Tir. Cease your complaints, and bear his body hence;
The dreadful sight will daunt the drooping Thebans,
Whom heaven decrees to raise with peace and glory.
Yet, by these terrible examples warned,
The sacred Fury thus alarms the world:—
Let none, though ne'er so virtuous, great, and high,
Be judged entirely blest before they die.[Exeunt.

Footnotes:

  1. Imitated from the commencement of the plague in the first book of the Iliad.
  2. The story of the Sphinx is generally known: She was a monster, who delighted in putting a riddle to the Thebans, and slaying each poor dull Bœotian, who could not interpret it. Œdipus guessed the enigma, on which the monster destroyed herself for shame. Thus he attained the throne of Thebes, and the bed of Jocasta.
  3. To dare a lark, is to fly a hawk, or present some other object of fear, to engage the bird's attention, and prevent it from taking wing, while the fowler draws his net:
  4. Farewell, nobility; let his grace go forward,
  5. And dare us with his cap, like larks.
  6. Henry VIII. Act III. Scene II.
  7. The carelessness of Œdipus about the fate of his predecessor is very unnatural; but to such expedients dramatists are often reduced, to communicate to their audience what must have been known to the persons of the drama.
  8. Start is here, and in p. 136, used for started, being borrowed from sterte, the old perfect of the verb.
  9. It is a common idea, that falling stars, as they are called, are converted into a sort of jelly. "Among the rest, I had often the opportunity to see the seeming shooting of the stars from place to place, and sometimes they appeared as if falling to the ground, where I once or twice found a white jelly-like matter among the grass, which I imagined to be distilled from them; and hence foolishly conjectured, that the stars themselves must certainly consist of a like substance."
  10. Serpens, serpentem vorans, fit draco. Peccata, peccatis superaddita, monstra fiunt. Hieroglyphica animalium, per Archibaldum Simsonum Dalkethensis Ecclesiæ pastorem, p. 95.
  11. The idea of this sacred grove seems to be taken from that of Colonus near Athens, dedicated to the Eumenides, which gives name to Sophocles's second tragedy. Seneca describes the scene of the incantation in the following lines:
  12. Est procul ab urbe lucus illicibus niger
  13. Dircæa circa vallis irriguæ loca.
  14. Cupressus altis exerens silvis caput
  15. Virente semper alligat trunco nemus;
  16. Curvosque tendit quercus et putres situ
  17. Annosa ramos: hujus abrupit latus
  18. Edax vetustas: illa jam fessa cadens
  19. Radice, fulta pendet aliena trabe.
  20. Amara baccas laurus; et tiliæ leves
  21. Et Paphia myrtus; et per immensum mare
  22. Motura remos alnus; et Phœbo obvia
  23. Enode Zephyris pinus opponens latus.
  24. Medio stat ingens arbor, atque umbra gravi
  25. Silvas minores urget; et magno ambitu
  26. Diffusa ramos, una defendit nemus.
  27. Tristis sub illa, lucis et Phœbi inscius
  28. Restagnat humor, frigore æterno rigens.
  29. Limosa pigrum circuit fontem palus.
  30. Actus Tertius. Scena prima.
  31. This diffuse account of the different kinds of forest trees, which composed the enchanted grove, is very inartificially put into the mouth of Creon, who, notwithstanding the horrible message which he has to deliver to Œdipus from the ghost, finds time to solace the king with this long description of a place, which he doubtless knew as well as Creon himself. Dryden, on the contrary, has, with great address, rendered the description necessary, by the violence committed within the sacred precinct, and turned it, not upon minute and rhetorical detail, but upon the general awful properties of this consecrated ground. Lucan's fine description of the Massyllian forest, and that of the enchanted grove in Tasso, have been both consulted by our author.
  32. The quarrel betwixt Œdipus and the prophet, who announces his guilt, is imitated from a similar scene in the Œdipus Tyrannus.
  33. Borrowed from Shakespeare;
  34. And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change.
  35. Richard II.

222

EPILOGUE.

What Sophocles could undertake alone,

Our poets found a work for more than one;

And therefore two lay tugging at the piece,

With all their force, to draw the ponderous mass from Greece;

A weight that bent even Seneca's strong muse,