Euripides condescended to stage tricks. It is well known how Aristophanes laughed at him for the presentation of shabby-genteel princes and monarchs out-at-elbow.[6] Having no deep tragic destiny for the groundwork of his drama, he sought to touch the spectators by royalty in ruins and wealth reduced to beggary. The gorgeous scenic shows in which Æschylus had delighted, but which he had invariably subordinated to his subject, and which Sophocles, with the tact of a supreme master in beauty, had managed to dispense with, were lavished by Euripides. One play of his, the Troades, has absolutely no plot. Such attraction as it possesses it owes to the rapid succession of pathetic situations and splendid scenes, the whole closing with the burning of the towers of Troy.

By curtailing the function of the Chorus, Euripides separated from the action of the drama that element which in Æschylus had been chiefly useful for the inculcation of the moral of the play. On the other hand, by expanding the function of the Messenger he was able to indulge his faculty for brilliant description. It has been well said, that the ear and not the eye was the chosen vehicle of pathos to the Greeks. This remark is fully justified by the narrative passages in the plays of Euripides—passages of poetry unsurpassed for radiance, swiftness, strength, pictorial effect. The account of the Bacchic revels among the mountains of Cithæron, and of the death of Pentheus in the Bacchæ, that of the death of Glauke in Medea, and of Hippolytus in the play that bears his name, that of the sacrifice of Polyxena in the Hecuba, that of Orestes and Pylades laying hands on Helen in the Orestes, and many others, prove with what consummate skill the third of the great tragic poets seized upon a field within the legitimate province of his art as yet but imperfectly occupied by his predecessors.

Another novelty was the use of the prologue. Here, again, Euripides expanded the already existing elements in Greek tragedy beyond their power of enduring the strain he put upon them. In their drama the Greek poets did not aim at surprise; the spectators were expected to be familiar beforehand with the subject of the play. But when the plot became more complicated and the incidents more varied under the hands of Euripides, a prologue was the natural expedient, in perfect harmony with the stationary character of Greek tragedy, for placing the audience at the point of view intended by the poets.

The solution of the tragic situation by the intervention of a god at the conclusion of the play, familiarly known as the deus ex machinâ, was too frequently adopted by Euripides. The speeches of these divine beings are always formal and uninteresting. Their interference is felt to be mechanical, and the settlement of human difficulties effected by them leaves an ineffaceable impression of littleness. It reminds us of that pinch of dust upon the warring hive which Virgil described with exquisite irony. The deus ex machinâ existed potentially in previous Greek tragedy, and Euripides is less to be blamed for the employment of this device than for the abuse of it. He did not take enough pains to prepare for the appearance of the deity by dramatic motives, and he had recourse to it too often. It is probable that the theatrical effect gratified his audience, and prevented them from calling in question the artistic justification of so novel and exciting a stage spectacle.

In all these changes it will be evident that Euripides, wisely or unwisely, obtained originality by carrying his art beyond the point which it had reached under his predecessors. Using a simile, we might compare the drama of Æschylus to the sublime but rugged architecture which is called Norman, that of Sophocles to the most refined and perfect pointed style, that of Euripides to a highly decorated—florid and flamboyant—manner. Æschylus aimed at durability of structure, at singleness and grandeur of effect. Sophocles added the utmost elegance and finish. Euripides neglected force of construction and unity of design for ornament and brilliancy of effect. But he added something of his own, something infinitely precious and enduringly attractive. The fault of his style consisted in a too exclusive attention to the parts. We are also often made to feel that he fails by not concentrating his whole strength upon the artistic motives of his plays. He has too many side-thrusts at political and ethical questions, too many speculative and critical digressions, too much logomachy and metaphysical debate.

The object of the foregoing remarks has been to show how and to what extent Euripides departed from the form and essence of Greek tragedy. It may sound paradoxical now to assert that it was a merit in him rather than a defect to have sacrificed the unity of art to the development of subordinate beauties. Yet it seems to me that in no other way could the successor of Æschylus and Sophocles have made himself the true exponent of his age, have expanded to the full the faculties still latent in Greek tragedy, or have failed to "affect the fame of an imitator." The law of inevitable progression in art, from the severe and animated embodiment of an idea to the conscious elaboration of merely æsthetic motives and brilliant episodes, has hitherto been neglected by the critics and historians of poetry. They do not observe that the first impulse in a people towards creativeness is some deep and serious emotion, some fixed point of religious enthusiasm or national pride. To give adequate form to this taxes the energies of the first generation of artists, and raises their poetic faculty, by the admixture of prophetic inspiration, to the highest pitch. After the original passion for the ideas to be embodied in art has somewhat subsided, but before the glow and fire of enthusiasm have faded out, there comes a second period, when art is studied more for art's sake, but when the generative potency of the earlier poets is by no means exhausted. For a moment the artist at this juncture is priest, prophet, hierophant, and charmer, all in one. More conscious of the laws of beauty than his predecessors, he makes some sacrifice of the idea to meet the requirements of pure art; but he never forgets that beauty by itself is insufficient to a great and perfect work, nor has he lost his interest in the cardinal conceptions which vitalize the most majestic poetry. During the first and second phases which I have indicated, the genius of a nation throws out a number of masterpieces—some of them rough-hewn and Cyclopean, others perfect in their combination of the strength of thought with grace and elevated beauty. But the mine of ideas is exhausted. The national taste has been educated. Conceptions which were novel to the grandparents have become the intellectual atmosphere of the grandchildren. It is now impossible to return upon the past—to gild the refined gold, or to paint the lily of the supreme poets. Their vigor may survive in their successors; but their inspiration has taken form forever in their poems. What, then, remains for the third generation of artists? They have either to reproduce their models—and this is stifling to true genius; or they have to seek novelty at the risk of impairing the strength or the beauty which has become stereotyped. Less deeply interested in the great ideas by which they have been educated, and of which they are in no sense the creators, incapable of competing on the old ground with their elders, they are obliged to go afield for striking situations, to force sentiment and pathos, to subordinate the harmony of the whole to the