gaged the attention of some of the most eminent German critics, a Winkelmann, a Lessing, a Herder, for a long time in an extraordinary degree. Yet there are probably few points on which intelligent judges of such matters are more unanimous, than that these celebrated men were all mistaken on the question which they agitated, and that it is only in later times that it has been placed on a right footing and clearly understood. The bodily sufferings of Philoctetes are exhibited by the poet for no other purpose than to afford a measure of the indignation with which he is inspired by his wrongs, and of the energy of his will. It is no ordinary pain that torments him, but of a kind similar to that which extorted groans and tears from Hercules himself. Yet in his eagerness to escape from the scene of his long wretchedness, he makes an almost superhuman effort to master it, and conceal it from the observation of the bystanders. The difficulty of the exertion proves the strength of the motive: yet the motive, strong as it is, is unable to bear him up against the violence of the pain. He loses his self-command, and gives vent to his agony in loud and piteous exclamations. But all he had hoped for from Neoptolemus, when he strove to stifle his sensations, was not to be cured of his sore, but to be transported to a place where his sufferings might be mitigated by the presence and aid of compassionate friends. When he discovers the fraud that had been played upon him, he is at the same time invited to return to Troy, by the prospect of recovering health and strength, and of using them in the most glorious of fields. But long as he had sighed for deliverance from his miserable solitude, intolerable as are the torments he endures, ambitious as he is of martial renown, and impatient of wasting the arrows of Hercules on birds and beasts, there is a feeling stronger than any of these which impels him to reject the proffered good with disdain and even loathing, and to prefer pining to his life's end in lonely, helpless, continually aggravated wretchedness. This is the feeling of the atrocious wrong that has been inflicted on him: a feeling which acquires new force with every fresh throb of pain, with every hour of melancholy musing, and renders the thought of being reconciled to those who have so deeply injured him, and of lending his aid to promote their
