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56 said that Ariston, his eldest son, had in a fit of jealous suspicion brought an action against his father, as being imbecile and incapable of managing his own affairs. The poet, then, as tradition tells us, in his hundredth year, entered the court, leaning on his favourite grandchild (who probably suggested the filial devotion of Antigone's character), and, scorning to otherwise defend himself against the insult offered to his mental powers, recited the passage from his then unfinished play which describes the glories of Colonus. And the story goes on to say that, before Sophocles had finished reciting these noble lines, the Athenian jury, always susceptible to an "appeal to their feelings," broke into irrepressible applause. "A dotard cannot have written this," was their verdict; and the case was dismissed—we will hope "with costs."

Anstice gives—as far as can be given in English—the spirit of the original; and we make no excuse for borrowing largely from his version (too little known) of this ode:—

Stranger, thou art standing now

On Colonus' sparry brow;

All the haunts of Attic ground,

Where the matchless coursers bound,

Boast not, through their realms of bliss,

Other spot as fair as this.

Frequent down this greenwood dale

Mourns the warbling nightingale,

Nestling 'mid the thickest screen

Of the ivy's darksome green.