Thee, Admetus, in the bands
Of her stern unyielding hands
Hath she taken; but resign
Thy life to her-it is not thine
By thy weeping to restore
Those who look on light no more.
Even the bright sons of heaven
To dimness and to death are given.
She was loved when she was here;
And in death we hold her dear:
Let not her hallowed tomb be past
As where the common dead are cast;
Let her have honour with the blest
Who dwell above; her place of rest
When the traveller passeth by,
Let him say, 'Within doth lie
She who dared for love to die.

Thou who now in bliss dost dwell,

Hail, blest soul, and speed us well !'"*

MEDEA.

To combine in the same chapter Alcestis with Medea, may appear like yoking the lamb with the lion; and so it would be, were the Colchian princess the mere fury for which she is often taken. But Euripides had too deeply studied human character not to be aware that in nature there are no monstersnone at least fit for the ends of dramatic poetry; and

* Partly translated by the late Dean Alford. Gray, in his fine ode, "Daughter of Jove, relentless power," had this choral song before him, as well as the verses of Horace which he proposed to imitate.

accordingly his Medea, though deeply wronged, is yet a woman who loved not wisely but too well. Even Lady Macbeth, though far more criminal than the heroine of this tragedy, since she had no wrongs to avenge, but sins for ambition's sake alone, is not entirely devoid of human feeling. With similar truth, both of art and observation, the Greek poet gives Medea a woman's heart even in the moments when she is meditating on her fell purpose.

Aristotle's judgment that Euripides, although he does not manage everything for the best in his plots or his representations of life, is the most pathetic of dramatic poets, is especially true of this tragedy. The hold that it has in every age retained upon spectators as well as readers, is a proof of the subject being chosen well. It was translated or adapted by Roman dramatists; it was revived in the early days of the modern theatre in Europe; it is still, wedded to immortal music, attractive; and no one who has seen the part of Medea performed by Pasta or Grisi will question its effect on an audience.

On the stage Medea appears under some disadvantage. The worse elements of her nature are there active; the better appear only now and then. She is placed in the situation described by Shake

speare:

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream :
The genius, and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection."

"Julius Cæsar."

This is the condition of Medea from her first appearance on the scene to the last; the "little kingdom" of her being is rent in twain by her injuries, her threatened banishment, her helplessness among strangers and foes, her jealousy, her contempt for the meanspirited Jason, her contempt even for herself. That she, the wise, the potent enchantress, should have been caught by his superficial beauty, and not read from the first his real character-are all elements of the insurrection in her nature. We behold only the deeplywronged wife and mother-we do not realise her as she was a few years earlier, before the spoiler came to Colchis, a timid, trusting, and loving maiden, who set her life on one cast. Her picture, as drawn by an epic poet from whom Virgil found much to borrow, may put before us Medea as she was before the ship Argo— "built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark”. passed between the blue Symplegades, and first broke the silence of the Hellespontic sea. She is thus described after her first interview with Jason :—

"And thus Medea slowly seemed to part,
Love's cares still brooding in her troubled heart;
And imaged still before her wondering eyes,
His living, breathing self appears to rise-
His very garb and thus he spake, thus sate,
Thus, ah, too soon! he glided from the gate.
Sure ne'er her loving eyes beheld his peer,
And still his honied words are melting on her ear.”

A little further on we have this description of her :

"She said, she rose;

Her maiden chamber's solitary floor

With trembling steps she trod: she reached the door,
Fain to her sister's neighbouring bower to haste;
And yet the threshold hardly had she passed,
Sudden her failing feet are checked by shame,
And long she lingered there, then back she came.
Oft as desire would drive her forth again,

So oft does maiden bashfulness restrain.

Thrice she essayed to go, thrice stopped, then prone
In anguish on her couch behold her thrown.” *

Such was Medea a few years only-if there be such a thing as dramatic time-before the tragedy begins. Her children are very young. Jason and herself appear to have not been long at Corinth, and so she must be regarded as still in the bloom of her youth and beauty, and not a hot-tempered lady of uncertain age. The desertion of her by her husband has accordingly the less excuse.

There is no prologue to this play, for the opening speech of the nurse- -nurses on the Greek stage perform very similar functions to those of the indispensable confidantes of the classic drama of France-cannot be considered as such. This old servant does not go much into family history; indeed, a barbaric woman— for such Medea is-was supposed by the pedigree-loving Greeks to have no ancestors worth mentioning. She merely lets the audience know the very critical position of affairs between Jason and his wife. The nurse

* Dean Milman s Translations from Valerius Flaccus.'

perceives that nothing but evil can come out of this second marriage-is sure that Medea is plotting some terrible revenge-and tells an old servant of Jason's her own terrors and her mistress's sad condition. He, on his part, brings her news. Medea must quit Corinth on that very day, and take her two sons with her; their father has consented to their banishment, and Creon, king of Corinth, cannot rest until the Colchian witch is over the border. The fears of the nurse harp on the children. She bids them go into the house, and begs Jason's servant,—

"To the utmost, keep them by themselves,
Nor bring them near their sorrow-frenzied mother.
For late I saw her with the roused bull's glare
View them as though she'd at them, and I trow
That she'll not bate her wrath till it have swooped
Upon some prey." ""*

Her just fears are confirmed by the exclamations of her mistress, speaking from within :

"Ah me! ah me!

I have endured, sad woman, endured
A burden for great laments. Cursed sons
Of a loathed mother, die, ye and your sire,
And let all our house wane away."

The nurse remains on the stage when the Chorus of Corinthian women enter and comment on the "wild and whirling words" they have overheard :—

* All the translations are taken from Mrs Augusta Webster's version, poetical as well as "literal," of the "Medea."