of the Gods,
come to cry their message of _Karma_ to the world; and in doing
so, incidentally to create a supreme art-form;--the latter, a
"good easy soul who lives and lets live, founds no anti-school,
upsets no faith."--thus Browning sums him up. A "faultless"
artist enamored of his art; in which, thinks he (and most
academic critics with him) he can improve something on old
Aeschylus; a man bothered with no message; a beautiful youth; a
genial companion, well-loved by his friends--and who is not his
friend?--all through his long life; twenty times first-prize
winner, and never once less than second.--Why, solely on the
strength of his _Antigone,_ the Athenians appointed him a
strategos in the expedition against Samos; with the thought that
one so splendidly victorious in the field of drama, could not
fail of victory in mere war. But don't lose hope!--upon an
after-thought (perhaps) they appointed Pericles too; who
suggested to his poet-colleague that though master of them all in
his own line, he had better on the whole leave the sordid details
of command to himself, Pericles, who had more experience of that
sort. What more shall we say of Sophocles?--A charming brilliant
fellow in his cups--of which, as of some other more questionable
pleasures, report is he was too fond; a man worshiped during his
life, and on his death made a hero with semi-divine honors;--does
that sound like the story of a Messenger of the Gods?

He was born at Colonos in Attica, in 496; of his hundred or so
of dramas, seven come down to us. His age saw in him the very
ideal of a tragic poet; Aristotle thought so too; so did the
Alexandrian critics, and most moderns with them. "Indeed," says
Mahaffy, "it is no unusual practice to exhibit the defects of
both Aeschylus and Euripides by comparison with their more
successful rival." Without trying to give you conclusions of my
own, I shall read you a longish passage from Gilbert Murray, who
is not only a great Greek scholar, but a fine critic as well,
and a poet with the best translations we have of Greek tragedy to
his credit; he has made Euripides read like good English poetry.
Comparing the _Choephori_ of Aeschylus, the second play in the
Oreseian Trilogy, with the _Electra_ of Sophocles, which deals
with the same matter, he says:

"Aeschylus... had felt vividly the horror of his plot; he
carries his characters to the deed of blood on a storm of
confused, torturing, half-religious emoti