AN account of the Iphigenia of the poets of ancient Greece is incomplete, if it takes note of the stirring adventures of her youth only; and, stopping short at the sacrifice of Aulis, omits all notice of her after history. The comparison which I lately instituted between Racine's 'Iphigénie' and its far-famed prototype, led me to do this. I propose now to repair my omission, and to complete Iphigenia's story, by giving an outline of another play of Euripides, less generally known in England; his 'Iphigenia in Tauris,' in which he describes her after fortunes. After which, I wish to offer the student (who, more an antique Roman than a Dane" in the range of his poetic reading, feels some interest nevertheless in a successful effort to transfer the beauties of a classic drama into a Teutonic speech) an account of one of Goethe's finest plays his 'Iphigenie auf Tauris.'

To begin, then, with Euripides. When his Iphigenia in Tauris' opens, many years have passed since the sacrifice at Aulis. Great Troy has fallen, after a ten years' siege. The conquerors (all but Ulysses) have returned home. Clytemnestra's terrible revenge on her husband for her lost daughter has been accomplished. She has slain him treacherously, as, laden with spoils and flushed with victory, he came back to his palace. But her deed has displeased the gods; they have not left it unpunished. The young Orestes, that little child who received his sister's last embrace in the 'Iphigenia in Aulis,' having grown up to man's estate, has been enjoined by an oracle to "slay the slayers." He has obeyed, and put his wretched mother to death, and, along with her, Egisthus, the partner of her crimes. Less fortunate than Hamlet, in having had his mother pointed out, as well as her husband, as the object of his vengeance, he

has been also far unhappier than the Dane in having been doomed to live on, after that vengeance was executed. The Furies have seized him as their prey. The blood of a mother (whatever her personal guilt) clings to the miserable hand that shed it, and can be washed off neither by prayer nor sacrifice. Eschylus (rightly judging that obedience to a divine command can involve no man in lasting misery, however it may in temporary suffering) has devoted the third play of his great trilogy to the final deliverance of Orestes from his tormentors. The same, though wrought out in another manner, is the subject of the 'Iphigenia in Tauris,' the fifth tragedy of Euripides in which Orestes bears a part. The other four are-first, his Iphigenia in Aulis;' secondly, his 'Electra,' which represents the death of Clytemnestra and her husband by the hand of Orestes; thirdly, hisOrestes,' in which his mother's death is avenged upon its hero, both by inward and by outward suffering; fourthly, his 'Andromache,' in which Orestes, in a brief interval of rest from wandering finds leisure to avenge his slighted cousin Hermione on her husband Pyrrhus. The fifth and last, the play which we are now considering, despatches the unhappy Orestes to Tauris; there, unknowing, to seek out his unknown sister. For, years before, on the day of the sacrifice at Aulis, Artemis had wafted the rescued Iphigenia over the bright Egean and across the Propontis; then over the Euxine of later times (in those days the Axenus, or Inhospitable), to land her safely in the Tauric peninsula; the spot where the best blood of England flowed so freely but a few years ago the modern Crimea. There in gloomy state rose the temple of the Tauric Artemis, before whose awful shrine the savage inhabitants were accustomed to sacrifice every stran

ger that landed on their coast. They received with reverence the maiden whom the goddess had brought amongst them; but, installed as the priestess of their temple, she was forced to preside herself over the horrors of the human sacrifices. Orestes, pursued from city to city and from temple to temple by the Furies, consults once again the oracle of Apollo. He receives for answer, that he must seek Artemis's temple in Tauris, and bring her heaven-descended statue from thence to Athens; so shall he be set free from his tormentors. Accompanied by his faithful friend and cousin Pylades, the assistant of his vengeance, and now his sister Electra's husband, Orestes undertakes the distant voyage. He undertakes it without any thought of the lost Iphigenia she died to her family and country in his earliest childhood. His only aim is to obtain rest from the horrible chase, in which he has fled for many days, like a frightened stag, before his unearthly pursuers. Iphigenia, on her part, is wholly ignorant of the misfortunes of her house. Had she indeed descended from the fatal altar to the under world, she would have learned her father's and her mother's fates far sooner; as, one after the other, their pale shades advanced to greet her. But as it is, only a few broken rays from the outer world have reached her through the mists of the living death which has so long enshrouded her. It was a beautiful idea to bring together again, after their long separation, this mournful brother and sister. To let these two, almost sole survivors of a famous house, meet at last, each in their utmost extremity; the one of unappeasable remorse, the other of desolate loneliness. To let it seem awhile as though Iphigenia had been set apart so long from the troubled stream of the fortunes of her family, only to be plunged at last beneath its darkest gulfs. As though a new tragedy were to complete the long series of horrors in the race of Pelops, the

slaughter of the brother by his sis ter's hand. And then, to let light break through the gloom; to leave them, as the play concludes, with good cause to bless the gods who had wonderfully spared the life of each to be a consolation to the other.

The Iphigenia in Tauris' of Euripides opens by a prologue spoken by Iphigenia herself, setting forth her birth and her misfortunes. This is the usual way in which Euripides acquaints his audience with the previous events, required to be known for the comprehension of his story. It seems less unnatural here than in many of his plays-an additional proof of his heroine's solitude and sadness!-Racine would have supplied her with a confidante out of the Greek women captive in Tauris, and addressed her explanations to her. But this expedient is generally unsatisfactory; as it seems incredible that two persons long acquainted with one another should need suddenly to be reminded of each other's parentage and history.-After describing her wonderful escape from death, Iphigenia bewails the sad honours of her present office, which have before now constrained her to preside over the shedding of Greek blood. She then goes on to relate the anxiety which a dream had caused her. She seemed, in her sleep the night before, to have left that dreary shore and returned to Argos. There, slumbering in the well-known apartments of her childhood, she was awakened by an earthquake. Rushing forth, she beheld her whole father's house in ruins, amidst which one single pillar was left standing. The capital of that pillar had human hair, and spoke with human voice; and she found herself in tears, sprinkling it as she was accustomed to do the heads of the victims, when she auspicated the human sacrifices. She interprets the first part of the vision rightly. The pillar is her brother Orestes.

But the sprinkling, which really signifies his danger of being sacrificed by her hand, is understood by her to mean that he is

dead already. She retires to prepare libations to his shade with her attendants; determined to pay her only brother such funeral honours as are within her power. The psychological accuracy of this dream is very remarkable. The hopes and fears of the exile's thoughts of home blend in it most naturally with the horrors of her actual life.-As Iphigenia retires within the temple, Orestes and Pylades appear. They have just disembarked, and are beginning to realise all the perils of their errand. Seeing the temple too strong to force by daylight, they resolve to await the night, hidden in a cave beside the sea. When they are gone, Iphigenia comes forth with the Chorus of Greek maidens, whom Thoas, the king of the country, has appointed to attend her. Their lyric strains celebrate her dignity and misfortunes. Exiles themselves, they feelingly deplore her exile. She bewails before them her brother's early death. As she pours her libations in his honour, she laments that she can do no more for that "scion of Agamemnon, the sceptred Orestes," who has gone down untimely to Hades. That upon his tomb she may drop no tear, lay down no votive offering of her hair; she who, far from home and country, has been reckoned there so many years for dead! she, the sacrifice of a father's hand, the bride of death; who now dwells far from the pleasant looms of Argos, amid the groans of victims, by the Inhospitable Sea-" spouseless and childless, cityless and friendless!" Iphigenia's affection for the brother whom she left in infancy, combines with her allusions to the human sacrifices to increase the spectator's dread of what the consequences of Orestes's landing may be.-Her lamentations are interrupted by the coming of a herdsman, who narrates the capture of Orestes and Pylades. He tells how one of his companions espied them concealed in a cave, and how their beauty impressed him as a divine apparition; how, when the rest, shaking off their transitory

awe, advanced to seize them, one of the two strangers (Orestes, once more maddened by the Furies) rushed forth, with fearful exclamations, sword in hand; how, in his paroxysm of rage, he attacked the cattle, which the herdsmen had been washing in the sea, as if charging some invisible tormentors; talking, meantime, wildly of serpents hissing, of a phantom mother whom the Fury was preparing to fling at him: how, as the herdsmen quailed before his onslaught, the terrible madness departed, and he fell foaming at his friend's feet; and how that friend recovered him by his affectionate care: how both resisted manfully to the end; but how both (through the protection of the gods, still unwounded) were captured at length by overwhelming numbers.

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Our king, to whom we brought them," so he concludes, "has commanded them to be sent to thee for the accustomed sacrifice. Rejoice, oh maiden! at this opportunity of revenging thy wrongs on Greeks!" Iphigenia bids them lead the strangers to her, saying that her deeper grief for her brother's death has dried up her wonted compassion for her countrymen. And then she bursts into a passionate lamentation that no wind ever brings Menelaus or Helen to undergo her vengeance for that joyous departure from home, to return no more thither-for that false bridal, that cruel sacrifice, which she never can forget. The close of her speech is an instance of Euripides's disregard for dramatic propriety in behalf of his favourite moral commonplaces. For she expresses a strong and wellreasoned conviction, that the gods can find no pleasure in human sacrifices; that men attribute to them their own evil passions when they suppose that they do so. Euripides should have reserved these "clear views" for some other occasion; not put them into the mouth of a priestess, whose presence at such rites is rendered by them a mere terrified submission to the power of evil, instead of an act of obedience