“Blind hopes of good I planted
In their dark breasts.”
A striking phrase, meaning, however, nothing more, I imagine, according to the use of the Greek writers (and also of the Latins with caecus) than dim, indistinct; neither, indeed, is the phrase foreign to our colloquial English idiom—“The swearing to a blind etcetera they (the Puritans) looked upon as intolerable.”—Calamy’s Life of Baxter. In the well-known story of Pandora, Hesiod relates that, when the lid of the fatal box was opened, innumerable plagues flew out, only Hope remained within.—Works and Days, 84.
“And flame-faced fire is now enjoyed by mortals?”
Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, in his account of New South Wales (London, 1804), mentions that the wild natives produced fire with much difficulty, and preserved it with the greatest care. The original inhabitants of New Holland, and the wild African bushmen described by Moffat, the missionary, are among the lowest specimens of human nature with which we are acquainted. As for Æschylus, it is evident he follows in this whole piece the notion of primitive humanity given in his introductory chapters by Diodorus, and generally received amongst the ancients, viz., that the fathers of our race were the most weak and helpless creatures imaginable, like the famous Egyptian frogs, as it were, only half developed from the primeval slime.
Enter Ocean. “This sea god enters,” says Brunoy, quoted by Pot., on “I know not what winged animal—bizarrerie inexplicable.” Very inexplicable certainly; and yet, as the tragedian expressly calls the animal a bird, I do not see why so many translators, both English and German, should insist on making it a steed. The bird certainly was a little anomalous, having, as we learn below, four feet (τετρασκελὴς ὀιωνός, v. 395—a four-footed bira); but it was a bird for all that, and the air was its element. If the creature must have a name, we must even call it a griffin, or a hippogriff, notwithstanding Welcker’s remarks (Tril. p. 26). Those who wish to see its physiognomy more minutely described may consult Aeliean. hist, animal. IV. 27, in an apt passage quoted from Jacobs by Both. There is an ambiguity in the passage which I have translated—
“Thought instinctive reined the creature,”
some applying γνώμῃ not to the animal, but to the will of the rider. So Prow.—