Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/91

Rh satire which distinguished Thackeray. One who reads the extant tragedies with this clue to one aspect of their teaching, will find illustrations at every step. Should he need a guide, he will find one in the Essay already named. To give those illustrations in detail, would be to quote a large portion of what will be found in the following pages.

Any estimate in these pages of the chief characteristic of the dramatic poetry of Sophocles must, for the same reason, be of the briefest. Those who wish for a fuller survey of his works may be referred to Schlegel's well-known Lectures on Dramatic Poetry, or Müller's History of Greek Literature, or M. Patin's Etudes sur Sophocle. I am quite content that they should learn to understand Sophocles from Sophocles himself. What is perhaps most necessary, is to warn them against the commonplaces of rhetorical panegyric which have been repeated times without number, but which help little to any true perception of his excellence. To say that Sophocles is the "Homer of Tragedians," is either a mere amplification of the fact that he stands at the head of one class of writers, as the great epic poet does at the head of another, or else it tends to mislead by identifying two