A HINT,
TOUCHING THE GREEK DRAMA.
While there is an active literary faction in America, who decry the study of the ancient classics, it is still pleasing to observe, upon a comprehensive survey, that these consecrated remains are assuming in public esteem the place which they deserve. I hope therefore to meet with some indulgence when I offer a few desultory remarks, not in behalf of classic lore in general, so much as in commendation of a single branch. The observations which follow are meant to shew some reasons why our scholars should devote special attention to the Greek Tragedies.
It is believed that these relics, unfortunately not more than thirty in number, have been more neglected in our schools and among our private scholars than any portion of ancient letters. That this has not been the case in England will be very apparent to any one who is familiar with the lives and labors of such men as Bentley, Porson, Markham, and Blomfield. Especially in the University of Cambridge the ardor with which these works have been restored to purity of text, and elucidated by indefatigable research, has been almost excessive.
The intrinsic difficulties in the Greek plays are not such as should deter any well grounded scholar. After an ordinary training in the Attic idioms of Zenophon, Plato, and Demosthenes, the labor will be small. From the nature of the versification, there is a limit to the construction, so that the sense cannot be thrown beyond a few lines. And the metres themselves, except in the most difficult choral parts, have been robbed of their intricacies by the labors of the critics.
There is this obvious inducement for the scholar to take up a Greek tragedy, that it is short. Even if he study with minute analysis, a few days will complete his task. But he who begins the Odyssey is loth to lay it aside until he has finished it, which is the work of months. The tragedy is complete in itself, “totus teres atque rotundus.”
It has been maintained by some scholars, that no human productions have the perfection of literary finish, as it is possessed by the dramas of Euripides. And we may include his two great predecessors in the remark, that their works, like the Hellenic sculptures, will remain unrivalled, the models of all who aim to present nature idealized to its utmost point.
The ancient tragedy, from its very nature, contains the concentration of high passion. This was the very notion of it, as tragedy. And this quality renders it an indispensable study to all those whose province it is to scrutinize or to awaken the active powers; in other words, to the metaphysician, the poet, and especially the orator. No doubt it was this view of the subject which led a man no less visionary than Mr. Fox to declare, as he does in his correspondence with Dr. Parr, that if he had a son to educate for the senate, he would cause him to be profoundly versed in the writings of Euripides.1 And yet so far as mere passion is concerned, we find it more strongly developed in the “desolate simplicity” of Aeschylus, than in either of his followers. This use of dramatic composition is doubtless involved in that celebrated and vexed passage of Aristotle's Poetics, in which tragedy is said to be efficacious to purge the passions. Barker quotes Jamblichus, in illustration of this παθηματων καθαρσις, where he says: “By contemplating the passions of others in tragedy and comedy, we settle our own passions, render them more temperate, and purify them.” Milton also, whose whole soul was steeped in Grecian poesy, alludes in the introduction to his Samson Agonistes, to this same remark of Aristotle, where tragedy is said “to be of power by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure.”
1 See Appendix to Parr's Works, Johnstone's edition. Vol. vii. and viii.