* See the Frogs of Aristophanes, where he ridicules the opening chorus of the Agamemnon, and the chorus quotes, what to us is untranslatable, from plays now lost.

+ It is evident that Milton drew much of his inspiration from the Prometheus, but for which play we should in all probability never have had the

of all other countries, that to render either its force or its beauty by any translation is hopeless. This, in common with all who have made the trial, I experienced. The flashes too of the dialogue, the pathos, the simplicity, the grandeur, the inversions of the style presented no ordinary difficulties, to crown which the text is deplorably corrupt.* In the brief compass of a preface+ I shall not attempt to speak of this divine poet. One remark I cannot however help making, that his countrymen were not unjust in assigning to him the palm above his two great rivals; what Shakespeare is to us he was to the Athenians, and such merited devotion did they pay to his manes, that whoever undertook to write tragedies first sacrificed at the tomb of this great founder of the stage, Eschylus.

Paradise Lost. Every page also of the Samson Agonistes reminds us on what it was modelled.

* I have referred to the text of Blomfield, for the sole reason that it is now most in use. I cannot say, however, that I have followed it, or any text exclusively. As linguists, the Germans are more profound than ourselves, and as annotators have a decided advantage, in the force of their language. I am inclined to think, of English and Latin, from late observation, that even the former is the best medium for comments.

t. It is my intention, when this work is completed, to prefix to it a dissertation on the style and genius of Eschylus, as compared with those of Sophocles and Euripides.

ARGUMENT.

THE chained Prometheus is the representation of constancy under suffering, and that the never-ending suffering of a God. Though he is exiled to a naked rock on the shore of the encircling ocean, this drama still embraces the world, the Olympus of the Gods, and the earth of mortals; all scarcely yet reposing in a secure state above the dread abyss of the dark Titanian powers. This idea of a self-devoting divinity has been mysteriously inculcated in many religions, as a confused foreboding of the true; here, however, it appears in a most alarming contrast with the consolations of revelation. For Prometheus does not suffer in an understanding with the powers by whom the world is governed, but he atones for his disobedience, and that disobedience consists in nothing but the attempt to give perfection to the human race. He is thus an image of human nature itself, endowed with a miserable foresight, and bound down to a narrow existence, without an ally, and with nothing to oppose to the combined and inexorable powers of nature, but an unshaken will, and the consciousness of elevated claims.

The poet has contrived in a masterly manner to introduce variety and progress into that which in itself was determinately fixed, and gives us a scale, for the

I make no apology for taking this argument from Black's translation of Schlegel's admirable treatise on dramatic literature.