Mutare rati stamina fusi;
Quicquid patimur mortale genus,
Quicquid facimus venit ex alto;
Servatque sua decreta colus,
Lachesis dura revoluta manu.
Some degree of poetical justice might have been preserved, and a valuable moral inculcated, had the conduct of Œdipus, in his combat with Laius, been represented as atrocious, or, at least, unwarrantable; as the sequel would then have been a warning, how impossible it is to calculate the consequences or extent of a single act of guilt. But, after all, Dryden perhaps extracts the true moral, while stating our insufficiency to estimate the distribution of good and evil in human life, in a passage, which, in excellent poetry, expresses more sound truth, than a whole shelf of philosophers:
The Gods are just—
But how can finite measure infinite?
Reason! alas, it does not know itself!
Yet man, vain man, would, with this, short-lined plummet,