Page:The Tragedies of Aeschylus - tr. Potter - 1812.pdf/316

Rh him to treat them with less respect, he has softened the violation by a kind of magic power: Apollo and the Furies must be allowed the liberty to transport themselves whither and when they please; and Mercury has the charge of conducting Orestes; so that had Horace wrote, Ille per extentum Funem mibi posse videtur Ire poëta, meum qui pectus ianiter angit, Inritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet Ut magus, et modo me DELPHIS, modo ponit Athenis, the allusion would have added a wonderful propriety to the expression, and the lines have conveyed a just character of this tragedy. However a French or a Dutch critic may be shocked at this change of scene, to an Athenian nothing could be more agreeable than to see a contest, which Apollo could not compose at Delphos, brought before the great council of his own city, the God, in person attending and pleading in the cause. That respect to his country, which distinguishes our noble poet above all the writers of antiquity, has an irresistible charm, "Rules, art, decorum, all fall before it. It goes directly to the heart, and gains all purposes at once." The English reader feels this in its full force, and Æschylus is acquitted of the charge of having violated an unity. As these dreadful sisters were the ministers of the offended Gods, to execute their vengeance on impious mortals stained with blood, just, impartial, and of resistless pawer, they were