order, found fitter forms in the tradi- | the subject had remained virgin for Shaktionary members of the Saturnian house, spere. The subject of Faust had been than in the more recent and more sharply- treated, well or ill, before Goethe; but defined children of Jove. his is now the "Faust." So of Prometheus the Titan there had been many drawings or busts before, in antique Greek poetry; but it was reserved for Eschylus to cast him in colossal statuary, with head, limbs, and all complete.

His genius was lofty and bold, but rather bare and stern. Luxuriance and wealth of imagination were hardly his; they are seldom found so high as the Promethean crags, although sometimes, under tropical light, they appear in yet Many were the attractions of the subloftier regions, such as Job, Isaiah, and ject for him. First of all, Prometheus the "Paradise Lost." His language is was a Titan-one of the old race who the only faculty he ever pushes to excess. reigned ere evil was; secondly, he was a It is sometimes overloaded into obscurity, benevolent and powerful being, suffering and sometimes blown out into extrava-—a subject to meet and embrace which, gance. But it is the thunder, and no all the noble sympathies of the poet's lower voice, which bellows among those nature leaped up; thirdly, the story was lonely and difficult rocks, and it must be full of striking points, peculiarly adapted permitted to follow its own old and aw- both for the lyric and the drama; and, ful rhythm. fourthly, there was here a gigantic mask At Gela, in Sicily, in the sixty-ninth ready, from behind which the poet could year of his age, died this Titan-banished, utter unrebuked his esoteric creed, and as some think, at all events alienated, express at once his protest against things from his native country. It was fitting as they are, his notion of what they ought that he should have found a grave in the to be, and his anticipation of what they land of Etna and the Cyclopses. There, are yet to become. For these and other into the hands of his Maker, he returned reasons, while the vulture fastens upon the "blast of the breath of his nostrils;" the liver of Prometheus, Eschylus leaps and a prouder and a more powerful spirit into, and possesses his soul. never came from, and never returned to his Maker.

The fable is as follows:-Prometheus, son of Japetus and Themis, or Clymene, "Prometheus Bound" is not the most instead of opposing Jove, as his brother artistic or finished of schylus' plays; Titans had, by force, employs cunning but it is the most characteristic and and counsel. He rears up and arms man sublime. There are more passion and as his auxiliary against Heaven. He besubtlety in the "Agamemnon;" but less stows on him, especially, the gift of fire, intensity and imagination. The "Aga- and enables him therewith to cultivate memnon " is his "Lear;" and the "Pro- the arts, and to rise from his degradation. metheus" his "Macbeth." It was natu- For this crime, Jove dooms him to be ral that a mind so lofty and peculiar as chained to a rock, with a vulture to feed this poet's should be attracted towards upon his liver. But Prometheus, knowthe strange and magnificent myth of Pro-ing that from Io's race would spring a metheus. It seemed a fable waiting for demigod (Hercules), who would deliver his treatment. Thus patiently, from age him from his chains, suffered with heroic to age, have certain subjects, like the firmness; he was even acquainted with spirits on the wrong side of Styx, or souls in their antenatal state, seemed to wait till men arose able to incarnate them in history or song. And it matters not how many prematurely try to give them embodiment! Their time is not yet, and they must tarry on. Twenty plays on Lear might have been written, and yet

the future fate of Jove, which was unknown to the god himself. When this irresistible enemy of Jupiter should appear, Prometheus was to be delivered from his sufferings. The reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim was to be the price of the disclosure of the danger to his empire, from the consummation of his

marriage with Thetis. Thetis was, in sume the sublime attitude of the forgiver, consequence of his disclosure, given in instead of the forgiven. The second and marriage to Peleus; and Prometheus, more probable theory is, that, in the last with the permission of Jupiter, delivered play, Eschylus meant to make it appear from his captivity by Hercules. Such that Jove had been "playing a part,' is the story which Eschylus extended though for the wisest and noblest reasons through three lyrical dramas, the first "hiding himself," as we might say, and and last of which are irrecoverably lost.

that he meant to surprise Prometheus, A difficulty here arises, which has as well as his own servants and the unipuzzled and disunited the critics and com- verse, by producing suddenly the reasons mentators. Does, or does not, Eschylus which had made him assume the aspect mean to represent Jupiter as a tyrant? of the oppressor, and convince even his If not, why do neither Mercury nor victim that his sufferings had been disOcean, who are introduced as his mini- guised benefits. These, however, are only sters, seek to defend his character against conjectures. The poet's solution of his own the attacks of the Titan? And yet, if problem is hid in impenetrable darkness. he does, why should he afterwards, as Were, however, the second of those Shelley remarks, intend a "catastrophe so conjectures allowed, it would, we think, feeble as the reconciliation of the cham-give a clear, consistent, and almost a pion with the oppressor of mankind?" Christian meaning to the whole fable of To evade this difficulty, Shelley, in his the "Prometheus." Man and God are at play, overthrows Jupiter before Prome- variance: the one is abject and degraded theus and Hercules combined. The the other seems cold, distant, and cruel. champion triumphs over the oppressor. Mediators, numerous, wise, and benevoProfessor Blackie, on the other hand, lent, rise up to heal, but seem rather to denies that it was the purpose of the widen, the breach. They become victims poet to represent Jove as a tyrant; but before High Heaven. The Divine Venthat he meant ultimately, in the closing geance, like a vulture, covers them with drama, to unite the jarring claims of both its vast wing. All their inventions add -of Prometheus as the umpire between little, whether to their own happiness or gods and men, and of Jove as possessing to that of the species. They bear, howthe supreme right to rule and to punish. ever, on the whole, bravely; they suffer, But, first, he does not explain the silence of Jove's ministers as to the character of their calumniated lord; secondly, as a writer in the "Eclectic" shows, he wrests the words and misrepresents the character of Ocean, whom Eschylus means manifestly for a timeserver; thirdly, he does not answer the complaints of Prometheus himself, which seem to us on his theory quite overwhelming; and, lastly, he does not throw out the faintest glimpse of what could be the medium of reconciliation which the last play was to develop.

on the whole, well.. Their melodious groanings become the poetry and the philosophy of the world. Their tragedies are sublime and hopeful. A golden thread of promise passes, from bleeding hand to bleeding hand, down the ages. The reconciliation is at last effected, by the interposition of a divine power. A Hercules is at last born, and glorified, who effects this surpassing labour. He shows that God has all along hid intolerable love and light under the deep shadows of this present time. He has punished Prometheus; he has allowed himself to be misrepre- : Two theories occur to us as to this sented; he has suffered man to fall; he knotty point. One is, that Eschylus, in has made the wisest of the race tenfold his "Prometheus Unbound," meant to partakers of the common misery, that he represent Jove as repentant; and, by might at last surprise them by dropping timely penitence, saving his throne, and the veil of ages, and showing a face of inregaining his original character. Prome- effable love, the more glorious for the theus, according to this view, would as-length of the obscuration and the sudden

ness of the discovery. The result is simple and characteristic. Might and heaven on earth-man, his Titan instruc- Force are strongly drawn. They are alike, tors, his Herculean deliverer, and his but different. Might talks confidently, Heavenly Father, united in one family of like a favoured minion. Force is like changeless peace, and progressive felicity a giant Nubian slave "made dumb by and glory. poison." He speaks none, but his silent Our readers will perceive in this a rude frown unites with Might's loquacity in sketch of the great Christian scheme, compelling Hephaestus to do his reluctant rescued from the myths and shadows of part in chaining the Titan to the rock. Paganism. We by no means offer it with The Oceanides utter glorious asides. Has dogmatic confidence, as the one true ex- not every noble sufferer since the world plication. There are, we admit, subordi- began had his chorus, visible or invisible, nate parts in the fable which it leaves un- to sympathise and to soothe him? Is explained; and it assumes a termination not this a benevolent arrangement of the to the last play of the "Trilogy" which great Hidden Being who permits or preis necessarily gratuitous. But it seems sides over the tragedy? Socrates had as probable as any other we have met. friends wise and immortal as himself It affords a striking and curious coinci- around him when he drank the hemlock. dence with some of our Christian verities. When Lord Russell was riding up Tower And, were it admitted, its effect would Hill, the multitude thought they saw be to cast a more pleasing light upon Liberty and Justice seated at his side." the old world-moving story. The storm- And, if we may dare the reference, did beaten rock in the Scythian desert-the not, near a greater sufferer than them all, far lands below-the everlasting snows in the Garden, “ an angel appear from around-the bare head of the solitary, heaven strengthening him?" Even when unsleeping, unweeping Titan-the blister- men supply the other elements of the ing sun of noon-the cold Orion, and the tragedy, God provides the music, which Great Bear of Night, which seem carrying is to soften, to sublimate, and to harmotidings of his fate to distant firmaments nise the whole. In consonance with this, -the faithful vulture, "that winged the Grecian chorus may be called the hound" of hell, tapping at his side with divine commentary, or the running conher slow red beak-the sympathies of solation made in music upon the dark visiters the stern succession of duty- main business of the play. doing ministers of wrath-and, lastly, the avatar of the long-expected Deliverer, shaking the Caucasus at his coming; and the meeting in mid-air of the two reconciled parties, amid the jubilant shouts of earth and heaven-all this would then shine upon us in a gleam, however remote and faint, from the Christian Sun.

From "Prometheus Bound" the Mystery, let us turn to look at it a moment more, as "Prometheus Bound" the Poem. It is the only play in which you do not regret the rigid preservation of unity of place; for the place is so elevated, commands such a prospect, and is so strictly in keeping with the character and the subject, that you neither wish nor could bear it shifted. The play is founded on a rock; and there it must stand. The action and the dialogue are severely

Ocean is a plausible sycophant. Io, although necessary, has the effect of an excrescence, albeit a beautiful one. The prophetic tale of her wanderings is one of those delicious passages, rarely to be found except in the Greeks, or in Milton, in which mere names of places become poetical by the artful use of associations connected with them. In this, which we may call ideal geography, Homer, Eschylus, and Milton are the three unequallel masters. Hear Eschylus:

"First, Io, what remains Of thy far sweeping wanderings hear, and

grave

My words on the sure tablets of thy mind.
When thou hast pass'd the narrow stream
The continents to the far flame-faced East,
that parts
Thou shalt proceed the highway of the sun;
Then cross the sounding ocean, till thou reach

them

Cisthene and the Gorgon plains, where dwell | undaunted, and almost darkens the sun Phorcys' three daughters. Them Phoebus, by his stern soliloquy. In one word, Probeamy-bright, Beholds not, nor the nightly moon. Near metheus is a great, good being, mysteriously punished; Satan is a great, bad being, reaping with quick and furious hand what he had sown; nay, warring with the whirlwind which from that sad sowing of the wind had sprung.

Their winged sisters dwell, the Gorgons dire.
One more sight remains,

That fills the eye with horror: mark me well;
The sharp-beak'd griffins, hounds of Jove,
avoid,

Fell dogs that bark not, and the one-eyed host
Of Arimaspian horsemen with swift hoofs,
Beating the banks of golden-rolling Pluto.
A distant land, a swarthy people next
Receives thee: near the fountains of the sun
They dwell, by Ethiop's wave. This river
trace,

Until thy weary feet shall reach the pass
Whence from the Bybline heights the sacred
Nile

Pours his salubrious flood. The winding wave
Thence to triangled Egypt guides thee, where
A distant home awaits thee, fated mother
Of no unstoried race."

Compare this with Milton's list of the fallen angels, or his description of the prospect from the Mount of the Temp

tation.

It was comparatively easy for Eschylus to enlist our sympathies for Prometheus, if once he were represented as good and injured. But, first, to represent Satan as guilty; again, to wring a confession of this from his own lips; and yet, thirdly, to teach us to admire, respect, pity, and almost love him all the while, able either to state or to solve. was a problem which only a Milton was

plaints of his sublime wo. But no sooner have they left him alone, than he finds a fitter audience assembled around him in the old elements of nature; and, like the voice of one of their own tameless torrents, does he break out into his famous (miscalled) soliloquy. Soliloquy it is none, for he was never less alone than when now alone.

The words of Prometheus are consonant with his character. The groans of a god should be melodious; and not more so were those of Ariel from the centre of his cloven pine, where he "howled away twelve winters," than those of PromeBut Prometheus himself absorbs almost theus from his blasted rock. As Proall the interest, and utters almost all the fessor Blackie remarks, he remained sipoetry in the play. He has been com-lent so "long as the ministers of justice pared to Satan, and certainly, in grandeur are doing their duty." It were beneath of utterance, dignity of defiance, and him to quarrel with the mere ministers proud patience of suffering, is comparable of another's pleasure. Nor does he deem to no other. But there are important those myrmidons worthy of hearing the differences which, in our notion, elevate Prometheus as a moral being above, and sink him, as a brave and intellectual being, far below, that tremendous shadow of Milton's soul. Prometheus deems himself, and is, in the right; Satan is, and knows he is, in the wrong. Prometheus anticipates ultimate restoration; Satan expects nothing, and hardly wishes aught but revenge. Prometheus is waited on by the multitudinous sympathies of innocent immortals; Satan leans on his own soul alone, for the feeling of his fallen brethren toward him is rather the reverence of fear than the submission of love. Prometheus carries consciously the fate of the Thunderer in his hands; Satan knows the Thunderer has only to be provoked sufficiently to annihilate him. Prometheus on Caucasus is not un visited or uncheered; Satan on Niphates Mount is utterly alone, and, though miserable, is

"Oh! divine ether, and swift-wing'd winds,
And river-fountains, and of ocean waves
The multitudinous laughter, and thou earth,
Boon mother of us all, and thou bright round
Of the all-seeing sun, you I invoke!
Behold what ignominy of causeless wrong
I suffer from the gods, myself a god."

We are glad to find that the Professor uses the word "laughter," instead of "dimple," of the ocean waves. It is stronger, and more suited to the lofty mood of the supposed speaker. But in what "part of the Old Testament" is the "broad

Light, a common joy to all,
Thou beholdest these my wrongs!"

strong word laugh retained in descriptions of nature?" The floods, indeed, are said, by a still bolder image, to "clap Shelley was, and had a right to be, a hands," but nowhere to laugh. It is the daring genius. He had the threefold Lord in the heavens who laughs; or it is right of power, despair, and approaching the war-horse who laughs at the shaking death. He felt himself strong; he had of a spear. Inanimate objects are never been driven desperate; and he knew that said to laugh, although it were but in his time was short. Hence, as a poet, unison with the spirit of Hebrew poetry. he aimed at the boldest and greatest The word "multitudinous" does not ex- things. He must leap into death's arms actly please us, nor give the full sense of from the loftiest pinnacle possible. But avapioμov. We are almost tempted to coin all his genius, determination, and feeling a word, and to translate it the "unarith- of having no time to lose, were countemeticable laughter of an ocean's billows." racted in their efforts by a certain morLines are scattered throughout which, bid weakness, which was partly the rein their strong condensation, remind you sult of bodily suffering, and partly of the of Satan's terrible laconicisms. The cho-insulated position into which his melanrus, for instance, says

choly creed had thrown him. He was a hero in a deep decline. Tall, swift, and subtle, he wanted body, sinews, and blood. His genius resembled a fine voice cracked. The only thoroughly manly and powerful

"How should I fear, who am a god, and things he has written, are some parts of

deathless?"

Satan says

"What matter where, if I be still the same?"

the "Revolt of Islam," the "Cenci" as a whole, and the commencement and one or two passages throughout the "Prometheus." The rest of his writings-even In the interview with Hermes, he re- when beautiful, as they generally are, tains the dignity of his bearing, and the and sincere, as they are always-are fearlessness of his language. And how more or less fantastical and diseased. he mingles poetry the loftiest, and protest The "Cenci" itself, the most calm and the most determined, in the description artistic of his works, could never have of the new horrors which he sees ap- been selected as a subject by a healthy proaching his rock; the "pangs unfelt or perfectly sane mind. before;" the hell charged upon hell, that "Prometheus Unbound" is the most are at hand! The earth begins to quake ambitious of his poems. But it was below him. The sky gets dark over his written too fast. It was written, too, head. The thunder bellows in his ears. in a state of over-excitement, produced Hermes leaves him, and the lightning by the intoxication of an Italian spring, succeeds, and "wreaths its fiery curls operating upon a morbid system, and around him." The dust of a whirlwind causing it to flush over with hectic and covers him. Winds from all regions meet, fight, and fluctuate around his naked body. In the distance, the ocean, laughing no more, appears, mingling its angry billows with the stars. And as this many-folded garment of wrath wraps luxuriant as a "Moenad's hair;" its round, and conceals Prometheus from view, his voice is heard screaming out above all the roar of the warring elements the closing words—

"Mighty mother, worshipp'd Themis, Circling Ether that diffusest

half-delirious joy. Above all, it was written twenty years too soon, ere his views had consolidated, and ere his thought and language were cast in their final mould. Its language is loose and

imagery is wilder and less felicitous than in some of his other poems. The thought is frequently drowned in a wild flux of words; its dialogue is heavy and prolix; and its lyrics have more flow of sound, than beauty of image or depth of senti