his sense of the feebleness of human intellect and the impotence of human foresight, as compared with the omnipotent wisdom of an eternal being. Like some master-spirit, he views the actions and passions of the characters which he has created with a half-contemptuous pity. He heaps upon mankind every epithet of scorn—"phantoms," "shadows," "creatures of a day," "born to misery as the sparks fly upwards." Hence springs what has been called his "Irony," so admirably illustrated in Bishop Thirlwall's well-known essay. "Men promise much and perform little. They think they are marching onward to fame and greatness, when the ground is opening beneath their feet, and they are sinking to destruction. They boast of their strength when they are really displaying their weakness. Like Œdipus, they solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and are blind to the riddle of their own lives."[1] And there had been sufficient historical examples, even within his own experience, to point the moral of this Irony. Scarcely one of those great statesmen whom he had personally known, commanding the armies or guiding the councils of his country, had either lived long or had seen good days. Defeat, disaster, or dishonour, had been the lot of all. Themistocles had died in a strange land, a pensioner on the Great King's bounty; Pericles had fallen a victim to the plague which was decimating his besieged countrymen; his nephew, the gay and gallant Alcibiades, was a traitor in the Spartan camp; while Nicias had perished
- ↑ Plumptre's Introd. to Sophocles, lxxxviii.
