While round her valiant squadrons stood, The DEED OF FREEDOM purchas'd with their blood.* The next LYRIC compositions of POPE, are two choruses inserted in a very heavy tragedy altered from Shakespeare by the Duke of Buckingham; in which we see that the most accurate observation of dramatic rules without genius is of no effect. These choruses are 1 extremely elegant and harmonious; but are they not chargeable with the fault which Aristotle imputes to many of Euripides, that they are foreign and adventitious to the subject, and contribute nothing towards the adshilg elanggo on vancement of the main action? Whereas the. chorus ought, · Μοριον είναι τε όλες, και συναίωνίζεστ bai," to be a part or member of the one Whole, co-operate with, and help to accelerate the in * Dodsley's Miscellanies, vol. ii. page 152. same volume, an excellent ode of Mr. Cobb. of whose odes Pope took the following line; tended See also in the tended event; as is constantly, adds the phi losopher, the practice of Sophocles. Whereas these reflections of POPE on the baneful influences of war, on the arts and learning, and on the universal power of love, seem to bě too general, are not sufficiently appropriated, do not rise from the subject and occasion, and might be inserted with equal propriety in twenty other tragedies. This remark of Aris totle, though he does not himself produce any examples, may be verified from the following, among many others. In the Phoenicians of Euripides, they sing a long and very beautiful but ill-placed, hymn to Mars; I speak of that which begins so nobly, le agleb Ο πολυμόχθος Άρης, τι ποθ' αιμαλι Και θανατω καλέχη, Βρόμια παράμεσος ερείαις; * “O, direful Mars! why art thou still delighted with blood and with death, and why an enemy to the feasts of Bacchus?" And a still more glaring instance may be brought from the end of the third act of the Troades, in which the * Ver. 793. the story of Ganymede is introduced not very artificially. To these may be added that ext quisite ode in praise of Apollo, descriptive of hise birth and victories, which we find in the zung gilt na Iphigenia in Tauris.t betation on vilma ; On the other hand, the choruses of Sophocles never desert the subject of each particular drama, and all their sentiments and reflections are drawn from the situation of the principal personage of the fable. Nay, Sophocles hath artfully found a method of making those poetical descriptions, with which the choruses of the ancients abound, carry on the chief design of the piece; and has by these means accomplished what is a great difficulty in writing tragedy, has united poetry with propriety. In the Philoctetes the chorus takes a natu Ver. 795. Ver, 1935. et seq d ral The subject and scene of this tragedy, so romantic and The! uncommon, are highly pleasing to the imagination. See particularly his description of his being left in this desolate island, v. 280. His lamentation for the loss of his bow, 1140. and also 1185, and his last adieu to the island, 1508, One ral occasion, at verse 694, to give a minute and moving picture of the solitary life of that unfortunate hero; and when afterwards, at verse 855, pain has totally exhausted the strength and spirits of Philoctetes, and it is nefor the cessary for the plot of the tragedy that he should fall asleep, it is then that the chorus breaks out into an exquisite ode to sleep. As in the Antigone, with equal beauty and decorum in an address to the god of love, at verse 791 of that play. And thus, lastly, when the birth of Edipus is doubtful, and his parents unknown, the chorus suddenly exclaims, “Tis 107 Τις 20000 216 τεκνον, τις σ ̓ ἐπικλε των Mangalavan; &c. From which, O my son, of the immortal gods, didst thou spring? Was it some nymph, a favourite of q Pan, that haunts the mountains, or some daughter of Apollo, (for this god loves the remote « babat rocks and caverns,) who bore you? Or was it Mercury, who reigns in Cyllene? or did Bac One may here observe by the way, that the ancients thought bodily, pains, and wounds, &c. proper objects to be represented! on the stage. See also the Trachiniæ of Sophocles, and the lamentations of Hercules in it. chus, 980s varwy en ang gw, a god who dwells, on the tops of the mount untains, beget you, on mountains, any of the nymphs that possess Helicon, with whom he frequently sports?* +90 21 11 bas apistoolid¶ to at the bits dignana The judicious author of the Tragedy of El101 10.0 frida, hath given occasion to a kind of controversy among the more CA JU BASIC the more curious critics, conZA 09912 cerning the utility of the chorus, which, after the model of the ancients, he hath endea21 970 to be voured to revive. That the great Grecian vijaded DIA Voit masters retained it only out of respect to its 2 has duttured of pud antiquity, and from no intrinsic valuableness T or propriety of the thing, can scarcely be imagined. The sentiments of the judicious Brumoy abib abog Isterra 1 in Mue 4.1 are moderate and rational, and seem to cont 10 911100RT 6 kaya si JR25 14 prehend all that is necessary to be said on this -ngusb sme2 10 2015h0 subject. "I know (says he) the chorus is at tended with inconveniences. Sophocles had the address to withdraw his chorus for a few mo 25 h: 10 few mo ments, when their absence was necessary, as in the Ajax. If the chorus, therefore, incommodes and puts him under difficulties, he must charge its solely to his own want of dex the poet, |