Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/699

Rh E U R E U R 673 the various descriptions of paper, nails, pius, and needles, glass for windows and glass bottles, and jewellery and trinkets. Such goods form the trade; and, in addition to these, firewood, timber, cattle, honey, wax, and corn are furnished to the district surrounding the department. Eure is divided into the following arrondissements : Evreux, Louviers, Les Andelys, Bernay, and Pont-Audemer; and its capital is Evreux. Notwithstanding the number of industries carried on in the department the population has for some time been decreasing ; while in 1851 it was 415,777, it was cnly 377,874 in 1872, and 373,629 in 1876. EUKE-ET-LOIR, a department in the northern part of France, formed out of portions of Orleanais, Maine, and Isle -de-France, is bounded on the N. by the department of Eure, W. by Orne and Sarthe, S. by Loir-et-Cher, S.E. by Loiret, and N.E. by Seine-et-Oise. It has an area of 2361 square miles, and lies between 47 57 and 48 57 N. lat., and 44 and 2 E. long. The western and north-western parts consist of undulations of hill and valley, with springs, rivulets, and small lakes. The eastern part is a level and uniform and very fruitful plain. The northern part is watered by the Eure, with its tributaries the Vegre, Blaise, and Avre, a small western portion by the Huisne, and the southern by the Loir with its tribu taries the Connie and the Ozanne. The air is pure, and the climate mild, and not subject to sudden changes. The soil consists, for the most part, either of clay intermixed with sand or of calcareous earth, and is on the whole fruitful; but in some portions of the S.W. it is sandy and dry, and many tracts of land are so poor as to be uncultivated. The agriculture is better conducted than in most of the depart ments of France, and the average yield of the various kinds of corn is about three times greater. The wheat is remarkably fine; and among the other agricultural products are rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, beet-root, melons, and onions. Wine is not extensively produced, nor of the best quality ; but in some parts there is an abundant supply of apples, from which cider is made as the common drink of the inhabitants. The extensive meadows supply pasturage for a large number of cattle and sheep, the average yield of wool being double that of any of the other departments. There are some iron mines, and granite, marble, and gypsum quarries. The manufactures are not extensive ; but leather, paper, cotton goods of various kinds, serges, flannels, and other coarse woollens, hosiery, hats, caps, household linen (such as sheetings and table linen), and some earthenware are furnished. The department has Chartres for its capital, and is divided into the arrondisse ments of Chartres, Chateaudun, Dreux, and Nogent-le- Rotrou. The population, which in 1851 was 415,777, was 282,622 in 1872 and 283,075 in 1876. EURIPIDES is the mediator between ancient and modern drama. No great poet is more difficult to estimate justly, and none has been judged more unfairly. He can not claim the full excellence of the school from which he began the departure, nor yet that of the school which at last arose on the foundations laid by him. His time forced an inner conflict on the art to which his genius was devoted. We must try not to look at him either wholly from a modern stand-point or wholly from that of the age which he closed, but rather to place ourselves, as far as we can, at the line of separation on which he stood, and endeavour to see how he dealt with the perplexing forces of an inevitable transition. 6) All that is known about his outward life may be shortly 0-406 told, lie was born in 480 B.C., on the very day, according J&amp;lt; to the legend, of the Greek victory at Salamis, where his Athenian parents had taken refuge; and a whimsical fancy has even suggested that his name son of Ettripiis was meant to commemorate the first check of the Persian fleet at Artemisium. His father Mnesarchus was at least able to give him a liberal education ; it was a favourite taunt with the comic poets that his mother Clito had been a herb-seller a quaint instance of the tone which public satire could then adopt with plausible effect. At first he was intended, we are told, for the profession of an athlete, a calling of which he has recorded his opinion with some thing like the courage of Xenophanes. He seems also to have essayed painting; but at five-and-tweuty he brought out his first play, the Peliades, and thenceforth he was a tragic poet. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, and in his career of about fifty years he gained it only five times in all. This fact is perfectly consistent with his unquestionably great and growing popularity in his own day. Throughout life he had to compete with Sophocles, and with other poets who represented tragedy of the type consecrated by a splendid tradition. It was but natural that the judges should crown works of that school more frequently than the brilliant experiments of an innovator. The hostile criticism of Aristophanes was witty ; and, what has not always been observed, it was true, granting the premise from which Aristophanes starts, that the tragedy of ^Eschylus and Sophocles is the only right model. Its unfairness, often extreme,. consists in ignoring the changing conditions of public feeling and taste, and the possibilities, changed accordingly, of an art which could exist only by continuing to please large audiences. It has usually been supposed that the unsparing derision of the comic poets contributed not a little to make the life of Euripides at Athens uncomfortable ; and there is certainly one passage (in a fragment of the Mflanippe, Nauck, Frag. 495) which would apply well enough to his persecutors : afSpwif 5t TroAAol TOU 7e o!T0s OVVIKO. affKovffi x&P tras Ktpr6(U&amp;gt;vs tyci&amp;gt; 5e TTOUJ (j.t&amp;lt;r&amp;gt; yfoiovs, otfivts crofy&v irtpt &X C A fX ovffl ffTo/j.a.Ta. To raise vain laughter, many exercise The arts of satire; but my spirit loathes These mockers whose unbridled mockery Invades grave themes. The infidelity of two wives in succession is alleged to explain the poet s tone in reference to the majority of their sex, and to complete the picture of an uneasy private life. He appears to have been repelled by the Athenian demo cracy, as it tended to become less the rule of the people than of the mob. Thoroughly the son of his day in intellectual matters, he shrank from the coarser aspects of its political and social life. His best word is for the small farmer (autourgos), who does not often come to town, or soil his rustic honesty by contact with the crowd of the market place. About 409 B.C. Euripides left Athens, and after a residence in the Tliessaliau Magnesia repaired, on the in vitation of Iving Archelaus, to the Macedonian court, where Greeks of distinction were always welcome. In his Archelaus Euripides celebrated that legendary son of Temenus, and head of the Temenid dynasty, who had founded ^Ega-; and in one of the meagre fragments he evidently alludes to the beneficent energy of his royal host in opening up the wild land of the North. It was at I ella, too, that Euripides composed or completed, and perhaps produced, the Bact-Juc. Jealous courtiers, we are told, contrived to have him attacked and killed by savage dog-. It is odd that the fate of Acta-on should be ascribed, by legend, to two distinguished Greek writers, Euripides and Lucian; though in the former case at least the fate has not such appropriateness as the Byzantine biographer discovers in the latter, on the ground that its victim &quot;had waxed rabid against the truth.&quot; The death of Deaili, Euripides, whatever its manner, occurred in 406 B.C., when 1( ^ c - VIII. 85