to the Greek tragic poets which has not been noticed by Aristotle[1], this little essay must be content to share the fate of the greater part of the works written in modern times on Greek tragedy, and to pass for an idle dream. We would however fain hope either that the critic's sentence, investing Aristotle as it does with a degree of infallibility and omniscience, which, in this particular province, we should be least of all disposed to concede to him, may bear a milder construction, or that we may venture to appeal from it to a higher tribunal. Another more specific objection may possibly be, that the idea of tragic irony which we have attempted to illustrate by the preceding examples, is a modern one, and that instead of finding it in Sophocles, we have forced it upon him. So far as this objection relates to our conception of the poet's theology, we trust that it may have been in some measure counteracted by the distinction above drawn between the religious sentiments of Sophocles, and those of an earlier age. This distinction seems to have been entirely overlooked by a German author, who has written an essay of considerable merit on the Ajax, and who in speaking of the attributes of Minerva, as she appears in that play, observes: "the idea that the higher powers can only interpose in the affairs of mankind for the purpose of making men wiser and better, is purely modern[2]." That which he
- ↑ "Hodie plerisque fati usus in Græcorum tragœdia necessarius videtur: de quo quum nihil ab Aristotele traditum sit, apparet, quamvis in plerisque tragœdiis Græcorum fato susæ sint partes, tamen scriptores illarum fabularum non cogitavisse de fato." Hermann. Præf. ad Trachinias, p. 7. A little further on he observes: "Qua in re autem illi tragœdiæ naturam positam esse statuerint optime ex Aristotele cognosci potest, qui et ætate iis proximus fuerit, et, ut ipse Græcus, Græcorum more philosophatus est." And so again in the Preface to Philoctetes, p. 11. "Tragici Græcorum eam habebant animo informatam notionem tragœdiæ, quæ est ab Aristotele in libro de arte poetica proposita." Had they then all the same notion of it, and was there no difference between that of Æschylus and those of Sophocles and of Euripides? And if they had, was it sufficient, in order to comprehend it, to be a Greek of nearly the same age, and a philosopher? How many contradictory theories have been proposed on Goethe's poetry by contemporary German metaphysicians! Even Hermann himself has not been universally understood in his own day. Many persons are still persuaded that his treatise De Mythologia Græcorum antiquissima is mere poetry, while the author himself protests that it is plain prose. But, joking apart, if Lord Bacon had written a treatise on the art of poetry, who would now think his judgement conclusive on Shakespeare's notion of tragedy, or on the design and spirit of any of his plays?
- ↑ Immermann. Ueber den rasenden Ajax des Sophocles, p. 23: at p. 18. he observes: "the way in which a superior Being steps in, and determines the hero's
