CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Tragedies of Euripides in English Verse. By Arthur S. Way. Vol. II. (Macmillan and Co.) —Mr. Way carries on his work of translating Euripides with spirit and success. This volume contains six dramas, the Andromache, Heracleidae, Troades, Electra, Helen, and Hercules Furens, and it has also prefixed to the translation an excellent essay on "Euripides and his Work." None of the plays, it is true, stand in the first rank of the Euripidean drama, but they are for various reasons highly interesting, and as a whole they have never been more adequately presented to the English reader. Here is a part of Hecuba's lament over her grandson, Astyanax :— "Poor child, how sadly thine ancestral walls,
Bulwark of Loxias, from thine bead have shorn The curls that oft thy mother softly smoothed And kissed, wherefrom through shattered bones forth grins Murder—a ghastliness I cannot speak! 0 hands, how sweet the likeness to your sire Ye keep !—limp in your sockets, lo, ye lie. Dear lips, that babbled many a child-boast once, Ye are dead !—'twas false, when, bound•ng to my robes,
'Mother,' thou saidst, 'full many a curl rn shear
For thee, and troops of friends unto thy tomb Will lead, to say the loving last farewell.' "
And here is a specimen of lyric verse from the " Helena " :—
" Ah! who of the Phrygians dared that felling
Of the pines, for the mourning of Ilium fated, And for tears unto them that in Hellas were dwelling, Of whose beams was the galley, with evil freighted, Builded of Priam's offspring the hated. Whose oars barbaric sped over the tide, Till he came to the hearth of my Spartan palace In quest of my beauty, foredoomed the occasion Of mischief; beside him in treacherous malice Came Kypris, the bringer of death's desohstion, With Danans• sons, unto Priain's nation,
Woe's me for my lot, who am Misery's bride!"
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