BOOKS.

SANDYS' " BACCHAE " OF EURIPIDES.* TUE genius of Euripides will doubtless long continue to bo to critics a fruitful subject of comparison with that of the two other great Athenian tragedians. After a period of undue disparage- ment, the pendulum seems to be swinging back again, and the favourite poet of Milton, of Fox, and of Goethe is recovering the place of which the sneers of Schlegel and his school at one time threatened to deprive him. But even those who chose rather to dwell upon plays like the Orestes and Electra, which show how far Euripides could fall below himself, have been ready to admit that in the Bacchae we have a drama quite unique of its kind, and that a very remarkable kind. Mr.

* The &echo of Euripides. With Critical and Explanatory Notes, and with Numermix Illuetratione from Works of Ancient Art. By Johu Edwin Situdya, M.A. Cambridge 1 tho Uuh•erelty Press. 16$0.

Trevelyan has preserved for us the opinion of Lord Macaulay, and it is one in which few scholars would hesitate to join ;— "The Bacchae is a most glorious play. I doubt whether it is not superior to the Medea As a piece of language, it is hardly equalled in the world. And whether it was intended to encourage or to"discourage fanaticism, the picture of fanatical excitement which it exhibits has never been rivalled." Un- fortunately, too many would be obliged to agree with his quali- fying words,—" It is often very obscure, and I am not sure that I understand its general scope." The difficulty does not lie wholly or even chiefly in the state of the text; though this, depending, as it does, for nearly half the play, on a single manuscript of no very great merit, has furnished plenty of material for several generations of critics. But, as Lord Macaulay said, it is the general purpose of the play which it is so difficult to grasp. It depicts the vengeance of Dionysus on the King of Thebes and his royal relatives, who had refused to accept tho worship of the god, and had scorned the story of his divine parentage. In so far, it seems undoubtedly to be a warning against the danger of neglecting the popular religion.

There is not a suggestion that the terrible fate of Pontheus and Agave was undeserved ; not a hint at any rationalising interpre- tation of a myth which more than most lends itself to such a pro- cess. The Chorus, which is naturally looked to for the expression of the poet's own sentiments, freed almost entirely from the con- straint of dramatic fitness, abounds in reflections as to the folly of a self-conceited wisdom, and the duty of a sober temper, combined with an awe of things divine. And yet the author is the Euripides who was the pupil of Anaxagoras, the atheist, who was famous for his own collection of books, and was attacked with merciless ridicule for rationalism and sophistry.

The key is to be found partly in the fact that the Bacchae is the product of the closing years of the life of the poet. Mr. Sandys says very justly:—

"Euripides, like others who have hesitated in accepting unre- servedly the tenets of a popular creed, had, in his earlier writings, run the risk of being misunderstood by those who clung more tenaciously to the traditional beliefs. His political enemy, the ultra-Conservative .Aristophanes, had unscrupulously set him down as an atheist, though all the while it would appear that ho had only striven for the recogni- tion of a higher type of the divine than that which was represented in the current mythology of the day. Hence our play, with its story of just doom falling on the 'godless' Penthous, may bo regarded as in some sort an apologia and an eirenicon, or as, at any rate, a con-

fession on the part of the poet that he was fully conscious that., in some of the simple legends of the popular faith, there was an element of sound sense, which thoughtful men must treat with forbearance, resolved on using it, if possible, as an instrument for inculcating a truer morality, instead of assailing it with presumptuous denial."

Professor Mahaffy, in his vigorous and suggestive study of Euripides, has put forward another point of view, which should not be lost sight of. The play was written, not at Athens, but at the court of Archelaus, in Macedonia. The king, who had attained the throne by the worst of crimes, was anxious, like some despots of later days, to shed. a halo around his ill-gotten power by his patronage of literature and art. "Among the half-educated Macedonian youth, with whom literature was coming into fashion, the poet may have met with a good deal of that insolent, second-hand scepticism which is so offensive to a deep and serious thinker, and he may have wished to show that ho was not, as they doubtless hailed him, the apostle of this random, speculative arrogance." What- ever the explanation may be, it does not adinit of doubt that the poet writes as one much more in sympathy with the orgiastic elements in the popular religion than might naturally have been expected from his earlier writings. This does not, of course, preclude the notion that it was mainly with the symbolical sig- nificance of these elements that his sympathy lay, and that Dionysus was for him not mainly the son of the Theban Semele, nor even the wine-god merely, but the type and embodiment of all enthusiastic passion that transcends the limits of the daily round of life.

Of this striking play, the Public Orator of Cambridge has

issued an edition, which may be said to be almost, if not quite, unrivalled for finish and completeness among the English editions of any classical author. An introduction of 150 pages

contains a criticism of the legend of Dionysus, a sketch of the poet's position at the time of composing the drama, an analysis of the play, and some remarks upon its representation, its pnr- pose, and its after-fame, together with a full discussion of the various illustrations which Mr. Sandys has selected for the elucidation of the text. Then follows the text, with full critical notes, written (very properly) in Latin, and containing a com-

plete collation of the two primary MSS., so far as they extend, and of one of the two throughout, with a conspectus of all the important readings of nine or ten of the recent editors. The explanatory notes and the scheme of choral metres extend over nearly two hundred pages, an amount of space which enables: Mr. Sandys, without undue prolixity, to discuss the many diffi- culties of the play with reasonable fullness. What may, per- haps, be considered the distinctive feature in the edition is fur- nished by the " illustrations from works of ancient art," which: are to be regarded as among the first-fruits of the increased attention now given to archaeology in the University of Cam- bridge, and as a promise of fuller harvests in the future. The Bacchae, with its striking figures and scenes, lends itself un- usually well to this kind of illustration ; and Mr. Sandys' diffi- culty must have lain chiefly in the task of selection from the abundance of coins, gems, bas-reliefs, and statues that. might have been pressed into his service. Gems have naturally furnished the greater part of his materials ; but he has shown, a wise discretion in not limiting himself to these, and has thus; avoided the occasional forcing of a reference, which is, per- haps, the sole drawback to Mr. King's exquisite illustrations. to Mr. Munro's " Horace." As necessary, from the nature of- the subject, the great majority have been depicted before,. though some only in books very difficult of access ; but two• are here engraved for the first time, one a gem recently dis- covered at Binchester, the other a terra-cotta lamp from: Cyprus. These illustrations serve for much more than merely to adorn the page. It is true that ever since Lessing exploded the fallacies of Spence's Polymetis, critics have not failed to• recognise the essential difference of the conditions under which. the poet and the artist work. Mr. Sandys has some sound remarks upon this himself in his introduction. But it cannot. but help us to enter more fully into the Hellenic mind,—and that is the true aim of the study of Greek literature,—if we have side by side a scene as itswas painted in the words of their most brilliant dramatist, and the same as it presented itself to. the mind of the sculptor or the painter. The Maenad of Scopas was certainly not a reproduction of the Maenad of the Attic., stage ; but doubtless, if it had been preserved to us, it would have told us, though in different language, the same story of wild enthusiasm that we gather from a Chorus of the Bacchae.. With rare exceptions, there are none of Mr. Saudys' illustra-- tions which do not help to bring us into the atmosphere in, which alone such a drama was possible.

For the text of Euripides, Mr. Sandys has done less than might have been expected from a scholar of such distinction.. He has not suggested more than nine or ton emendations, and perhaps only two of them. at the utmost possess that com- bined note of simplicity and happiness which will assure them, acceptance. One might have been tempted to believe that the time for felicitous conjectures on the well-worked field of the Attic dramatists was over, had it not been for the proofs to the- contrary that Mr. Verrall has given of late, in his brilliant papers. But in the task of selecting from the abundant stock of various readings duo to the uncertainty of the manuscript• tradition, and the ingenuity of preceding students of the play (among whom Milton holds a not undistinguished place), Mr.. Saudys has rarely failed to show that sound sobriety of judg- ment which is a peculiar stamp of our best English scholar- ship. The same character of sober soundness marks the ex-

planatory notes. If they have a fault, it is that too little- tenderness is shown to the needs of that deserving class of students who read without guidance. There is many a little- point of scholarship on which such a one would be likely to go. astray, although at school or college the teacher would remove-

the stumbling-block in a moment, as in the tinceis in 1.80,.

the construction of the dative in 1. 8, and the accusative in L 1067, the accent in 1. 139, and the idiom in 1. 822. In most of

these cases, a reference to a grammar—usually the best possible.

form of commentary—would have been quite sufficient. Occa- sionally, too, we feel inclined to complain that Mr. Sandys.

has withheld his judgment, or at any rate, the grounds of his.

judgment, on a moot point that has presented itself. Thus, on. the old question of " GUYEKtZ," for which the latest and best of

the German editors gives " El'iqsa," Mr. Sanclys is content to.

leave us to infer his opinion from the fact that he does not follow him. If Elmsley and Porson wrote " oi. 4;"1"")" iur v. 1100, why did they do so, and why were they wrong in doing it P 1u a few cases, we should be inclined to question Mr. Sandys' decision,—" olscerec " is surely "rosy," rather than "wine-flushed ;" " Vhotot," "a tress " of the lion's mane, rather than ivy ; " xci,c6ec" is probably a misprint, and "1-4,iort," too, but they are both misleading, and it is hardly proper to say that " ran" " is supposed to stand for " without adding that the best authorities consider this extremely doubtful. We are inclined to wish that Mr. Sandys had incorporated in his critical notes somewhat more of the matter which finds a place in the explanatory commentary ; a good deal of repetition might then have been spared. It is, doubtless, difficult to keep the discussion of the various readings within the limits of a brief Latin commentary, where the choice depends much upon the interpretation assigned ; but excellent models are supplied in the commentaries of Mr. Shilloto, the admirable character of which Mr. Sandys would he the first to acknowledge.

In the translations somewhat freely interspersed, Mr. Sandys is usually exceedingly happy ; but we are not sure that the principle which he has followed is the sound one. They are in most cases extracted from a blank-verse rendering, and often show singular skill in compressing the full force of the Greek iambic senarian within the narrow space of an English line. But occasionally the task of doing this has proved too much even for so expert a master, and something is sacrificed which the junior student ought to be trained to regard as indispensable. E.g., " Our fathers' heir-loom of time-honoured faith," is an excellent English verse, but is far weaker than the "old as time itself," which Mr. Sandys rightly decides must be the meaning cof the Greek (v. 201). But whatever differences of judgment there may be on isolated points, there will only be one verdict .among scholars as to this latest work of the Cambridge Public Orator. For soundness of scholarship, grace of rendering, thoroughness of dealing with the numerous points of history, geography, mythology, and art arising from the text, it is worthy of the form in which it appears. And that is not saying a little, for the printing, paper, and binding are simply perfect.