Page:Sophocles (Collins).djvu/27

Rh "Happiness is a fruit that grows in His garden only.""To honour Him is the first and greatest of commandments." Here are lines which might have been written by a Christian divine:—

These sentiments pervade every play. It is only when unmanned by despair that his heroes are tempted, like Job, in the anguish of their hearts, to "curse God and die." Even then such impiety meets with its own reward. Well, therefore, might his unknown biographer declare Sophocles to have been "dear to the gods as no other man was;" and with equal truth may Professor Plumptre hail him as one of those who were, in their degree, "schoolmasters unto Christ."

Mingled with this strong religious feeling in Sophocles was that melancholy supposed to be engendered only in the poets of the north. He is oppressed by