either subject to an iron destiny, which without design or forethought steadily pursued its immutable track, insensible of the victims which in its progress it crushed beneath its car: or else that they were at the mercy of reckless and wayward deities, who sported with their happiness, and sometimes destroyed it merely to display their power. We do not deny that the former at least of these suppositions may be adapted to the purposes of dramatic poetry, and that the contrast between man with his hopes, fears, wishes, and undertakings, and a dark, inflexible fate, affords abundant room for the exhibition of tragic irony: but we conceive that this is not the loftiest kind, and that Sophocles really aimed at something higher. To investigate this subject thoroughly, so as to point out the various shades and gradations of irony in his tragedies, would require much more than the space which can here be devoted to it. We shall content ourselves with selecting some features in his compositions which appear most strikingly to illustrate the foregoing remarks. One observation however must be premised, without which the works of Sophocles can scarcely be viewed in a proper light. That absolute power which we have attributed to the dramatic poet over his creatures, may be limited by circumstances: and in the Greek theatre it was in fact restricted by peculiar causes. None but gods or heroes could act any prominent part in the Attic tragedy; and as the principal persons were all celebrated in the national poetry, their deeds and sufferings were in general familiar to the audience. The poet indeed enjoyed full liberty of choice among the manifold forms which almost every tradition assumed: and he was allowed to introduce considerable variations in subordinate points. But still he was confined within a definite range of subjects, and even in that he could not expatiate with uncontrolled freedom. Now the legends from which his scenes were to be drawn, were the fictions, at least the tales, of a simple but rude age: the characters of his principal persons were such as had struck the vigorous but unrefined imagination of a race who were still children of nature: their actions were such as exhibited the qualities most esteemed in the infancy of society; and their fate corresponded to the view then entertained of the manner in which the affairs of the world are directed by
