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Rh to the Greek tragic poets which has not been noticed by Aristotle, this little essay must be content to share the fate of the greater part of the works written in modern times on Greek tragedy, and to pass for an idle dream. We would however fain hope either that the critic's sentence, investing Aristotle as it does with a degree of infallibility and omniscience, which, in this particular province, we should be least of all disposed to concede to him, may bear a milder construction, or that we may venture to appeal from it to a higher tribunal. Another more specific objection may possibly be, that the idea of tragic irony which we have attempted to illustrate by the preceding examples, is a modern one, and that instead of finding it in Sophocles, we have forced it upon him. So far as this objection relates to our conception of the poet's theology, we trust that it may have been in some measure counteracted by the distinction above drawn between the religious sentiments of Sophocles, and those of an earlier age. This distinction seems to have been entirely overlooked by a German author, who has written an essay of considerable merit on the Ajax, and who in speaking of the attributes of Minerva, as she appears in that play, observes: "the idea that the higher powers can only interpose in the affairs of mankind for the purpose of making men wiser and better, is purely modern ." That which he