Ἄρηρεν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὦ τάλας ἐγώ. &c.
containing his last adieu to his country, companions, and friends. The chorus, touched with the pathos of this apostrophe, and commiserating his sad reverse of fortune, enters with him into the same excess of lamentation, and, as the first expression of it, lets fall this natural sentiment, “That though from coolly contemplating the divine superintendency of human affairs, there results abundant confidence and security against the ills of life, yet when we look abroad into the lives and fortunes of men, that confidence is apt to fail us, and we find ourselves discouraged and confounded by the promiscuous and undistinguishing appointments of good and ill.” This is the thought, which Seneca hath imitated, and, as his manner is, outraged in his chorus of the third act:
O magna parens, Natura, Deûm, &c.
But the great difference lies here. That, whereas in Euripides this sentiment is proper and agreeable to the state and circumstances of the chorus, which is ever attentive to the progress of the action, and is most affected by what immediately presents itself to observation; in Seneca it is quite foreign and impertinent; the attention of the chorus naturally turning, not on the distresses of Hippolytus, which had not yet commenced, but on the rashness and unhappy delusion of Theseus, as being that, which had made the whole subject of the preceding scene. But the consequence of that delusion, it will be said, was obvious. It may be so. But the chorus, as any sensible spectator, is most agitated by such reflexions, as occur to the mind from those scenes of the drama, which are actually passing before it, and not from those which have not yet taken place.
IV. What was remarked of the second song of the chorus will be applicable to the fourth, which is absurdly founded on a single reflexion in the Greek poet, but just touched in a couple of lines, though much more naturally introduced. Theseus, plunged in the deepest affliction by the immature death of Phædra, and not enduring the sight of the supposed guilty author of it, commands him into banishment, “Lest, as he goes on, his former triumphs and successes against the disturbers of mankind, should in consequence of the impunity of such unprecedented crimes, henceforth do him no honour.” The chorus, struck with the distressful situation of the old king, and recollecting with him the sum of his former glories, is made to exclaim,
Οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως εἴποιμ’ ἂν εὐτυχεῖν τινα
Θνητῶν· τὰ γὰρ δὴ πρῶτ’ ἀνέστραπται πάλιν.
i. e. there is henceforth no such thing, as human happiness, when the first examples of it are thus sadly reversed. Which casual remark Seneca seizes and extends through a whole chorus; where it visibly serves to no other end, but to usurp a place, destined for far more natural and affecting sentiments.
If I have been rather long upon this head, it is because I conceive this critique on the Hippolytus will let the reader, at once, into the true character of Seneca; which, he now sees, is that of a mere declamatory moralist. So little deserving is he of the reputation of a just dramatic poet.
196. Ille bonis faveatque, &c.] The chorus, says the poet, is to take the side of the good and virtuous, i. e. is always to sustain a moral character. But this will need some explanation and restriction. To conceive aright of its office, we must suppose the chorus to be a number of persons, by some probable cause assembled together, as witnesses and spectators of the great action of the drama. Such persons, as they cannot be wholly uninterested in what passes before them, will very naturally bear some share in the representation. This will principally consist in declaring their sentiments, and indulging their reflexions freely on the several events and distresses as they shall arise. Thus we see the moral, attributed to the chorus, will be no other than the dictates of plain sense; such as must be obvious to every thinking observer of the action, who is under the influence of no peculiar partialities from affection or interest. Though even these may be supposed in cases, where the character, towards which they draw, is represented as virtuous.