My royal father gone, myself to thee For ever, ever lost-thou sunk in nothing! Loud laugh our enemies, and my stern mother, Thy promise sent to me by secret means, That thou would'st come to avenge, maddens with joy. Thus this affecting scene concludes. El. And do I hold thee. Or. May it be for ever! El. Beloved women-fellow-townswomen, This is Orestes standing now before you, Once dead in craft and now by craft preserv❜d. Cho. Daughter, we see him, and from purest joy Tears of delight come trickling from our eyes. This dialogue is followed by one in which the original error of the plot before noticed appears more strikingly than ever. Electra still persists in her rash exclamations and lamentations, notwithstanding her brother's prudent injunctions to the contrary. She laughs indeed at the thought of prudence, and stoutly swears by the invincible Diana, that it is beneath her to tremble in a house governed by women. Orestes, who is very far indeed from partaking with his sister in her noble and generous enthusiasm, bids her remember her own experience, that there may be something of the god of war even in women. The whole of this conversation has to me an air of ridicule. The sister is determined to exclaim, the brother equally deter mined to prevent her. The boldness of Electra gives the prudence of Orestes an air of meanness; the caution of the brother magnifies to an unfortunate extent the apparent manliness of the sister. Certainly it is the man who ought to have been heroic. At last when Electra begins to be a little reasonable, and desires Orestes not to fear her betraying him by her joyful looks before her mother, as her former detestation still remains, we wish more and more that she would change places with her brother. It had been better perhaps, both for the morality and taste of the play, if they had both been satisfied with putting Egisthus to death, but as this is not the case, the design to slay the mother should have originated solely in Orestes, who should have been represented as acting under the impulse of a sublime, uncontrolable passion, stimulating him to avenge his father's death. The agency of the gods also, which is always at the command of the ancient writers, should have been strongly brought out. Who would not have admired Electra had she opposed these dreadful designs by her entreaties, if in yielding at last to the ascendancy of Orestes she had sympathized a little with her mother in affliction, for * the sacrifice of her unfortunate sister Iphigenia. All this is surely ill managed, and many opportunities of pathos and sublimity are thrown away. * Those who wish to see the respective wrongs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra discussed at large, and in harmonious versification, will be gratified by reading the Iphigenia of Racine. It will be shewn there what a mother might be supposed to say and feel on the occasion of her daughter's sacrifice. I refer particularly to the fourth scene of the fourth act, and to the fifth scene in the last act. Cly. O Ciel! ô mere infortunée! De festons odieux ma fille couronnée, Tend la gorge aux couteaux, par son pere appretés! C'est le pur sang du dieu qui lance le tonnere Sc. 5. Act 5. I shall be pardoned for adding the beau- Ductores Danaûm, delecti, prima virorum. The scene last mentioned is interrupted by the return of the tutor who, in a most furious and most just rage on account of the noise which has been making, endeavours to awaken his young friends to a sense of their danger. His first words are these. ω πλείςα μωροι και φρενων τητωμενοι. &c. Enormous fools! your understandings lost. This is equally unworthy of the author and his subject, and in truth poor Orestes did not deserve such a scolding. It must be observed that this play affords a pretty strong example against a strict and absolute adherence to the unity of place. It is perfectly absurd to suppose that the cautious Chrysothemis should have so feelingly described her joy on supposing Orestes to be in the country, or that the equally cautious Orestes should have discovered himself, to Electra, both of them knowing and fearing the enflamed state of their sister's temper, in a public square, before the house of Egisthus. It is almost equally improbable that Clytemnestra and Electra Deducta 'st, non ut, solenni more sacrorum should abuse each other there. Indeed all dramatic experience proves that an extreme adherence to the unities is as much to be avoided as an entire rejection of them. In the play before us the resource adopted by the author of a rebuking tutor will scarcely be allowed to remove the difficulties in which a too rigid law has involved him. Electra, on discovering in the tutor the person to whom she had formerly entrusted Orestes, notwithstanding her brother's obtrusive and provoking prudence, breaks out in a noble strain of feeling. Most lov'd and honor'd friend-the sole preserver Orestes. The preceding reproof of Orestes sets the author's want of skill in a most prominent point of view. μη μ' ελεγκε πλειοσιν λογοις. In plain prose-" ask me no more questions." Certainly the principal danger in the composition of this tragedy was that Electra would appear much too masculine. So far however from managing this defect, the author seems to play with it and exaggerate it, for just as the reader is about to lose all memory of her too manly |