ever predominant, a feeling which Virgil and Tibullus well knew how to appreciate.  Even Euripides himself, perhaps taught by some dangerous lessons at home, has expressed his belief that it is best “not to be too clever in matters regarding the Gods."[2] A calm retreat in the wild, picturesque tracts of Macedonia, might have had some share in reforming this spoiled pupil of the sophists.  But as we find that the too careful contemplation of nature degenerates into superstition or rationalism in their various forms, so Euripides had imbibed the taste for saying startling things,[3] rather than wise; for reducing the principles of creation to materialism, the doctrines of right and wrong to expediency, and immutable truths to a popular system of question and answer.  Like the generality of sophists, he took away a received truth, and left nothing to supply its place; he reasoned falsehood into probability, truth into nonentity.

At a period when the Prodico-Socratic style of disputing was in high fashion, the popularity of Euripides must have been excessive.  His familiar appeals to the trifling matters of ordinary life, his characters all philosophizing, from the prince to the dry-nurse, his excellent reasons for doing right or wrong, as the case might be, must have been inestimably delightful to the accommodating morals of the Athenians.  The Court of Charles the Second could hardly have derived more pleasure from the writings of a Behn or a Hamilton, than these unworthy descendants of Codrus must have experienced in hearing a bad cause so cleverly defended.  Whether the orators and dikasts followed the example of the stage in those days, can scarcely be ascertained, but it is more than certain that they practically illustrated its principles.  At least, the Sicilians were so fond of our author, that a few of the unfortunate survivors of the Syracusan disaster, were enabled to pick up a living by quoting such passages of our author as they had learned by heart.  A compliment paid to few living dramatists in our days!

In dramatic conduct, Euripides is at an even greater disadvantage with AEschylus and Sophocles.  The best characters of the piece are often the least employed, as in the instance of Macaria in the “Heraclidae,” while the play is dwindled away with dull, heavy dirges, and the complaints of senile childishness.  The chorus, as Aristotle[4] has remarked, is most unfortunately independent of the plot, although the finest poetry is generally to be found in the lyric portions of our author’s plays.  In fact, Euripides rather wanted management in employing his resources, than the resources themselves.  An ear well attuned to the harmony of verse, a delicate perception of the graceful points of language, and a finished subtilty in touching the more minute feelings and impulses of the mind, were all thrown away either upon bad subjects or worse principles.  There is no true tragedy in Euripides, He is a melodramatist, but not according