should have fixed certain rules; and, if we may so speak, provided certain materials; and, afterwards, have committed to some other Being, out of these materials, and in subordination to these rules, the task of drawing forth a Creation; a supposition which evidently leaves room, and induces indeed a necessity, for contrivance. Nay, there may be many such Agents, and many ranks of these. We do not advance this as a doctrine either of philosophy or religion; but we say that the subject may be safely represented under this view; because the Deity, acting himself by general laws, will have the same consequence upon our reasoning, as if he had prescribed these laws to another." PREFACE. [This Version - or Per-version-of Eschylus was originally printed to be given away among Friends, who either knew nothing of the Original, or would be disposed to excuse the liberties taken with it by an unworthy hand. Such as it is, however, others, whom I do not know, have asked for copies when I had no more copies to give. So Mr. Quaritch ventures on publishing it on his own account, at the risk of facing much less indulgent critics. I can add little more to the Apology prefixed to the private Edition.]1 I SUPPOSE that a literal version of this play, if possible, would scarce be intelligible. Even. were the dialogue always clear, the lyric Choruses, which make up so large a part, are so dark and abrupt in themselves, and therefore so much the more mangled and tormented by copyist and commentator, that the most conscientious translator must not only jump at a meaning, but must bridge over a chasm; especially if 1 The first paragraph of the first impression was as follows: "I do not like to put this version or per-version - of Eschylus into the few friendly hands it is destined for, without some apology to him as well as to them. Perhaps the best apology, so far as they are concerned, would be my simple assurance that this is the very last lèse-majesté I ever shall or can-commit of the kind." he determine to complete the antiphony of Strophe and Antistrophe in English verse. 1 Thus, encumbered with forms which sometimes, I think, hang heavy on Eschylus himself; struggling with indistinct meanings, obscure allusions, and even with puns which some have tried to reproduce in English; this grand play, which to the scholar and the poet, lives, breathes, and moves in the dead language, has hitherto seemed to me to drag and stifle under conscientious translation into the living; that is to say, to have lost that which I think the drama can least afford to lose all the world over. And so it was that, hopeless of succeeding where as good versifiers, and better scholars, seem to me to have failed, I came first to break the bounds of Greek Tragedy; then to swerve from the Master's footsteps; and so, one license drawing on another to make all of a piece, arrived at the present anomalous conclusion. succeeded in shaping itself into a distinct, consistent, and animated Whole, through which the reader can follow without halting, and not without accelerating If it has 1 For instance, the long antiphonal dialogue of the Chorus debating what to do or whether do anything - after hearing their master twice cry out (in pure Iambics also) that he is murdered. [2"I wish the reader who knows Beethoven would supply-or supplant my earlier lyric Choruses from one of his many works, which seem to breathe Eschylus in their language, as Michael Angelo, perhaps, in another. For Cassandra's ejaculations we must resort, I doubt, to a later German music." Note from first edition.] |