the most emphatic sense, when he sheathed it in his own body. The last objection that the speech suggests to the view proposed by Welcker, arises from the professions which Ajax appears to make of his intention in future to yield to the gods and pay due reverence to the Atridæ, and in general to regulate his conduct by maxims of moderation and discretion. These professions would certainly be mere dissimulation if they referred to anything but the approaching termination of his career, whereas they seem to imply a prospect of its continuance. Yet, if Ajax contemplated his death as a satisfaction both to divine and human justice, his manner of describing the lesson he had learnt and which he would thenceforth practise, is not unnatural, but strongly emphatic.
On the other hand the objections which the speech raises to the common opinion are very difficult to remove. If the aim of Ajax is to deceive his friends, admitting the contrivance to be worthy of his character, and consistent with his previous conduct, he cannot reasonably be supposed more in earnest in one part of the speech than another. It would imply in himself and would create in the reader an intolerable confusion of ideas and feelings, to imagine that he really pitied the condition of Tecmessa, and nevertheless only expressed his sentiments for the purpose of deceiving her. And yet who that has witnessed the scene of the parting from his child, can believe that he felt no pity for the mother. If so, since he couples her widowhood with its orphanhood, we should be forced to infer that he was equally indifferent to both. On the same principle if the passages relating to the anger of the goddess and the submission due to the gods are to be taken as ironical, we must consider Ajax in the light of a Capaneus or a Mezentius, who not only disregards but insults the gods. That he should be sincere in his professions of reverence for them, and yet use his piety for a cloak, would be a contradiction not to be endured. But in no part of the play is Ajax represented as an audacious blasphemer and contemner of the gods, though in the pride of his heart he sometimes has forgotten what was due to them. His last speech, where his sentiments continue the same and are exprest without disguise, breathes not only piety but confidence in the divine favour, grounded on the consciousness not indeed of perfect innocence, but of great wrongs suffered, and of
