Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/13

Rh of the choral ode of the Greek tragic poets. Rhyme still seems to me, as I then said, to introduce an element more or less incongruous, to fetter the free flow of thought by the periodicity of the same sound recurring at fixed intervals, to present a temptation, very difficult to guard against, to expansion and over-ornamentation for the sake of it. If I had but few precedents to appeal to among those who had gone before me as translators, Mr Matthew Arnold's employment of unrhymed metres in his Merope gave then, and the exquisite drama of Philoctetes, published anonymously last year, has given since, abundant proof how capable that form is of approximating in melody and beauty to the perfection of the Sophoclean choruses. On the other hand, there has been something not far from a consensus of critics in favour of rhyme, and many readers among my friends have expressed the same feeling. They missed what they had been accustomed to look upon as the indispensable accompaniment of all but the so-called heroic verse. At all events, they did not find in my translation that which compensated for its absence. I have accordingly endeavoured to meet their wants, without surrendering my own judgment, by adding a rhymed version of the choral odes and chief lyrical dialogues in an appendix. I must leave it to them to decide