CASS. O me! how fierce the fire is! it comes on me! Сно. O much in suffering, much in wisdom too, Maid, thou hast talked at length: but if in truth Before quitting the subject of the translation for that of the notes, we must pause to commend to the notice of our readers the general criticisms on the Agamemnon, as a drama, contained in Mr. Conington's very able preface. Viewing it,' concludes Mr. Conington, in this light, as a product of an age when art 'was ruder, and human nature itself both developed in a rougher 'form and less completely apprehended, I believe it will be found 'difficult to overrate the Agamemnon.' Very difficult indeed, if, like Mr. Conington, you take the same common-sense view of Æschylus that you would of any modern writer, and give him credit simply for his own ideas, that is, for the ideas which he himself intended to express. But it is a difficulty soon surmounted by the more enthusiastic Germans, who find in a Greek tragedian the revelation which they can see no longer in the Bible. We cannot conceive anything more fatal to truthfulness and healthiness of criticism, and a right appreciation of what is really admirable in a Greek poet, than that system of mystical interpretation of which Klausen's plays are a very mitigated specimen. If this fashion is to prevail, our view of every drama of Æschylus and Sophocles (for Euripides, being the most philosophical of the three, is yet exempt) must shift with the evershifting cloud-sea of German metaphysics. And we cannot help, with some diffidence, expressing our belief that the bent of Æschylus's mind was more political and less philosophical than has been generally supposed, and consequently that more of politics and less of philosophy is to be looked for in his poems. It is clear that to Aristophanes, and the party of which Aristophanes was the organ, their favourite poet appeared to be the representative of the good old times before philosophers were born; and though we do not by any means insist upon this argument as conclusive, it may at least be taken to indicate that extreme subtlety of speculation on moral and theological subjects was not the characteristic of the poet in the eyes of those for whom he wrote. Marathon was the name which he desired to be inscribed upon his tomb. And those who read the Prometheus as a production of the time when Athenian democracy was young, and the Orestean Trilogy as the last work of one about to fly for ever from the face of that democracy when it was approaching its full development, must, we think, see something more prominent than that change of tone on religious subjects which has been so often pointed out. As to the mysteries of Eleusis, which are supposed to have been the channel through which Æschylus derived some deeper views of morals and religion, we are strongly inclined to believe that the Pelasgian worship of Mother Earth which was there embodied was not purer but less pure, not more but less removed from Fetichism, than the Polytheism of the Ionian conquerors. We now pass to the Notes. To convey any notion of the erudition which they contain within the limits of this article, is impossible. We shall follow a method analogous to that which we have adopted in displaying the qualities of the translation, and select some passages of noted difficulty here, as we have selected some of noted poetic beauty there. Mr. Conington prefers English as the language of his annotations, because it is more adapted than Latin for the purposes of subtle analysis-because it cannot form a cover, as Latin does, for all that scurrilous anility and laudatory cackling which disgraced the egregii viri of the old school of criticism-and thirdly on liberal grounds, because it tends to put an end to 'the dogmatic style of notewriting.' We agree, in the main, in all these reasons. Though with regard to the second, we cannot help observing that a comparison between the Latin notes of the good Elmsley and the English 'reprocities' of certain scholars of the present day, show that the adoption of the vulgar tongue is not in itself enough to make scholars talk like men and gentlemen, though no doubt Mr. Conington is right in saying that it may do something. As to the 'dogmatic style' of note-writing and of philological writing in general, to which the language of law and empire,' as Mr. H. N. Coleridge called Latin, is clearly congenial, we admit that it has been carried to very absurd extremes, especially by Dawes. But if the question is between the rationalistic or metaphysical and the phenomenal or positive school of grammar and philology, we must admit a certain illiberal prepossession in favour of the latter. Accurate observation of the phenomena of language seems to us to be both harder and more profitable than that facile though imposing generalization which the metaphysical grammarians and philologians are daily bringing more and more into vogue among us; and the expression of observations, compared with that of a metaphysical account of phenomena, must naturally appear dogmatic. What is the result of this metaphysical philology? Mr. Conington has to complain that 'there is no philosophical grammar of sufficient authority to be made a regular standard of appeal'-' that almost every editor has a grammar of his own.' Naturally-just as every metaphysician has a metaphysical terminology of his own. After all, in Grammar, as in Optics or Acoustics, it is only the secondary laws with which science can be conversant-the primary laws must be left to consciousness, and the particulars to observation. If we are to go on rationalizing without limit, we shall come at last to the predicament of that scholar who threw himself into the sea because he could not discover why Jupiter made Jovis. Let any grammarian tell us why the sign of the dative case is used in English to denote the substantive infinitive, and then we will ask him to tell us also why the sign of the genitive is used in French for the same purpose. Even so common and apparently unobjectionable an instance of metaphysical grammar as the nomenclature of the cases, will be found, on examination, to be by no means free from fault. What can be more absurd, or more calculated to mislead the learner, than the use of the same names, genitive and dative, to denote the ranges of signification respectively embraced by the second and third cases in Greek and Latin? Even the word vocative by no means adequately denotes the powers of the case to which it is applied. It appears to us that it would be almost better for the writer of a practical grammar simply to number the cases, pending that complete and final adjustment of the metaphysical terminology, by the appearance of a satisfactory philosophical grammar, which Mr. Conington pronounces to be still a desideratum, and which is absolutely essential to make the philosophical philologist intelligible to readers who are not familiar with his private nomenclature. But to proceed to the Notes themselves. On vv. 49-51, τρόπον αἰγυπιῶν, οἵτ ̓ ἐκπατίοις ἄλγεσι παίδων ὕπατοι λεχέων σιροφοδινοῦνται, Mr. Conington remarks that ἐκπατίοις ἄλγεσι is taken by Peile and others, after the Scholiast, on the old principle of hypallage, to mean 'grief for the loss of their young:' he himself, rightly as we think, preferring to render ἐκπατίοις excessive. We rather think that the old principle of hypallage' like 'κατὰ understood,' ὕστερον πρότερον, κατάχρησις, and many other venerable euphemisms for nonsense which passed current with the Busbies, and even with the Butlers and Keates, must now give place, and leave the grammatical phenomena which they have veiled open to more rational modes of statement. Πυθιόνικος ὕμνων θησαυρὸς would, we suppose, have been called an hypallage for Πυθιονίκων ὕμνων θησαυρὸς: yet the fact clearly is, that the words ὕμνων θησαυρὸς constitute but one notion; one substantive, in short, with which the adjective Πυθιόνικος naturally agrees. And we believe that half the so-called instances of hypallage may be explained away on the same principle. For example; 'Dare classibus Austros' in Virgil, is said to be put by hypallage for 'dare classes Austris,' which is simply saying that it is nonsense. How would launch the sea into a ship?" instead of 'launch a ship into the sea,' sound in English? Surely the poet might talk with no less propriety of giving their fleet the wind,' by putting the fleet in a way to catch the wind, spreading the sails and so forth, than of 'giving their fleet to the wind.' οὔθ ̓ ὑποκλαίων οὔθ ̓ ὑπολείβων ὀργὰς ἀτενεῖς παραθέλξει. - Vv. 69-71. This is well known to readers of Æschylus as a locus vexatissi mus. We believe there are no varieties of reading, but there are endless varieties of interpretation. These are reviewed by Mr. Conington in a long note, at the end of which he saysA better view of the passage is one communicated to me by Mr. Lingen, of Baliol College, who takes the ἱερὸν to be the 'sinner himself, ἀπύρων being added, more Æschyleo, as a ' qualifying epithet; and compares Eum. 294, 5, where καθιερω“ μένος answers to ἱερῶν, and ζῶν οὐδὲ πρὸς βωμῷ σφαγεὶς modifies 'the sense.' This appears to us to be a very plausible suggestion, supported by a very happy illustration. We have only to go a little further and construe ὀργὰς as desire, (in which we think we are warranted by the etymological connexion of the word with ὀρεγω, by the radical meaning of 'natural impulse or affection, from which the other meanings all diverge, and perhaps also by vv. 215, 216 of this play, παυσανέμου γὰρ θυσίας παρθενίου θ' αἵματος ὀργᾷ περιόργως ἐπιθυμεῖν δεῖ,) and then we shall be able to interpret the passage in a way, as it seems to us, satisfactory in itself and suitable to the context. 'Neither by 'wails, libations, nor tears, will he (Paris) be able to appease ' the intense desire (of the avenging deities) for a sacrifice not ' offered with fire,' i.e. for the punishment of the guilty. βοσκόμενοι λαγίναν ἐρικύμονα φέρματι γένναν, have also given abundant exercise to the ingenuity of commentators. The difficulty is to bring about a union, or some decent semblance of it, between the feminines λαγίναν γένναν and the so-called masculine βλαβέντα. 'Oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together, though expedients very like 'oxen and wainropes' have been tried. By the never-failing πρὸς τὸ σημαινόμενον, βλαβέντα is made to agree with λαγὼ, which is supposed to lurk in λαγίναν γένναν. But this only removes one harshness to make room for another; for the hare in question is most manifestly of the feminine gender. Mr. Conington says, · λαγίναν γένναν-βλαβέντα is an instance of that looseness in 'the use of genders which appears several times in this play, 'and is not to be accounted for so much on the σχῆμα πρὸς τὸ ' σημαινόμενον principle, which would suppose, e.g. τιθέντες in 'v. 544 to refer to ὄμβροι understood in δρόσοι, as by the 'unfixedness of the language at the time Æschylus wrote.' This seems to us to be a far more sensible view of the passage than any of those adopted by preceding commentators; but we doubt whether the doctrine of the mutability of genders is not put rather too widely. Genders are, it is true, among the most arbitrary phenomena of language, but when once fixed they are generally fixed for ever. Perhaps, therefore, it will be safer to say, that both in this passage, and in vv. 560-562, ἐξ οὐρανοῦ γὰρ κἀπὸ γῆς λειμώνιαι |
