Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/309

Rh inaccuracy, and indecency. The third laments the effeminacy of the age.

Encouraged by the success of his former drama, he employed himself on one which very much exceeds it in merit. As in a former case, he had grounded his play on one written by another. So now, too timid to construct a new plot, he therefore took his subject from the "Ion" of Euripides; "and," as Mr. Campbell says, "with bold and sometimes interesting alterations." Whitehead himself says of it: "The subject of the following scenes is so ancient, so slightingly mentioned by the historians, and so fabulously treated by Euripides in his tragedy of 'Ion,' that the author thought himself at liberty to make the story his own. Some glaring circumstances he was obliged to adhere to, which he has endeavoured to render probable."

The "Ion," though it has incurred the critical censure of Schlegel for some improbabilities and repetitions, is one of the most beautiful of the dramas of Euripides. A short account of that play in connection with the "Creusa" of Whitehead, may not prove unacceptable to the reader—the coincidence of the name, and our admiration of it as perhaps the most beautiful classical drama in the language, will compel us also to pay a passing tribute to the "Ion" of Sir Thomas Talfourd. The story, as told by Euripides, runs thus:—Creusa, daughter of Erectheus, King of Athens, falls a victim to the licentious passion of Apollo, and bears a child, whose birth she conceals, and whom she exposes. He is, however, found, and brought up as servant to the god at the temple. After this, Creusa is married to Xuthus, a military stranger. They are childless, and go to the Oracle at Delphi to make inquiries (v. 66.):

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