The Life of Thomas Hardy
miral to the cabin-boys. Both poets also use the great national watchwords and battlecries, Hardy quoting with great effect Nelson's famous signals to his fleet, and Æschylus putting lines into the mouth of the messenger that must have drawn out all the enthusiasm the Athenians were capable of expressing on the occasion of their solemn dramatic and religious festival. Opposed to the small, confident, and high-spirited bodies we see in the one case the imperfect amalgam of French and Spanish units, under the leadership of the tragically hopeless and vacillating Admiral Villeneuve, and in the other, the vast conglomeration of Persian and countless other barbarian vessels arrayed in all their exotic and decadent splendor. In the portrayal of the losing side in both instances, we receive a vision of oriental power, pomp, and magnificence, touched with a characteristically oriental note of sadness and fatalism. Although there was as little doubt as to the outcome in the minds of the Greek audience as there is to modern readers of The Dynasts, yet the suspense is admirably sustained by both poets, and the parallel scenes can be read again and again, and retain their fascination undiminished.
Heroic characters in The Dynasts and in Æschylean tragedy present a series of most interesting Plutarchian studies and comparisons. Napoleon, as the great central figure of the modern epic-drama demands our first attention, although Mr. Abercrombie makes the very suggestive observation that the whole Napoleonic chronicle occupies a position in Thomas Hardy's work analogous to that of the single character of Prometheus in Prometheus Bound. Hardy undoubtedly set out to present Napoleon
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