Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/293

Rh Æschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder at what mythology had not helped to explain. He is competent to express any of the common manly feelings. If his hero is to make a boast, it does not lack fullness, it is as boastful as could be desired. He has a flexible mouth and can fill it readily with strong, sound words, so that you will say the man's speech wants nothing. He has left nothing unsaid, but has actually wiped his lips of it. Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly, and expresses with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end.—The Greeks had no transcendent geniuses like Milton and Shakespeare, whose merit only posterity could fully appreciate.

The social condition is the same in all ages. Æschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.

Jan. 29, 1841. There is something proudly thrilling in the thought that this obedience to conscience and trust in God, which is so solemnly preached in extremities and arduous