with another. He has reached the goal: but by the same turn of fortune she is removed farther than ever from the object of her desires: the same gale which has wafted him into the haven of rest, has wellnigh wrecked her hopes. Still even against this evil she has long had a remedy in store, which, if it succeeds, will unite her lot to that of Hercules by indissoluble bonds: no woman shall again dispute his love with her. But now the irony of fate displays itself in the cruellest manner: all her wishes shall be granted, but only to verify her worst fears. The labours of Hercules are at an end: she herself has disabled him from ever undertaking another. No rival will henceforward divert his love from her: his eyes will soon be closed upon all earthly forms. But all this is but a bitter mockery: in truth she has made him in whose wellbeing her own was wrapt up, supremely wretched; she has converted his affection for herself into deadly hatred. She, who was able to ruin him, has no means of saving him: the only proof she can give of her fidelity and love is, to die.
That the death of Dejanira is indispensably necessary, every one will acknowledge; but those who think, as Hermann, that with it the play really ends, will perhaps agree with him in his opinion, that it ought to have been reserved to a later period in the action. According to the view we have here taken of the poet's design, he could not have chosen a more seasonable time for it. Had it been longer postponed, it would merely have disturbed the effect of the last scene without any compensating advantage. This scene, if we are not mistaken, is so far from a superfluous and cumbrous appendage, that it contains the solution of the whole enigma, and places all that goes before in its true light. Hercules appears distracted not only by his bodily torments, but also by furious passions: by the sense of an unmerited evil, perfidiously inflicted by a hand which he had loved and trusted. The discovery of Dejanira's innocence likewise reveals to him the real nature and causes of his situation: it exhibits his fate, though outwardly hard and terrible, as the fulfilment of a gracious and cheering prediction. Henceforth his murmurs cease, his angry passions subside. He himself indeed does not yet penetrate into the depth of the mystery; but when, as by a prophetic impulse, he directs Hyllus to transport him to the summit of
