Page:Euripides (Mahaffy).djvu/150

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144
EURIPIDES.
[CHAP. X.

of reproducing in their tongues his pathos and his power.

126. I will mention, in conclusion, a few of the best and most accessible helps to the study of the poet.

The best complete texts are those of Kirchhoff, Dindorf (with the fragments), Fix (in Didot's series), and of Mr. Paley (with a full commentary). Editions of select plays are very numerous; among the best, containing several together, are those of King, Porson, Monk, Elmsley, Hermann, Weil; the school editions of single plays are endless. For those not familiar with Greek, I may add that in addition to Potter's and Woodhull's translations of the whole of the works, there are single versions of divers excellence, such as Shelley's Cyclops, Milman's Bacchanals, Fitzgerald's Hippolytus, Browning's Heracles (in Aristophanes' Apology), and Alcestis (paraphrased with comments in Balaustion's Adventure), Schiller's Iphigenia in Aulis, Bankes' Hecuba, and many others which lie concealed in our larger libraries. Even musical versions of the plays, on the model of Mendelssohn's versions of Sophocles, are not wanting. For we have recently Gadsby's Alcestis, and what is far more interesting and almost unknown, Miss Helen Faucit appeared as Iphigenia (in Aulis) in the Dublin Theatre Royal, in November, 1848. The version was arranged for her by Mr. Calcraft, and the music of the chorus composed by R. M. Levey. The most elaborate German criticisms of the poet's genius and his works are those in Bernhardy's and Klein's histories of the Greek drama; the best French book is M. Patin's Étude. But the literature of the subject would occupy a separate volume.

THE END.