But why, you say, why bid me hear
Of Flavius and the like "small deer,"
And do not rather ask my mind
Of Brutus, Cato, and that kind?
Well, yes! In Brutus I record
A champion equal to my sword;
Praised, envied, blamed, abused, admired
Of course (but most when he retired),
None could match Brutus in debate;
His style was worthy of the State,
The Patriot Party's helm and shield-
But Brutus now has left the field.
He strove, good "honourable man,"
To be a Stoic partizan.

Through supersubtlety of wit
To lead the multitude unfit,
His mind sagacious, sound, eclectic,
Turned policy to dialectic;

And often, at a Party Meeting,
Athirst for phrases high and heating,
I've known him pause to puzzle out
The whole Philosophy of Doubt.
Scorning the frenzy and the fuss
Strained from the dregs of Romulus,1
He into exile goes with Plato,
Disdainful as his Uncle, Cato.

For Cato-Does he hope to gain
A Party triumph by Disdain?
He penetrates the Tribunes' shams,
But can he rule, with Epigrams?
If in his cause the Knights invest,
They will exact high Interest.
And if, on strictly moral ground,

Their claim seems bad-why not compound? 2
Should Cato their demands deny,
His only choice will be-to die;
And if he please his Stoic whim,

And dies,-why, who will die with him?
Those valiant "Die-Hards," who to-day
Encircle him in brave array,

1 'In Fæce Romuli,' Cicero to Atticus, li. 1. 8.

? Cato, by his straightforward honesty, spoiled Cicero's diplomatic policy of bringing about a union between the Senate and the Knights.

He'll find their principles have veered,
Whene'er their Mullets grow a beard.1

Look round the world in short, I see
No soul with whom I can agree;
For always, in another's line

There's something contrary to mine;
I cannot make the two combine.
Hence, all things said, it seems not wise
To act, but still to criticise.

Far from the world of State I live,
In wisdom "deep contemplative";
Sigh for my Country, and expand
My lonely furrow in the sand.

1 "Cum . . . nostri principes digito se cœlum putent attingere, si mulli barbati in piscinis sint, qui ad manum accedant," &c.—Cicero to Atticus, ii. 1. 7.

MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.

THE

CEDIPUS THE KING - A PROFOUND STUDY OF CHARACTER -
IRONY OF THE TRAGEDY- SOPHOCLES AT COVENT GARDEN
THE SETTING OF THE PLAY- CEDIPE ROI THE TRIUMPH OF
M. MOUNET-SULLY-
-SIR EDWARD FITZGERALD LAW-A MODERN
DRAKE HIS VARIED SUCCESS-HE NEVER KNEW FAILURE.

SOPHOCLES' tragedy of Edipus the King is the masterpiece of its kind. The darkness of the story which it unfolds compels a dark austerity of treatment. The poet has handled his material as a sculptor might handle a block of marble. He has cut away from it everything that is not essential, everything that might dull the clear and living outline. The conspicuous quality of the play is a restraint, which is the more desirable on account of the poignancy of the motive. Where emotions so horrible are engaged, as in the "Edipus," the slightest exaggeration might revolt the spectator, and of exaggeration Sophocles is here, as elsewhere, wholly incapable. The crimes of murder and incest, which make up the tragedy, are heaven sent, and though the sin is rigorously expiated, the guilty ones are the victims of a curse rather than the deliberate contrivers of evil. And, as Aristotle said long ago, the story excites our pity and terror by hearing, not seeing. Edipus was exposed and Laïus was killed long before the action of the piece begins. And when Jocasta dies by her own hand, we are not witnesses of the tragedy. We know it only by the speech of the messenger.

The tragedy, moreover, moves to its appointed end with inexorable justice. If once we assume the conditions, the story is not merely probable, it is inevitable. Aristotle confesses that outside the tragedy (ew Tĥs Tрaywdías) there are things difficult of belief, and some of the modern critics have followed Aristotle with patient fidelity. The ignorance

of Edipus perplexes

them. They declare that it is a grave fault that he does not know what happened in his kingdom before he ascended the throne. Thus, in contempt of the conventions, they clamour for realism. They insist that the tragedy should be judged by the standard of life, and they forget, firstly, that every drama demands certain assumptions; and secondly, that it is a perfectly legitimate artifice of the stage to pretend ignorance in the characters in order to explain with perfect clarity the fable to the audience. And if the "Edipus" be perfect in concentration it is perfect also in simplicity. The language in which it is composed is the perfection of dramatic diction. Never was the "middle speech employed by Sophocles with a more beautiful effect. The ornaments of poetry are sternly cast aside. With a grave

economy everything is sacri- is his first duty, he will do

ficed to the exposition of the drama. Nowhere else in literature has the art of omission been so successfully practised. "Nothing too much," the true motto of the Greeks, might be set as an epigraph upon the title-page of this supreme tragedy.

In the the "Edipus," as in truth in all his plays, Sophocles proves that he is before all things a student and an observer of human character. It is not to criticise the prevailing view of the gods and their handiwork that he turns the legends of his land into tragedies. He is not engrossed, like Euripides, in the little puzzles of morality. It is the abiding interest of men and women which still holds him. If he follows obediently the convention of his time in accepting the Greek mythology as the material of his plays, having accepted it, he uses it for the display of character in action. The personages of his dramas are not puppets, and they are not types. They are separate human beings, vividly seen and perfectly individualised. It is this supreme faculty which gives to the tragedies of Sophocles modern, or rather universal, stamp. Edipus and Jocasta, Creon and Teiresias, seem alive to-day, because they were alive when they left the hand of their creator.

a

At the very outset Edipus is a man of strong policy and swift resolution, who will not palter with the truth. To save the city, whose salvation

whatever is required of him. He will consult the oracle of the god; he will take counsel with the soothsayer. He will inflict upon himself the punishment which he would allot to the crimes of others. "I pray," says he, "that, if the slayer of Laïus should be an inmate of my house, I may suffer the same things which I have called down upon others." And throughout, until the fatal knowledge overwhelms him, the Sophoclean irony is rarely absent from his speech. We know, in the theatre, what is concealed from him, that he, Edipus, and he alone, is the murderer of Laïus and the pollution of Thebes.

Thus he leaves nothing undone which may pierce the mystery. He neglects no rumour. "I examine every story," says he. When Teiresias enters to his undoing, he puts complete faith in the seer's knowledge and sincerity. "Save our city," he cries;

Save thy own Greatness: save me; save all that yet do groan Under the dead man's wrong! So in thy hand we lay us."

In every word of the speech there is a profound irony. At each step Edipus approaches more nearly to his own doom, and yet does not hesitate. When Teiresias makes a loyal plea for silence, the King is filled instantly with fury. His respect for soothsayers is blown to the winds. If Teiresias will not speak, then is Teiresias himself the culprit.

True,

being blind, he did not kill What is your heart but bitterness, if Laius with his own hand. But assuredly he had a guilty knowledge of the crime. "Had you seen," thus Edipus charges him, "I would have said that this thing was thine alone.” And thus, unwittingly, he compels Teiresias to tell the truth