Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/25

Rh This is more especially true at the present time, when, with the spread of education, the multitude of readers will be indefinitely increased.

Shakespeare has been not inappropriately styled "the modern Æschylus;" an association which, to the English reader at least, invests with peculiar interest the prophetic poet of the ancient world. The perusal of his master-works, like those of his great compeer, illustrates the truth proclaimed by the Apostle from the Athenian Areopagus, "that God has made of one blood all nations of men;" notwithstanding the diversity of external surrounding, we discern, in the personages of the Æschylean dramas, whether human or superhuman, beings of like passions with ourselves, endowed with the same mental constitution, and subject to the moral laws impressed by the Creator upon our common humanity. In his sublimer passages we soar with the poet as on eagle's wings, and anon we come upon pregnant utterances which

Such are the thoughts of Æschylus!

From all this wealth of poetry many readers are, however, practically excluded, not only by the foreign