nity.""Happiness is a fruit that grows in His garden only.""To honour Him is the first and greatest of commandments."[1] Here are lines which might have been written by a Christian divine:—
"Speak thou no word of pride, nor raise
A swelling thought against the gods on high;
For Time uplifteth and Time layeth low
All human things; and the great gods above
Abhor the wicked as the good they love.
*********
Be blameless in all duties towards the gods;
For God the Father in compare with this
Lightly esteemeth all things else; and so
Thy righteousness shall with thee to the end,
Endure, and follow thee beyond the grave."[2]
These sentiments pervade every play. It is only when unmanned by despair that his heroes are tempted, like Job, in the anguish of their hearts, to "curse God and die." Even then such impiety meets with its own reward. Well, therefore, might his unknown biographer declare Sophocles to have been "dear to the gods as no other man was;" and with equal truth may Professor Plumptre hail him as one of those who were, in their degree, "schoolmasters unto Christ."
Mingled with this strong religious feeling in Sophocles was that melancholy supposed to be engendered only in the poets of the north. He is oppressed by
- ↑ Fragments of lost plays of Sophocles.
- ↑ Philoctetes, 1441. This and the preceding translations are mainly taken from 'Sales Attici.'
