be admitted that he purposely avoids the use of direct and unequivocal terms in announcing what he knew to be dreadful and afflicting to them, without granting that he wished to disguise his intentions from them. Natural and common humanity would have forbidden him to shock the feelings of persons to whom his life was so dear, by a distinct declaration of his final resolution. On the other hand, to ask why then he touches on the painful subject at all, would be unfairly to call in question the undoubted conventional privileges of the dramatic poet. Ajax must give vent to the thoughts and feelings under which he is about to act: but he may be expected to do so with a considerate reserve dictated by his situation. If after making this necessary allowance we proceed to examine his language, we shall perhaps find that though it is certainly adapted to raise hopes that he has abandoned his design of self-destruction, it implies nothing but what he may be believed really to have thought and felt. The beginning indeed speaks of a marvellous change which has taken place within him: his iron soul has been unmanned by pity for Tecmessa. This change would seem to have been wrought during the interval occupied by the song of the Chorus: for at the close of the preceding scene he had resisted all the attempts to soften him with an obstinacy which appeared to be only exasperated by her importunity. Hence most critics have imagined that Tecmessa is supposed to have renewed her intreaties within the tent, and that Ajax, instead of silencing them as before with a peremptory refusal, now affects to be overcome by them. This however is a mere conjecture, and we are equally at liberty to suppose that during the pause in which he has remained silently wrapt in thought, the workings of conjugal affection have made themselves felt so as to cost him a painful struggle, though without being able to move him from his purpose. It does not however seem necessary to consider this in the light of an abrupt and almost præternatural inward revolution. It would be very consistent with human nature, of which Sophocles everywhere shews a fine and intimate knowledge, to interpret those replies to the supplications of Tecmessa, which sound so rough and hard, as signs of awakened sympathy, which Ajax had endeavoured to suppress by assuming a harsher
