whom the play was rehearsed, led on by their demi-god Theseus.  They were also prepared to receive, with reverence and faith, the belief on which the whole interest turns, that if OEdipus should be restored to Thebes, the vengeance of the gods against the devoted city might be averted; and to applaud his determination to remain on Athenian ground, that the predestined curse might descend on his unnatural sons and ungrateful country.  But while the modern reader admires the lofty tone of poetry and high strain of morality which pervades “OEdipus Coloneus,” it must appear more natural to his feelings, that the life of the hero, stained with unintentional incest and parricide, should be terminated, as in Dryden’s play, upon the discovery of his complicated guilt and wretchedness.  Yet there is something awful in the idea of the monarch, blind and exiled, innocent in intention, though so horribly criminal in fact, devoted, as it were, to the infernal deities, and sacred from human power and violence by the very excess of his guilt and misery.  The account of the death of OEdipus Coloneus reaches the highest tone of sublimity.  While the lightning flashes around him, he expresses the feeling, that his hour is come; and the reader anticipates, that, like Malefort in the “Unnatural Combat,” he is to perish by a thunder-bolt.  Yet, for the awful catastrophe, which we are artfully led to expect, is substituted a mysterious termination, still more awful.  OEdipus arrays himself in splendid apparel, and dismisses his daughters and the attending Athenians.  Theseus alone remains with him.  The storm subsides, and the attendants return to the place, but OEdipus is there no longer—­he had not perished by water, by sword, nor by fire—­no one but Theseus knew the manner of his death.  With an impressive hint, that it was as strange and wonderful as his life had been dismally eventful, the poet drops a curtain over the fate of his hero.  This last sublime scene Dryden has not ventured to imitate; and the rants of Lee are a poor substitute for the calm and determined despair of the “OEdipus Coloneus.”

Seneca, perhaps to check the seeds of vice in Nero, his pupil, to whom incest and blood were afterwards so familiar[1], composed the Latin tragedy on the subject of OEdipus, which is alluded to by Dryden in the following preface.  The cold declamatory rhetorical stile of that philosopher was adapted precisely to counteract the effect, which a tale of terror produces on the feelings and imagination.  His taste exerted itself in filling up and garnishing the more trifling passages, which Sophocles had passed over as unworthy of notice, and in adjusting incidents laid in the heroic age of Grecian simplicity, according to the taste and customs of the court of Nero[2].  Yet though devoid of dramatic effect, of fancy, and of genius, the OEdipus of Seneca displays the masculine eloquence and high moral sentiment of its author; and if it does not interest us in the scene of fiction, it often compels us to turn our thoughts inward, and to study our own hearts.