Page:Euripides (Mahaffy).djvu/148

142 Critical editions of the plays, such as King's, Monk's, and others, became fashionable, and attained their zenith in Porson's work.

123. In France the most important dramatic revivals were the famous operas of Gluck, the two Iphigenias; for the plays of Voltaire, Crebillon, and their rivals, were after all little better than Seneca's remodelling. But in Italy we have the text and metrical translation, with essays, of all Euripides' plays and fragments, by Carmelli (5 vols. Padua, 1743); an important work and undeservedly forgotten. For a man of rare genius, Alfieri—who took up the drama with a great taste for antiquity, but no knowledge of Greek—turned, late in his career and after he had long abandoned writing, to study the originals, which he had hitherto reached only through French versions. He has recorded to us his enthusiasm and his emotion on reading the real Alcestis (January 17th, 1796); nor could he rest till he had first translated it, and then imitated it in an independent play, the second Alcestis, which he printed, together with the translation, in his works. He seems never to have heard of Carmelli's work.

124. Now at last Germany was entering upon her literary greatness, and with the deeper genius of the nation adopted an independent theory of the drama. The most popular exponent was A. W. Schlegel, who in his Lectures set his face vehemently against the French fixity of theory and practice, and exalted national peculiarities as the proper vehicle for genius. Thus Shakspere was again set on the highest pinnacle of fame; and what was more original, Æschylus was for the first time interpreted with true reverence and understanding. The theories of Aristotle and Horace, in their French copies, were postponed to a proper study of the ancient masters themselves, and a theory of the drama was built on Æschylus and Sophocles. The weak points of Schlegel's criticism were his dislike of the French and depreciation of Euripides. Perhaps on account of Racine's, Voltaire's, and Alfieri's preference, and in