any of his works which implies such a conclusion must have mistaken his design. In the present instance it seems possible to shew that the poet's thought, when rightly conceived, leads to a point of view from which nothing appears either superfluous or misplaced in the piece.
The hero's first appearance exhibits him in the lowest depth of his humiliation. The love of glory is his ruling passion, and disappointment in the pursuit of honour has goaded him to phrenzy. Through the interposition of the gods his vengeance has been baffled in a manner which must for ever expose him to the derision of his enemies. The delight and exultation which he expresses at his imaginary triumph serve to measure the greatness of his defeat, and the bitterness of the anguish which awaits him with the return of reason. Ulysses himself cannot witness so tremendous a reverse, so complete a prostration, even of a rival, without pity. But the reflexions which the spectacle suggests to him and Minerva, tend to divert our thoughts from what is peculiar and extraordinary in the situation of Ajax, and to fix them on the common lot of human nature. All mortal strength is weakness, all mortal prosperity vain and transient, and consequently all mortal pride is delusion and madness. When man is most elated with the gifts of fortune, most confident in his security, then is his fall most certain: he is safe and strong only while he feels and acknowledges his own nothingness. Ajax in the contrast between his fancied success and his real calamity, is only a signal example of a very common blindness. The design of these reflexions was probably not to extract a moral from the scene, which needed not the aid of language to convey its lesson, but to prepare us for the contemplation of the other side of the subject, which is immediately presented to us. For in the next scene the hero's position is totally changed. The past indeed is immutable, the future affords not a glimpse of hope; but now he has awoke from his dream, he is healed of his phrenzy: he knows the worst that has befallen him, and that can befall. The discovery, it is true, is attended, as Tecmessa says, with a new pain, one from which his madness had till now protected him: but it is likewise a medicine which restores him to new health, and the pain itself a symptom of his recovery from the long disease, of which his late phrenzy
