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From first to last his "unapproachable favourites" were Homer and Sophocles, and Hesiod was "a Greek friend to whom he turned with excellent effect." But though he was thus essentially a classicist, a mere classicist he was not.
He employed himself also in translating the moral sentences extracted by Stobaeus from the Greek tragedies; drawing consolation from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists, whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse.
Every one held their breath and listened." "How you do go on!" muttered Norman; but no one heeded, and Harry continued. "He construed a chorus in Sophocles without a blunder, but what did the business was this, I believe. They asked all manner of out-of-the-way questions history and geography, what no one expected, and the fellows who read nothing they can help, were thoroughly posed.
Underlying the whole construction of the plot, the dialogue, the reflections, the lyric interludes, is the intention to illustrate some general moral law, some common and typical problem, some fundamental truth. Of the elder dramatists at any rate, Aeschylus and Sophocles, one may even say that it was their purpose however imperfectly achieved to "justify the ways of God to man."
Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died: they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them, and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf." RELIGION. We find in Sophocles a much purer tone of moral and religious feeling than in Homer. The gods are still conceived of as in bodily form. Their images abide in their temples.
Schoolroom work had begun again, and Lady Merrifield was hearing Mysie read the Geruasalemme Liberata, while Miss Vincent superintended Primrose's copies, and Gillian's chalks were striving to portray a bust of Sophocles, when the distant sounds of the piano in the drawing-room stopped, and Valetta came in with words always ominous 'Aunt Jane wants to speak to you, mamma.
Melodramatic the play may be, but it wins for its author our affection by the sheer beauty of a boyish nature as noble as Deianeira's; the return of Neoptolemus upon his own baseness is one of the many compliments Sophocles has paid to our human kind. Many years previously Sophocles had written his masterpiece, the Oedipus Tyrannus. It cannot easily be treated separately from its sequel.
It seems to me we do mean something when we say that Phidias, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, Raphael, Racine, Molière, Poussin, Milton, Wren, Jane Austen and Mozart are highly civilized artists, and that the creators of the Gothic cathedrals and the author of the Chanson de Roland, Villon, Webster, Rembrandt, Blake, Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Whitman, Turner, Wagner and the Congolese fetish-makers are not.
Oh, my dearest father, Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid, Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still Wast dear, and shalt be ever." Francklin's Sophocles Penelope is another of those mythic heroines whose beauties were rather those of character and conduct than of person. She was the daughter of Icarius, a Spartan prince.
Had Frederic been able to read Homer and Milton, or even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of the Henriade would prove that he was utterly destitute of the power of discerning what is excellent in art. Had he been familiar with Sophocles or Shakespeare, we should have expected him to appreciate Zaire more justly.
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