a Sophocles died about 405 B.C., at a period when the loss of the Sicilian armament and the renewed activity of the Peloponnesian commanders had reduced the daring enterprise of the Athenian democracy to a convulsive struggling to retain that liberty which seemed about to slip from its grasp. Then it was that those petty states, which had bowed their heads in abject terror before the sweep of her fierce anger, started up around her in the day of her adversity, eager for revenge and bloodshed. Foremost in the attack and loudest in the bark was Thebes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the patriotic bard, whose name was known and respected all over Greece, should in this, his latest work, have taken advantage of the story of Edipus to deter the descendants of Cadmus from an impious hostility against the land protected by the bones and the manes of the Theban Edipus. From the same source sprang, no doubt, that fierce spirit of enmity against the hostile metropolis of Bæotia, which is perpetually flashing and blazing in the Edipus Coloneus; hence came the mission and defeat of Creon, hence the ascribed virtue in the tomb of Edipus, which Sophocles, presuming probably on the prophetical powers supposed to form a part of the poetical faculty, has ventured to tack on to the original myth. The prophecy was not inspired, but the poet did not live to be mortified by the failure of his patriotic prognostication. But the charm which was wanting to the ashes of Edipus seemed to be supplied in those of Sophocles. Through the day of his funeral the enmity of Sparta and Athens slept. Spear and sword kept holiday while the remains of the great poet were committed to the dust. Besides these more particular political allusions, the character of the work is so distinctly national 1 -presenting such a grand vision of the mythical age of Athens—abounding so remarkably in songs and odes of fatherland—that we may imagine it to have been to Athens, although in an inferior degree, what the Iliad was to Greece in general, what the Æneid was to Rome, and what the Henriade was intended to be to France. And yet, further, the Edipus Coloneus abounds in allusions of a more private nature. A story told by Cicero, and repeated in every modern notice of the life of Sophocles, represents the poet to have been deeply injured in his old age by the avarice and ingratitude of his grandsons. Very frequent and sorrowful are the poet's allusions to these misfortunes of his old age, conveyed sometimes in the bitter reproaches of Edipus, addressed to his ungrateful son, and sometimes in sad reflections upon the decay of affection and faith among men. We may imagine what was passing through the old man's mind, when he composed those noble and melancholy lines : "Ω φίλτατ’ Αιγέως παι, μόνοις ου γίγνεται с I have endeavoured in this rapid sketch in some measure to show what appearance the Edipus Coloneus might be expected to present to an Athenian well versed in the mythology of his country, in the history of Athens, and in the private biography of the poet. No play perhaps owed more, at its first appearance, to those adventitious merits which have other founts than that of Helicon, and which recommend themselves only to contemporaneous critics; at the same time it is but fair to state that no poem could better afford to do without them. In none of his works is Sophocles more exalted in sentiment, or more magnificent in diction ; in none is the interest more successfully supported without the artificial machinery of a plot! If in artful management of the fable it be inferior to the Edipus Rex, or in the living picture of active heroism to the Antigone, yet in its magnificent display of the mysteries of the old Greek mythology it is unequalled. We are there admitted into the solemn groves of that chivalrous and martial Paganism, which surpassed in romantic grace all those immemorial superstitions which vegetated like noxious weeds on the banks of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Ganges. In the piety of Sophocles there is something far more sincere and reverent than is generally found in the votaries of a refined heathenism like his. CHAPTER III. In the remotest periods, long before Britain possessed either authentic history, or even genuine traditions ; before Roman ambition, or Saxon tyranny, the rude ferocity of the Dane, or the statelier chivalry of the adventurous Norseman, came to desolate our island; nay, before the massy granites of Stonehenge were piled upon one another by the rude art of those primitive ages, the story of Lear is placed by those monkish chroniclers who recorded, and perhaps invented, it. Sixty years did that unhappily celebrated monarch sway the sceptre of his ancestor, Brute: old age came upon him still in undisturbed prosperity, and he might look forward to a peaceful close of a fortunate and protracted career. But the powers which guide 1 the stars of heaven, and the fortunes of men, had already foretold in the one what they designed to accomplish in the other; and had reserved for the declining years and faculties of Lear, a load of disaster, such as manhood in its vigorous prime could barely have supported. His blasted old age sunk beneath the reiterated strokes, smiting like successive lightnings upon a head enfeebled already by the slower weapon of time, and he presented at length the sad and wondrous spectacle of frenzy following in the wake of dotage, and calamity treading upon the heels of decay. His story was perhaps as celebrated in the earlier days of our English literature, when it was looked upon with the reverence belonging to an authentic narrative, as ever was that of Edipus or Priam in the corresponding period of Athenian annals. It was copied by Holingshed from Geoffrey; it was made familiar to the lower classes in the form of a ballad; it was incorporated by Edmund Spenser into the second book of the Faëry Queene. But all these earlier celebrations have faded from remembrance before the magnificent dramatic version in which it has been remoulded by a greater pen even than Spenser's, and compared with which they are but as the grub to the various coloured and bright-winged butterfly. Geoffrey of Monmouth's narration is a mere nur. sery tale, destitute of dignity and almost of interest, and in style insufferably tedious and prosaic. Spenser has softened the improbability, but at the same time has weakened the point of his original. He relates it briefly and incidentally, but not without a full measure of that rich elegance and fascinating sweetness of expression by which he is wont to illustrate the meanest theme, and to render the foulest odoriferous. But in none of these narratives could there have been discerned the faintest indication of the importance and transcendent interest which this legend was destined to possess in the estimation of posterity. Shakespeare has employed a most singular and |