Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/137

 SOPHOCLES. 119 sparingly, adopted, arose from his having given to each of the plays in his Trilogies an individual completeness which the consti- tuent parts of an .Eschylean Trilogy did not possess. We shall de- rive some further reasons for believing this from a consideration of the general principles which guided the art of Sophocles. That he did act upon general principles is sufficiently proved, by the fact that he wrote a book on the dramatic chorus. The ob- jection, which (according to Chamteleon) he made to ^schylus, that even when his poetry was what it ought to be, it was so only by accident^, is just such a remark as a finished artist would make to a self-taught genius. But we might conclude, without any ex- trinsic authority, from a moderate acquaintance with his remaining Tragedies, that he is never beautiful or sublime, without intending to be so : we see that he has a complete apprehension of the proper means of arriving at the objects of tragical imitation : he feels that his success depends not upon his subject, but upon himself; he has the faculty of ''making with right reason;" in short, he is an artist in the strictest sense of the word^. "Sophocles," says one who has often more than guessed at truth, "is the summit of Greek art; but one must have scaled many a steep before one can estimate his height : it is because of his classical perfection that he has gene- rally been the least admired of the great ancient poets ; for little of his beauty is perceptible to a mind that is not thoroughly princi- pled and imbued with the spirit of antiquity 3." The ancients themselves fully appreciated Sophocles: his great contemporary Aristophanes will not expose ^schylus to the risk of a contest with a man to whom he has voluntarily given up a part of the tragic throne, and to Avhom he delegates his authority when he returns to the upper world"*: his numerous victories and the im- provements which ^Eschylus found it necessary to borrow from him, are all so many proofs of the estimation in which he was held by his countrymen: but it is to be feared that few, if any, of his modern readers, will ever be able to divest themselves completely of all their modern associations, and thus set a just value upon 1 See Athen. i. 22, X. 428, quoted in the sect, on .Eschylus. 2 Aristot. Eth. Nicom. vi, p. 11 40, 1. 10, Bekker : Icrrt Se Tix^n Trdcra wepi yeveaiv Kal rb Tex,vd^€Lu, Kal deojpelv, Sttws Blv yevrjrai tl tQiv iv8€xo/J.^v(jJv /cat elvac Kal /jlt] elvai Kal (5v 7) dpxh e" t(^ ttolovvtl dXd /Utj Iv ry iroLOV/xeuu}. i] /neu ofv rex"^ uiffTep eiprjrai e^ts res fjL€Td Xoyov iroi.r]TiKr] ian. 3 Gmsses at Truth, Vol. i. p. 267. Comp. Miillcr, Hist. Lit. (h c. xxiv. § 13.
 * Comp. Aristoph. Ran, 790, 15 15.