augury is a lie; for it was Edipus, and not Teiresias, who had expounded the fatal riddle of the Sphinx. If it were not for his hoary hairs (such is the king's last threat), he should have had such a bitter lesson as would have taught him the peril of falsehood.

Then Teiresias, "strong in the might of truth," denounces that infatuation and blindness of heart which is far worse than the loss of eyesight. His own mind and reason are clairvoyant, while Edipus is ignorant of his own birth, ignorant of the sin in which he is living. Fatal-continues the prophet, using a bold metaphor is the harbour in which the king has moored his barque, lulled by a vain security, and terrible is the storm which shall soon break upon himself and on his children. A light shall be thrown on this mysterious murder; but

"No delight to him

Shall that discovery bring. Blind, having seen—
Poor, having rolled in wealth,-he, with a staff
Feeling his way, to a strange land shall go.”—(P.)

And with this terrible prediction of the truth echoing in the ears of his audience, the prophet is led from the stage. Even Edipus, scoffer and sceptic though he be, is struck by the reality of the augur's manner, and remains silent and perplexed, pondering over the last

lower world. Among this shadowy throng is the ghost of Laius, his grey hair still dabbled with blood; and, being conjured by Teiresias to declare the truth, he denounces Edipus as his murderer.

A. C. vol. x.

с

mysterious words relating to his birth, which Voltaire has well rendered

"Ce jour va vous donner la naissance et la mort "

while the Chorus cannot restrain their terrible anxiety.

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Who," they ask, can this unknown criminal be, that has dared deeds of such unutterable horror? It is high time for him to fly, swifter than the swiftest steed; for the god of prophecy is already on his track with the tardy but resistless power of doom. Though he lurks in some lonely cave or mountain glen, the living curse will haunt him."

It is hard (they conclude) to disbelieve the prophet of truth-harder still to believe that their king, the wise and good, is a guilty and polluted wretch; and so, until he be convicted by the clearest proofs, they will remember only the good deeds of Edipus.

Creon now enters, and protests his innocence of the charge of conspiracy which Edipus had brought against him; but hardly has he made his protest to the Chorus, when Edipus appears, and angrily upbraids him with treasonable schemes. Creon rests his defence on grounds of common-sense-much in the style of Henry IV.'s famous speech to his son. Who could be so foolish (Creon asks) as to prefer

"To reign with fears than sleep untroubled sleep"?

As things are, he shares with Jocasta the counsels of

the king. All men court and flatter him; why should he barter his ease and pleasure for

"The polished perturbation, golden care,
That keeps the ports of slumber open wide
To many a sleepless night "?*

He has no motive for acting a traitor's part, or for conspiring with Teiresias

"Then charge me not with crime on shadowy proof; For to thrust out a friend of noble heart

Is like the parting with the life we love."—(P.)

But, as Voltaire † observes with regard to this passage, if a courtier accused of conspiracy should defend himself by such a commonplace, he would stand in great need of the clemency of his master. Certainly Edipus is neither convinced nor reassured. Creon's skilful pleading only seems to him to prove that he can show equal skill in weaving plots; and he is proceeding to further accusations, when Jocasta herself enters, and strives to act the peacemaker between her husband and her brother. The Chorus join with her in urging Edipus to forego his unjust suspicions. This is not the first time, says the queen, wishing to reassure her husband, that oracles have played men false. Laius had been warned that he should perish by the hands of his son

"And yet, as rumour tells, where three ways meet, By foreign ruffians was the monarch slain ;”—(D.)

* King Henry IV., P. I. Act iv. sc. 4.

Lettres sur Edipe, quoted by M. Patin, Etudes sur Sophocle.

while the son who was to have killed his father was left to die in the wilderness.

Up to this moment we may suppose Edipus to have been fully assured of his own innocence, and to have regarded the denunciation of Teiresias as the words of a madman or a traitor; but suddenly a chance expression of Jocasta causes a gleam of the real truth to flash across his mind. Where (he asks hurriedly and anxiously) was this spot "where three ways meet"? And the fatal answer comes

"They call the country Phocis, and the roads
From Delphi and from Daulia there converge."

Then Edipus, his suspicions being thus confirmed, in an agony of doubt asks question after question of the queen. Time, place, circumstances, all agree. Link after link in the fatal chain of evidence is closed about him, and each answer only makes it clearer that the words of Teiresias have been all too true. The king in his turn recounts his flight from Corinth, in dismay at the hideous destiny foretold to him by the Delphic god. He tells how on his journey he came to a place where three roads met; how he had been pushed from the road by an old grey-haired man, riding in a chariot, attended by a herald and servants; how blows had followed the insult; and how he had “slain them all." And, oh! the mockery of fate-the fearful "irony" of his threatened vengeance! It is on his own head that he has invoked that binding and irrevocable curse, which would be executed to the full by

the relentless powers of destiny. What man upon earth can be more utterly miserable?

"Am I not born to evil, all unclean?

If I must flee, yet still in flight my doom
Is never more to see the friends I love,
Nor tread my country's soil; or else to bear
The guilt of incest, and my father slay;
Yea, Polybus, who brought me up.
May I ne'er look

On such a day as that, but far away

Depart unseen from all the haunts of men."—(P.)

There is still a faint chance that, after all, Edipus may be innocent; but it rests upon the chance expression of the slave, who had talked of " a band of robbers." Jocasta, indeed, is still incredulous, and is confident that this oracle will be proved as idle as the others; but, at any rate, the slave shall be summoned and examined.

In the pause of the action of the drama, the Chorus, left alone in possession of the stage, draw the same moral from the tale of Edipus which the Chorus in 'Samson Agonistes' draws from him who had been

"The glory late of Israel, now the grief."

Woe to the man who walks proudly, fearing neither justice nor the eternal laws of a God who grows not old-who neither keeps his life from impious speech, nor his hands from profaning holy things. His downfall must be speedy and inevitable