upon for "translating" this-for carrying this over to us and making it ours.

In May Mrs Blackie took the sceptre into her own hands, and made plans for her invalided husband for the first time since their marriage. A hydropathic house had been opened at Dunoon by Dr East, which was not a mere cheap hotel, but a practical water-cure establishment. Mrs Blackie inclined to try the new cure upon the Professor, and he, willing to be set upon his feet again by whatever remedy, yielded to her wish. They spent May and June at Dunoon with Dr East, and before six weeks were over, the patient was not merely cured, but was climbing every mountain in the neighbourhood, and singing on their tops a pæan to the Doctor, which resolved itself at last into a prose pamphlet on his treatment. He sent a copy of this to Mr Carlyle, and it was thus acknowledged :-

Many thanks for your friendly remembrance of me at the Water-cure Establishment. I have often thought of that adventure; and believe it might really alleviate and almost free me for a time. But for a cure;-alas! that lies beyond the reach of Esculapian or other aid, and will never be my portion in this lower world! The inner man is too tumultuous for the outer (who is but a lean fellow, as you may see); there, once for all, lies the fact, and no Doctor of Medicine, but only Medea with her renovating kettle (if that terrible process were worth

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while, at this advanced stage of the business), could make a change therein. Happy he who is not lean, if not stupid; next happy he who is of feline fibre, more or less, and can content himself with the inevitable.

Later in the year Mr Carlyle, continuing to be interested in the translation of 'Eschylus,' took considerable trouble to find the right publisher for this canonical book of the "Heathen Bible." He selected G. W. Parker, West Strand, who agreed to publish it at the translator's own expense, as he had already lost considerably by undertaking to launch translations from the Greek. The sum required for its publication was £160, and at first there seemed little hope of providing so much. But Mrs Blackie came to the rescue with a courageous proposal. She had weighed the expense of housekeeping against that of living in lodgings, and suggested that they should sell their furniture, give up the house in the High Street, and live during the session in lodgings near Marischal College. By going to visit friends in summer they might pay for 'Eschylus' at the end of two years. Her plan was adopted, and the horsehair furniture went to the hammer. It may be suspected that she bore its loss with equanimity.

Lodgings were taken in a house in Union Street, just two rooms, to make the economy thorough. The Professors of Marischal College

were scandalised at the indignity, and forbore to visit their colleague. But the friends in Old Aberdeen, who were admitted to confidence, tempered the cold wind of academical dudgeon by constant visits. The manuscript of 'Eschylus' was placed in Parker's hands, and by June it was issued.

Letters from Mr Carlyle, Professor Newman, Leigh Hunt, Arthur Clough, "Orion," and many other qualified judges, poured in upon the translator during the year. Perhaps quotations from Leigh Hunt's letters will have the charm of rarity:

I have read with great interest and refreshment the "Prolegomena," full of musical matters of which I am fond, and to which there is a wonderful dearth of attention amongst almost all English poets,-those counted most musical not excepted,-and am now full-tilt, or rather full tumbling, amidst those billows of song which you have set rolling, and foaming, and harmoniously conflicting, and disclosing their almost too dazzling treasures of expression and imagery, after right Eschylean mode;— certainly no "waveless sea" beneath a "windless air."

And later he wrote:

With the exception of some condescensions to conventional helps of phraseology, chiefly in the rhymed passages, I should say that your version is right masculine and Eschylean, strong, musical, conscious of the atmosphere of mystery and terror which it breathes in, and in

RHYMED CHORUSES.

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all respects deeply feeling. I admire the just and impassioned prominence which your learning and love of music combined have enabled you to give to the lyrical nature of these fine, Cassandra- voiced, ringing old dramas; though I could not but think sometimes of Butler's verses about the gods chancing tó

"Have piques

Against an ancient family of Greeks,

That other men may tremble and take warning
How such a fatal progeny they're born in."

Mr Carlyle was equally eulogistic of the blankverse translation, but, unlike Leigh Hunt, protested against the rhythmic choruses, of which he

wrote:

I have also dipped here and there into the rhythmic matter; find it spirited and lively to a high degree, and indeed replete with ingenuity and talent; the grimmer is my protest against your having gone into song at all with the business.

The rhymes which he abhorred were not attempted in the first cast. They were due to Professor Aytoun's advice. Supping with the Jacobite poet one evening, Professor Blackie had read a couple of the dramas to him, and had invited his criticism. He urged him to alter the blank-verse choruses into rhyme, and except in Prometheus Bound," his opinion prevailed.

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CHAPTER XI.

'ÆSCHYLUS' AND THE GREEK CHAIR.

1850-1852.

'ESCHYLUS,' begun in 1838, had taken twelve years to transmute into English, but only the first three and the last three of those years were specially devoted to the work. It was dedicated to Chevalier Bunsen and Professor Gerhard. The translator likened his labour to that of Medea with her "renovating kettle," "who, having cut a live body to pieces, engaged to produce it again reinvigorated in all its completeness."

In translating 'Faust,' he had aimed at a "recasting" rather than at a "transposing" of the original. So his aim in translating Eschylus' was, in Southey's words, "faithfully to represent the matter, manner, and spirit of the original," rather than to offer "in the guise of