of democracy; low-bred, half-educated, insolent where he dare be so, but cringing before a superior will, with something of the coarse and garrulous wit of the "Sausage-seller " in the comedy of Aristophanes. His opening speech (which has been well translated by Dr Donaldson) will remind the reader of Lancelot Gobbo's dilemma between the suggestions of "the fiend" and his "conscience," in the 'Merchant of Venice.' The watchman has been divided within himself—starting, and returning, and halting by the road. "In fact," he says, "my soul often addressed me with some such tale as this: 'Why goest, simpleton, where to be come is to be punished?' Then again, 'What! wilt not away, poor wretch? and if Creon shall learn these tidings from some one else, how then wilt thou escape the penalty?'"
There is some excuse for his unwillingness to come, for he has been charged with unwelcome tidings. Early though it is in the day, the recent decree has been already broken. "Some one has entombed the body, and is gone." At daybreak the watchmen had discovered the corpse covered with a light coating of dust—sufficient to meet the religious idea of burial[1]—and untouched by bird or beast. Each had accused
- ↑ The casting of three handfuls of dust upon the corpse was enough to avoid the pollution of leaving it unburied. So in Horace we find the ghost of a shipwrecked and unburied man threatening a passing sailor—
"My prayers shall reach the avengers of all wrong;
No expiations shall the curse unbind.
Great though your haste, I would not task you long;
Thrice sprinkle dust—then scud before the wind."
—Ode I. xxviii. (Conington's Transl.)
