Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/17



has been truly remarked by Shelley, "that the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet must be composed of his peers; it must be empanelled by time from the selectest of the wise of many generations." By the verdict of this august tribunal, Æschylus takes rank with Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and may justly be regarded as one of "the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

As it may appear presumptuous to offer to the public a new translation of the Æschylean trilogy, the grandest dramatic work of classical antiquity, I may perhaps be allowed to state that I have not entered upon the task altogether uninvited. On the publication of my translation of "Faust," and the other master-works of Goethe, in Bohn's Standard Library, I was strongly urged by the late Baron Bunsen to undertake the translation of the Greek dramas. I felt honoured by the proposal; and though I was not immediately impelled to act upon the suggestion, his words have dwelt in my memory, and have encouraged me to complete an arduous and very difficult undertaking.

Considerable diversity of opinion prevails respecting the propriety of employing rhymed metres as