LITERARY PORTRAITS. Part First. Poets. ESCHYLUS; PROMETHEUS BOUND AND UNBOUND.* ESCHYLUS' "Prometheus Vinctus" has a part in a battle-field, would require been lately translated into English verse to be more than mortal to escape this by Professor Blackie. Without much feeling, seeing there, as he must, man ease, or grace, or melody, his translation writhen into all varieties of painful, shameis very spirited, and gives a more vivid ful, despicable, and horrible attitudes. idea of this great old poet's rugged energy It was, indeed, at Marathon, Salamis, and rapturous enthusiasm, than any other and perhaps Platea, that he mingled in verse rendering we have read. But we warfare; but the details of even these are mistaken if the mere English reader world-famous fights of freedom must have 'does not derive a better notion of schy- been as mean and disgusting as those lus still from the old prose versions. Best of Borodino or Austerlitz. From man, of all were such a translation as Dr John Eschylus turned pensively and proudly Carlyle has executed of Dante, distin- to the gods; first to the lower circle of guished at once by correctness and energy. Jove and Apollo, but at last, with deeper The sympathy which this poet felt reverence and fonder love, to that elder for the ancient mythology of his coun- family whom they had supplanted. Of try, for gods to whom Jove was but a that fallen house he became and contibeardless boy, was strictly a fellow-feel-nued the laureate, till the boy Keats, ing. He was a Titan among men; and we with hectic heat and unearthly beauty, fancy him, sick of the present, and revert- sang "Hyperion." ing to the past, tired of the elegant mannikins around, and stretching forth his arms to grasp the bulky shades of a bygone era. He had been a soldier, too, and this had probably infused into his mind a certain contempt for mankind as they were. He that mingles and takes * "Prometheus Bound" and "Unbound;" Blackie's "Eschylus;" Shelley's "Prometheus." VOL. I.-A More strictly speaking, Eschylus was the poet of Destiny, Duty, and other great abstractions. He saw these towering over Olympus, reposing in his sleeping Furies, and shining like stars through the shadows of his gods. To him, whether consciously or unconsciously, the Deities were embodied thoughts, as those of all men must in some measure be; and his thoughts, being of a lofty, transcendental 2 ESCHYLUS; PROMETHEUS BOUND AND unbound. order, found fitter forms in the tradi- | the subject had remained virgin for Shaktionary members of the Saturnian house, spere. The subject of Faust had been than in the more recent and more sharply- treated, well or ill, before Goethe; but defined children of Jove. his is now the "Faust." So of Prometheus the Titan there had been many drawings or busts before, in antique Greek poetry; but it was reserved for Eschylus to cast him in colossal statuary, with head, limbs, and all complete. ec His genius was lofty and bold, but rather bare and stern. Luxuriance and wealth of imagination were hardly his; they are seldom found so high as the Promethean crags, although sometimes, under tropical light, they appear in yet Many were the attractions of the subloftier regions, such as Job, Isaiah, and ject for him. First of all, Prometheus the Paradise Lost." His language is was a Titan-one of the old race who the only faculty he ever pushes to excess. reigned ere evil was; secondly, he was a It is sometimes overloaded into obscurity, benevolent and powerful being, suffering and sometimes blown out into extrava--a subject to meet and embrace which, gance. But it is the thunder, and no all the noble sympathies of the poet's lower voice, which bellows among those lonely and difficult rocks, and it must be permitted to follow its own old and awful rhythm. "Prometheus Bound" is not the most artistic or finished of Eschylus' plays; but it is the most characteristic and sublime. There are more passion and subtlety in the "Agamemnon;" but less intensity and imagination. The "Agamemnon " is his "Lear;" and the "Prometheus" his "Macbeth." It was natural that a mind so lofty and peculiar as this poet's should be attracted towards the strange and magnificent myth of Prometheus. It seemed a fable waiting for his treatment. Thus patiently, from age to age, have certain subjects, like the spirits on the wrong side of Styx, or souls in their antenatal state, seemed to wait till men arose able to incarnate them in history or song. And it matters not how many prematurely try to give them embodiment! Their time is not yet, and they must tarry on. Twenty plays on Lear might have been written, and yet nature leaped up; thirdly, the story was full of striking points, peculiarly adapted both for the lyric and the drama; and, fourthly, there was here a gigantic mask ready, from behind which the poet could utter unrebuked his esoteric creed, and express at once his protest against things as they are, his notion of what they ought to be, and his anticipation of what they are yet to become. For these and other reasons, while the vulture fastens upon the liver of Prometheus, Eschylus leaps into, and possesses his soul. The fable is as follows:-Prometheus, son of Japetus and Themis, or Clymene, instead of opposing Jove, as his brother Titans had, by force, employs cunning and counsel. He rears up and arms man as his auxiliary against Heaven. He bestows on him, especially, the gift of fire, and enables him therewith to cultivate the arts, and to rise from his degradation. For this crime, Jove dooms him to be chained to a rock, with a vulture to feed upon his liver. But Prometheus, knowing that from Io's race would spring a demigod (Hercules), who would deliver him from his chains, suffered with heroic firmness; he was even acquainted with the future fate of Jove, which was unknown to the god himself. When this irresistible enemy of Jupiter should appear, Prometheus was to be delivered from his sufferings. The reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim was to be the price of the disclosure of the danger to his empire, from the consummation of his |