"Of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is oftimes a sin in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They omit of monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villany; for as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is one thing that make latter ages worse than were the former; for the vicious example of ages past poison the curiosity of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seduceable spirits, and soliciting those unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them. In things of this nature silence commendeth history; 'tis the venial part of things lost, wherein there must never rise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell."
In the preface to his poem, Mr Hunt has made an apology for the nature of his subject, and pleaded the example of many illustrious predecessors. He quotes the Greek tragedians (of whom, in another part of the same preface, he confesses his total ignorance)[1], and and makes allusions to the example of Racine, and some of our own older dramatists. He might also have enumerated the two best dramatists that have appeared within our own recollection, Schiller and Alfieri, and, the first of all living poets, Lord Byron. Each of these great men has composed a poem of which the interest turns upon some incestuous passion; but we will venture to assert, what we think there could be no difficulty in proving, that not one of them has handled his subject in such a manner as might entitle Mr Leigh Hunt to shelter himself under the shade of his authority.
In the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, we are presented with the most fearful tragedy of domestic horror which it ever entered into the human fancy to conceive. But it is a spectacle of pure horror, and unpolluted with guilt, for the mother and the son have both sinned in ignorance. The object of Sophocles was to represent not the incest but the punishment—not the weakness or the vice of man, but the unavoidable revenge of an offended Deity. Œdipus and Jocasta are as virtuous in our eyes as if their incest had never been. We pity, but we do not hate, them; and in the the other play, wherein the subsequent life of Œdipus is represented, we learn to regard his character not merely without disgust, but with emotions of tenderness, love, and reverence. The object of the poet is sufficiently manifest from the whole conduct of the piece, in which every thing that could assist our fancy, in bringing before us the details of guilt, is most studiously avoided, and in which there occur perpetual allusions to the old denunciations of Apollo and the curse of Pelops.[2]
In the Hippolytus of Euripides, the expression is throughout not of horror but of pity. The love is that not of a mother, but of a youthful step-dame; love too, unpartaken, unrequited, and unenjoyed. Phædra is polluted by incestuous thoughts, not because her passions are irregulated, but because she has fallen under the wrath of Diana. The young and beautiful Hippolytus dies a martyr to his purity, and we sympathize indeed with the feeling of the poet, who prophecies that his tomb shall be the resort of virgins and the scene of prayers.
"through long ages maids shall come,
And cut their hoarded tresses on thy grave,
Before their wedding. They shall give to thee
The fruit of all their grief. The tender thoughts
Of virgins shall be thine. Nor shall the love
Of Phædra for thy beauty be unsung."[3]
The Mirra of Alfieri is a play never intended for representation; it is a pure imitation of Greek simplicity and pathos,—a heart-rending picture of madness and despair, a long ode of agony. There is no willingness in the guilty love of the daughter, and no spot of sin pollutes the lofty spirit of Ciniro. We look upon Mirra, not as a sinner, but a sacrifice. We perceive that
"the force of destiny, and wrath
Of Deities offended, have condemned
Her innocent to everlasting tears."
The same circumstance of palliation, which we have already mentioned in regard to the Œdipus, might also be alleged in defence of the Braut von Messina. That noble tragedy is like Mirra, a strict imitation of the Greek model; in both, the fable is carried on by means of as few actors as we find
