Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/14

xii which attempt has been furthest removed from failure.

(2.) On another point I have to make a more entire retractation. It seemed to me, when I entered on my task, that a reproduction of the symmetry, line by line, between the strophes and antistrophes of a choral ode would not give sufficient pleasure to the ear of an English reader to make the attempt, obviously more or less difficult, worth the time and labour it would cost; and that the delight which it gave to the Athenian hearer depended mainly on the accessories of music and motion by which it was accompanied. In going over my work again, I have come to a different conclusion. The impression made upon the ear, and even upon the eye of a reader, is, I believe, so far analogous to that which was made upon the spectator, that the attempt to reproduce it ought not to be hastily abandoned. It at least serves to indicate what is the crowning excellence of poetry in all its highest forms, the union of the most vigorous life, and freedom, and strong emotion, with a voluntary obedience to self-imposed laws of melody, and the consummate self-control and mastery over language which that obedience implies. In this edition, accordingly, both in the rhymed and unrhymed