Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/157

 EURIPIDES. 139 drama, between the chorus and the actors'. With regard to his system of prologues, which Lessing most paradoxically considers as showing the perfection of the drama, we need only mention that Menander adopted it from him, and point to the difference between this practice and that of ^schylus, Sophocles, and Shakspere, in order to justify the ridicule which Aristophanes unsparingly heaps upon them as factitious and unnecessary parts of a Tragedy. Like the other sophists, Euripides was altogether devoid of religious feelings; his moral character will not bear a searching scrutiny; and, unlike the good-tempered, cheerful Sophocles, he displayed the same severity of manner which distinguished his never-smiling preceptor, Anaxagoras. On the whole, were it not for the exceeding beauty of many of his choruses, and for the proof which he occasionally exhibits of really tragic power, we should be unable to understand the admiration Avith which he has inspired the most cultivated men in different ages ; and looking at him from the point of vicAV occupied by his contemporaries, we must join with Aristophanes, not only in calling him, what he undeniably was, a bad citizen^, and an unprincipled man, but also in regardino* him as a dramatist, who degraded the moral and religious dignity of his own sacred profession. At the best, he is one of those poets, who appear to the greatest advantage in selections of ele- gant extracts. "His works," says an eminent critic^, "must be regarded less in their entirety than in detail. In single passages there is much that in itself is excellent, deeply moving, and masterly, which, if part of a whole, is liable to censure. We might almost maintain, that, with Euripides, those very parts are most beautiful, which he introduced as superfluous additions, merely be- cause he could not resist the temptations offered by certain situa- tions ; though, indeed, it sometimes happens that the overabundant heaping- together of materials impedes the development of the in- dividual parts, and that the episodes fail in making their due impression, from a want of proper extension. Tragic effect to be perfect requires completeness in preparation, development, and ^ Kat Tou X'^P^^ ^^ '^^^ ^^' vxoaj3e7v tQv virOKpiTdv /cat /ULopiou elvat tov 6ov, Kai (TVvayojui^ea-daL, fir} ujatrep 'Evpnridrjs, dW uicnrep So0o^'^7S. Aristot. Poet. XVIII. 21. 2 On the connexion of Euripides and Socrates with the mischievous Girondisra of the middle-class party at Athens, we have written elsewhere {Quarterly Review, No. CLXi. Vol. 71, p. 116; continuation of Miiller's Hist. Lit. Gr. Vol. ii. p. 165, new ed.). 3 F. Jacobs, Hellas; or the home, histo7'y, literature and art of the Greeks. Trans- lated by J. Oxenford, p. 2 35.