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 Eschy- 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 man- More strictly speaking, Eschylus was nikins around, and stretching forth his the poet of Destiny, Duty, and other great arms to grasp the bulky shades of a by-abstractions. gone 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 ming and takes * "Prometheus Bound" and "Unbound;" Blackie's "Eschylus;" Shells "Prome theus." VOL. I.-A 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 :11 men must in some measure be; and his thoughts, being of a lofty, transcendental 14 |