O. Father of gods and men, oh! hear my prayer;
Behold the generous offspring of the eagle,
Who basely perish'd in the hideous folds
Of a fell serpent:—now the orphan brood
Are famished and defenceless in their eyrie;
Oh! plume their wings, and give them to avenge
Their royal father, and again establish
The undermined foundations of the palace."
After a dialogue of considerable length, and, in many places, of great beauty, they invoke the ghost of Agamemnon to aid them in the work of vengeance.
"O. Open, O earth, and send my father forth
To see the conflict.
E. Proserpine, inspire
Our souls with energy—our arms with strength.
O. Oh, father, bear in mind the bloody bath
Where thou wert slain.
E. The veil with which they bound thee.
O. The toils in which, like a wild beast, they caught thee.
Why does thy spirit start not from the grave
When that thou hearest of these unnatural deeds?
E. Why liftst thou not thy venerable head?
Pity thy children sitting on thy tomb!
Oh! blot not from the earth an ancient race;
Thou livest in us, and be it to avenge thee."
He at last gains admittance to the palace, and murders, Ægysthus and Clytemnestra. At first he glories in the deed, but the power of conscience soon prevails; and in a fit of phrenzy he fancies he sees the furies of his mother.
"O. (To the Chorus.) See there they are!
dost thou not see them there?
The dragons rear and hiss among their hair!
I can abide no longer.
Cho. My dear Orestes!
Thy fancy's vain creations do distract thee.
O. These are no imaginations. See, they come—
The dogs of hell—my mother's angry furies!
Cho. Thy hands are red with blood; in such a state
'Tis natural thy mind should be disturbed.
O. Save me, Apollo! see, they rush on me!—
The blood is dropping from their glaring eyes.—
Ye see them not—but I do see them well—
They fix their eyes on me—I cannot stay."
I shall now give a short analysis of the Electra, which is justly considered one of the finest plays of the Greek stage. Sophocles was not a man of so sublime a mind as Æschylus; but what he wants in loftiness and fire of spirit, he compensates by a delicacy of taste, and a tenderness of feeling, which, if they do not render him the greatest of the ancient poets, make him at least one of the most interesting of them. Nature had endowed him with an imagination which was ever under the guidance of a sound understanding; not overleaping her own boundaries; nor irregular and erratic in its course, and astonishing by its blaze, like the comet; but, like the evening-star, steady in its progress through the fields of light,—ever brilliant, and ever beautiful. He is always in the elementary of our nature—therefore he always takes possession of the heart; and though he does not reign there with absolute dominion, like Shakespeare or Homer, he is a guest whom we receive with pleasure, and dismiss with regret; and if he does not fill us with the idea that he is the greatest poetical genius of the dramatic writers of his country, he has certainly produced better plays than any of them. Less impetuous and less daring than Æschylus, and less pathetic than Euripides, he knew how to turn his talents to account better than either. His mind could grasp his subject, and mould it according to his will, which generally led him into the path of nature; and he seldom so far loses sight of the whole, as to say more in any one part than is necessary to the developement of his plot or his characters, nor less than is required for perspicuity. Like the statuaries, he seems to have fixed in his mind a standard of ideal excellence; and if he does not, like some of them, always reach it, he comes nearer it than any of his competitors for dramatic glory; and it is not easy for us to conceive, that the tragic art should in a few years have made such advances to perfection, as appears in some of the pieces of this elegant writer. The drama was then like a rich field newly broken up by the plough, and its fertility was amazing. Sophocles produced no fewer than a hundred and forty plays. Only seven of these have survived the wrecks of time, or the dilapidations of barbarian or monkish ignorance; but these are so skilful in design, and so beautiful in execution,—are such masterpieces of art, and yet such faithful exhibitions of nature,—as to make us greatly lament the loss of the whole.
