Page:Prometheus Bound (Bevan 1902).djvu/17

 these elements would predominate, sometimes another; the Hebraic and Miltonic would be more pronounced in Aeschylus than in Euripides, and in the same poet they would assert themselves in varying degrees. It is only by fusing these different elements that the effect of the Greek drama can be given. The fusion is made possible by the fact that the dramatists, the English Bible, and Milton have a great deal to start with in common. A single lifetime would cover the period, which saw at one extreme the activity of Shakespeare and at the other the production of Paradise Lost. The English of that period is the common source from which all three draw.

These principles will, I think, command the assent of any one who takes the trouble to think about them. And, if they are assented to, no exception can be taken to words and phrases in any translation simply on the score of archaism. A style which might justly be blamed as a pose in a modern poet, speaking in his own person, may be the very style required to represent the voice of another age. For us the spirit of Aeschylus can be expressed only in language of an archaic