Than tolerate the grim felicity
Of harsh Lakonia.'
She urges them to go to Athens, and they set sail. When they are blown out of their course she encourages them to new effort by singing poems; and when they are cast on the Syracusan coast, she wins the suffrages even of the Syracusans by her recitations. She tells her friends, just when she is about to be happily wedded, of this her early adventure, and recites the 'whole main of a play from first to last,' which was associated in her mind with such strange, glad memories.
And this is Mr. Browning's way of reproducing Euripides to us. Nothing could be more characteristic than this performance. It is full of dramatic subtleties; yet ever and anon the pure naturalness and simplicity of Greek life break through upon us with subduing force from the strange relief of contrast. One of our poets, in a very clever jeu d'esprit, spoke of Mr. Browning as 'thinking in Greek.' This poem proves, in a certain respect, how true was the characterization. But if Mr. Browning thinks in Greek, then it is most often to the low, sad undertone of modern doubt, question, and perplexity. The sunshine that is cast over this whole adventure is what most entitles it to be called Greek, though there is far too much suggestion of shadow, in the shape of perilous speculation, in the background.
Faust; a Tragedy. By John Wolfgang Von Goethe. Translated in the original metres by Bayard Taylor. Strahan and Co.
All translators of first-class poetry have a difficult series of problems to solve; but we are disposed to think a version of 'Faust' in the original metres is about the most arduous task a man could set himself. We would almost rather attempt 'The Birds' of Aristophanes. Mr. Taylor, hitherto known as one of the choicest writers of that variety of English prose which has developed itself across the Atlantic—a variety which is what gardeners call a 'sport'—is not quite up to the great work he has undertaken. He is not a sufficiently subtle metrist to echo the delicate melodies which lurk in Goethe's simplest forms of rhythm; nor does he always faithfully reflect Goethe's ideas—which, though twisted into recondite form, are usually simple reproductions of archaic axioms. It is the highest compliment you can pay Goethe, to say that there is nothing new in him. He iterated ancient truths in forms that suited his own era. He was like a mighty tree, bearing fresh foliage every year, but always the same old oak that cast cool shadows on the lawns of Eden. Nothing can be more certain than that absolutely new ideas must be false ideas; but it is equally certain that a man of great genius does infinite good by thinking out old ideas afresh, and presenting them in a form that suits his generation. There is not much in 'Faust' that there is not in 'Job' (which some authorities deem the oldest poem in existence), and there is much in 'Job' which there is not in 'Faust.' But 'Faust' was a necessity of the age, for all that. And even Bailey's 'Festus,' a very crude and washed-out variation of the theme, did good in its time.
The deficiencies we have indicated in Mr. Taylor's work are more visible in the second part of 'Faust' than in the first. In both they are painfully observable. Take Gretchen's song, 'The King in Thule:' we select the first, second, and fifth stanzas:—
'There was a king in Thule
Was faithful till the grave,
To whom his mistress dying