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12 the joy of self-exultation. This was the halo that shone from heaven, and shed over the tragedy a lustre by which it was sanctified in the eye of freedom.

I have brought heavy charges against this performance as a drama, and it is only justice that I should bring forward some of its beauties in detail: and here enough of matter will be found to soften the rigour of criticism. However wide the tragedies of Æschylus may be of the standard of excellence established in the land that gave Shakspeare birth, yet in all ages and in all countries he must be considered an eminent poet. In the ye that kindles as it rolls over the beauties of nature, and in the imagination that teems with great conceptions, he is inferior to few poets. There is a grandeur and loftiness of soul about him, generated by the elevation of freedom, that is blazing forth on every fit occasion,—a mysterious sublimity that cannot be understood, much less felt, by the slaves of a despot.

The following is a feeble attempt to render the meaning of the beautiful passage in which Prometheus describes the degraded state in which he found man, and by what means he had raised him from it; and it will be well if the meaning is given—the inspiration of poetry evaporates at the touch of translation.

The most sublime passage in this sublime poem is that in which Prometheus replies to Mercury, when, in the name of Jupiter, he denounces a terrible vengeance if he refuse to reveal the secrets of fate touching the dethronement of the thunderer.

There is so striking a resemblance between this passage and Satan's address to Infernal Horrors in the first book of Paradise Lost, that there is reason to believe that Milton's far-famed line,

might have been suggested by this:

It would be easy, were not this article already swelled too much in length, to draw such a parallel betwixt the two characters, as to give strong reason to suspect that Milton took his first idea of that of Satan from Prometheus. Yet this is to detract little from the glory of one of the greatest of our poets. An accidental spark is sufficient to kindle the fires of a volcano. Z.