character and work. It is but a step from Æschylus to him, yet the step involves an immensity of change, not only in the man, but in the age. Instead of the rough son of Mars—the hero of Marathon—who (as Sophocles himself said) "did what was right without knowing it," we have the graceful and artistic poet, skilled in weaving plots and in delineating characters. The change is like passing from storm to sunshine. The wild imagery, the unearthly conceptions, the heroes and the heroines, human indeed, but with the human image dilated to colossal proportions, like the spectre of the Brocken, and with the passions of the Titans who scaled Olympus—the "ox-horned Io," the blood-stained Furies, and the "wild Cassandra,"—all these have disappeared. In their stead the scene is occupied by creations of flesh and blood, with human sympathies and affections, true and real in character, because their types were taken from the gallery of life. The serenity which marked the poet seems to influence his readers and spectators. So true is he to nature, so gradual is his development of each legend, however wonderful or monstrous it may be, that we have no alternative but to believe and sympathise. It is with Sophocles as with Spenser. "Au plus fort de l'invention il reste serein. Sa bonne foi nous gagne; sa sérénité devient la nôtre. Nous devenons crédules et heureux par contagion. . . . 'C'est une fantasmagorie,' dira-t-on? Qu'importe? si nous la voyons, et nous la voyons, car 'Sophocle' la voit."[1]
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SOPHOCLES.
