RHYMED CHORUSES.

249

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 to

"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

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.

Professor Aytoun's advice.

They were due to
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

250

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

AIM OF THE GREEK TRANSLATION.

251

the English language an image of Eschylus in every minute verbal feature." He desired that his version of the great dramas should do Eschylus justice in so far that the reader should be satisfied that their author was a man of genius, essentially Greek, imbued with lofty conceptions of the divine sovereignty of Zeus, of the immortal influence of human action, of the impossibility of escape from the barriers within which man's lot is cast, those barriers of human relationship and divine limitation which are imposed on all. And he sought to do this through the medium of a language unsuited to express all that Greek meant when wielded by Eschylus,-unsuited to reproduce his tremendous phrases, his marvellous combinations, but sufficiently worthy to deprive the translator of all apology for failure. In the Preface he says:

If I have failed in these pages to bring out what is Greek and what is Eschylean prominently, in combination with force, grace, and clearness of English expression, it is for lack of skill in the workman, not for want of edge in the tool.

So far he surely attained, and farther; for he achieved some very beautiful renderings in rhymed verse of the more lyrical passages, whether inspired by the sentiment of wonder, of terror, of sympathy, or of grief. In "Prom

ditioned

etheus Bound" he avoided rhyme, the grandeur of its heroic antitheses-Prometheus paying the mighty penalty of his beneficence, Io doomed to suffering for reasons which her will had not conmaking rhyme inadequate to their But in every other play, rhyme corresponding or analogous" to the lyric metre of Eschylus is used, and where it cannot follow the measure of the original, the language employed is called upon to convey its emotional

proportions.

66

character.

Of this rhyme some stanzas may be presented, taken first from one of the irregular and rugged choruses of "Agamemnon," and afterwards from a pæan of vengeance chanted by "The Eumenides" :

"Thus he

Gave his own daughter's blood, his life, his joy,
To speed a woman's war, and consecrate
His ships for Troy.

In vain with prayers, in vain she beats dull ears
With a father's name; the war-delighting chiefs
Heed not her virgin years.

Her father stood; and when the priests had prayed,
Take her, he said; in her loose robes enfolden,
Where prone and spent she lies, so lift the maid;
Even as a kid is laid,

So lay her on the altar; with dumb force
Her beauteous mouth gag, lest it breathe a voice

Of curse to Argos.

IRREGULAR AND REGULAR RHYME. 253

And as they led the maid, her saffron robe
Sweeping the ground, with pity-moving dart.
She smote each from her eye,

Even as a picture beautiful, fain to speak,

But could not. Well that voice they knew of yore;
Oft at her father's festive board,

With gallant banqueters ringed cheerly round,
The virgin strain they heard

That did so sweetly pour

Her father's praise, whom Heaven had richly crowned
With bounty brimming o'er.

The rest I know not nor will vainly pry;
But Calchas was a seer not wont to lie.
Justice doth wait to teach

Wisdom by suffering. Fate will have its way.
The quickest ear is pricked in vain to-day,

To catch to-morrow's note. What boots
To forecast woe, which, on no wavering wing,
The burdened hour shall bring."

In these strophes and antistrophes rhyme is incidentally used, but with effect which consummates the choral form. In the grand strophe and antistrophe from "The Eumenides" which follow, rhyme is regular and sways the form :

"Whoso, with no forced endeavour,

Sin-eschewing liveth,

Him to hopeless ruin never

Jove the Saviour giveth.

But whose hand with greed rapacious,
Draggeth all things for his prey,

He shall strike his flag rapacious

When the god-sent storm shall bray,