stubbornness, to incur such tortures. Taunting him with his youth and his menial service as messenger of Zeus, Prometheus openly defies the king of heaven:—
"Let then the blazing levin-flash be hurled;
With white-winged snowstorm and with earth-born thunders
Let him disturb and trouble all that is;
Nought of these things shall force me to declare
Whose hand shall drive him from his sovereignty."
Warning the stubborn hero of the storm and earthquake which presently will crush and bury him, and of the eagle who will then be sent to feed constantly upon his living flesh. Mercury departs, assuring him that of this suffering there will be no end, until some god shall be willing to suffer for him and go for his sake to Hades and gloomy Tartarus. This was done, according to the legend, by Cheiron; a strange foreshadowing, as Mr Plumptre says, of the mystery of the Atonement. But of this restoration we see nothing in this play; the rest is all darkness, and terror, and storm, through which the grand figure of Prometheus stands out with a majesty which has certainly not been surpassed in poetry. The heroism of the Ocean-nymphs, who will not leave him in this terrible hour, is only what the neighbourhood of his own heroism required. In ordinary levels of daring their conduct would be very noble; here it attracts only a passing thought of pity: great tragic characters always carry others down in their fall. But the whole of this final passage is so inimitably sublime, even in a translation, that we cannot say another word which might mar its effect:—
