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But nothing can be more unsatisfactory and inconclusive than the theory of Schlegel, that such metaphors and images, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are the characteristics of a literature in its infancy. On the contrary, as we have already seen, Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, was as much characterized by sweetness and harmony, as Aeschylus by grandeur and headlong animation.
Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? He is sincere as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to be so conscious!
The triremes were already waiting; she went on board, the rowers took their oars and began the Keleusma. AEschylus, Persians 403. Laert. Diog. In the Frogs of Aristophanes the inhabitants of the marshes are made to sing the Keleusma, v. 205. Ailinos rang across the water from a thousand voices.
Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor AEschylus, nor Virgil even works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them.
In works of art, Gladstone is represented as armed with an axe. We hear of axes being offered to Gladstone by his worshippers. Indeed he was remarkably unlike Death, as described by AEschylus, "Of all gods, Death only recks not of gifts."
In a lecture on the Supplices of Aeschylus, I have heard him say tout bonnement, "I can't construe that what do you make of it, A.B.?" turning to the supposed best scholar in the lecture; or, when an objection was started to his mode of getting through a difficulty, "Ah! I had not thought of that perhaps your way is the best."
Shakespeare is between Sardou and Shaw. Euripides and Clyde Fitch! Upton Sinclair and Sophocles! Aeschylus and F. Anstey! D'Annunzio and Richard Harding Davis! Augustus Thomas and Tolstoi! More alphabetical humor.
Euripides, who has just died, tries to claim sovereignty in Hades; Sophocles, "gentle on earth and gentle in death" withdraws his claim, leaving Aeschylus to the contest. The two rivals appoint Dionysus, the patron of drama, to act as umpire. In a series of admirable criticisms the weaknesses of both are plainly indicated. Finally Dionysus decides to take back Aeschylus.
But their passings need not be ghastly and disastrous, or anything but honorable and beneficial, if in the prime and vigor of their lifetimes they would learn decently to live. But to return to our muttons, which is Greece; and now to the literature again: After Aeschylus, Sophocles.
But in sooth he was not merely for an age, but for all time; and his message, unlike Pindar's whom all Greece worshiped, and far more than Homer's or that of Sophocles is vital today. Aeschylus, and Plato, and Socrates who speaks through Plato, and Pythagoras who speaks through all of them, are the Greeks whose voices are lifted forever for the Soul.
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