Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/27

Rh in his little volume on "Euripides"; two remarks from which I take the liberty of quoting. Speaking of the atheism laid to Euripides' charge, he says:

"The only declared atheist in his extant plays is the brutal and ignorant Cyclops, whose coarse and sensual unbelief is surely intended for a keen satire on such vulgarity in speculation."

In another passage, after discussing the rival views that have prevailed about our poet, and the anomalies and contradictions of his character which make it so easy to blame, so hard to understand his many-sidedness, he concludes:

"We must combine all these portraits with their contradictions to obtain an adequate idea of that infinitely various, unequal, suggestive mind, which was at the same time practically shrewd and mystically vague, clear in expression but doubtful in thought, morose in intercourse and yet a profound lover of mankind, drawing ideal women and yet perpetually sneering at the sex, doubting the gods and yet reverencing their providence, above his age and yet not above it, stooping to the interests of the moment and yet missing the reward of momentary fame, despairing of future life and yet revolving problems which owe all their interest to the very fact that they are perpetual."

Euripides is the last of the Greek tragedians properly so called. "The sure sign of the general decline of an art," says Macaulay, "is the frequent occurrence, not of deformity, but of misplaced beauty." How hard this criticism hits Euripides must be obvious to all who are familiar with his choral odes. Many of the most beautiful of these have no direct connection with the plot of the play in which they occur; they might be introduced with equal propriety elsewhere; they are exquisite hymns, and, as such, often recommend a poor play; but they are irrelevant and out of place.

In spite, however, of all that was said and written against