PROFESSOR CAMPBELL'S " SOPHOCLES."*

WHATEVER may be the ultimate fate of Greek and Latin in Britain, the present Professors of those languages in our Uni- versities are doing their duty manfully. From them, we owe to Oxford and London our best editions of Thucydides and Catullus, to Cambridge our best edition of Lucretius, and now we owe to St. Andrew's our best edition of Sophocles. We do not, of course, rate Professor Campbell's work on a par with Professor Munro's. Ignorance only or flattery would do that For the latter is one of which every English scholar is proud when he speaks with the Germans " in the gate," while the latter is, at the most, a first-rate edition for students. As such, however, it deserves the warmest recognition, and we congratulate Pro- fessor Campbell very heartily on the successful termination of his arduous task. It is right, too, that we should repeat and emphasise the very favourable judgment which we feel bound to pass upon his work as a whole, because the observations that we have to make will not dwell, for the most part, on points of • Sopliocies. With English Notes and Introductions. By Lewis Campbell, LA. Tel. IL Oxford : The Clarendon Press. 1881. agreement between the accomplished editor and ourselves. He says, for instance, modestly enough, that to assign to the great critics who have labonred upon Sophocles each his own proper share of merit or blame would be a work demanding high qualities, and not unworthy of any scholar's ambition, but that he, for his own part, feels compelled to decline it. For ninety- nine out of a hundred lines, this abstention probably is as wise as it is modest, but for the one per cent. residuum it would not seem quite so advisable. Speaking roughly, and not by the card, there are about fifteen passages in each of the plays where the influence of authority in matters of opinion is of para- mount importance. An illustration or two, we think, will make this clear. In the Ajax (194 and 195), the sailors' cry to their chief is :— " 'AAA' eiva apcircer grov actapaicuri

lrlipiCet rata TO' aycorty exoXi."

Professor Campbell translates thus :—" But up from where thou sittest still" (we shall have a word or two to say about this style of translation by-and-by), " wheresover thou art thus fixed in a dangerous lethargy of quarrelsome repose." He goes on to say that ciyotiift is a difficult word, that the inactivity of Ajax was his manner of contending with the chiefs, and that the force of gyms, in the sense of a dangerous contest, is suited to the place ; and that the expression tiye.n4 (1;6414 is an oxymoron, "a perilous, quarrelsome rest." Others, he adds, suppose the words merely to mean " rest from combat," i.e., from the general combat. Now, here we. can speak with the instructive impartiality of ignorance. We are of opinion that the second interpretation is right. If, however, Hermann and Lobeck agree with Professor Campbell, we are ready at once to surrender our opinion. On the other hand, if they are among the " others," and we fancy they are, we should reject the first interpretation with as much confidence as we now do provision- ally and with all reserves. Again, take the well known and much debated passage from the same play, line 475 :— "Tf yap rap' iactp iitapa rgpretv gxet

lIpoerOdera ravalkicra roil ye maTtilaveir ;"

This we find rendered es follows :—" For what pleasure is there in day following day P Can it add to or take away anything from death ?" For the construction here, Professor Campbell says that the Ti (or ri) is to be resumed with the second clause, " What pleasure can time give, by retrenching what (or any- thing) ?" For the meaning, he quotes from Scott's "Lord of the Isles,"—

" Come be slow or come he fast, It is bat Death that comes at last."

Apparently, therefore, he thinks that the vanity of death is uppermost in the mind of Ajax, and that the hero, bent on suicide, feels that such a " necessary ill " may as well come " Fume, as syne." But Ajax was no Barnardine. Death for him was still the King of Terrors, though he knew it to be instant and inevitable. It is the vanity of life, rather, that he is speaking of, in the bitterness of his heart. We should supply ip.dp, in preference to rl (or Tr), and believe that what is meant is that "to-morrow and to-morrow bring no pleasure, when they do but bring us a day nearer to death, and put us a day farther back from it." The thought is not obvious, but is quite intelligible. Ajax, in an access of pessimism, reasons with life, as the Duke bade Claudio reason,— "Merely, thou art Death's fool,

For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet ran'st toward him still."

Yet here, again, we should be quite willing to yield to authority ; though, if we are not mistaken, the interpretation which we have given is nearly, if not quite, identical with that which Lobeck gives, and clenches with an emphatic " dixit consul." Professor Campbell does mention this view in a mutilated form, but he makes it the last of four alternatives, and we have reason, we think, to complain that these alternatives are left anonymous.

The lines which we have quoted from Measure for Measure remind us that this edition is enriched with apt quotations from Shakespeare. We are surprised, therefore, to find that the time-honoured illustration from Richard II. of the pun which Ajax, in his misery, makes upon his name, is omitted. But Professor Campbell, perhaps, does not think that the explana- tion which "old John of Gaunt" gives of sick men playing so nicely with their names applies to Ajax. If this be so, we can only say that we do not agree with him, for we look upon his quotation from Mr. Tennyson's " Maud " as much less germane

to the matter. The mind of Ajax was not " in a moment of intense feeling becoming engaged with trifles," it was bursting with the " misery " which " makes sport to mock itself."

Coming now to more minute points of criticism, we are sorry to see that Porson's prosaic iia' is substituted for 174

Ajax, 678. We do not understand what Professor Campbell means by saying that it is a form of asseveration which suits with the dissembling nature of the speech, but we quite under- stand that it spoils a very fine anacolouthon. For we have no hesitation whatever in referring the if.ctic of the previous line to mankind in general, and not to Ajax in particular. We believe, too, that TrpOuthp oinc cipip -or fir is a wrong punctuation, in line 78. There ought to be no stop at all, for Ulysses in- terrupts Athene here, just as she, in her turn, interrupts Ajax at 108 ; and we may add that these interruptions are common in the line-for-line dialogues (ortxopvAlai) of Greek tragedy. We think, too, that the meaning of line 1011 is that Telamon was a surly old wight, whose smile was none of the sweetest, even when good news was brought him. We do not appreciate the difficulty which is made here with the comparative " more sweetly," and the reference to " Henry the First of England, who is said never to have smiled again after the death of his son, William the Atheling," makes us hope that we may never have to smile again at such a description of the poor, drowned prince.

We have referred to Professor Campbell's style of translation. It strikes us as being, for the moat part, much too stiff and un- idiomatic. " And out through the hair he sprinkles a grey pulp, the brain being scattered about, and blood therewith," may be a literal translation of Tra,chiniae, 781 and 782, but this is just the kind of literal translation to which Voltaire's application of " la lettre tue " applies. We know as well as Professor Campbell knows, or as any schoolboy might, with a lexicon at his elbow, that the verb is active, but whether we make Lichee or his murderer the subject, "he sprinkles " is simply " tolerable, and not to be endured." We can hardly say, too, that " resprit vivifie " such a phrase as, " Sir, you have the privilege of seeing here the famous Philoctetes," for,— "°O&' gat' 6 KA.tunSs oor

But we gladly turn from what seem to us to be faults in his translations to the excellent introductions which the Professor has set before each play. They all bear marks of extensive reading, ripe scholarship, and acute criticism. Yet even here we feel at times disposed to tilt against him, though only purer hastet, and with respectful courtesy. Of the four plays in this volume, we have always thought that the Ajax is the best. Professor Campbell boldly gives the palm to the perhaps unduly depreciated Trachinice. Yet, if we are not mistaken, the very emphasis of his verdict has a suspicions ring in it. " As a piece of character-drawing," he says, "Deianira is unique in ancient poetry. Her uncalculating constancy, her bountifulness, her womanly pride, her manifest fascination, so distrustful of itself, form a whole which can scarcely be paralleled, except from Shakespeare." This is surely protesting too much. Again, though our admiration of Leasing as a critic is great, we do not think that "the testhetical controversy which once raged about the cries of Philoctetes" was extinguished and made chiefly memorable by his sarcastic remark that "the Athenians are to be supposed capable of despising this rock of a man, because he reverberates to the waves that cannot shake him." Professor Campbell calls this a fine image. It may be, but what does it mean ? Did the waves ever try to shake Philoctetes ? We assent very readily to the assertion that the Electra can never appeal to

modern sympathies. We are by no means at one with the editor in the reasons which he gives for that assertion. It may be granted that in one sense " intense and sustained emotion about one who has long been dead, is no longer easily conceivable. But Professor Campbell seems to overlook, for the moment, that Clytemnestra was alive all the while, to keep Electra's sore open. And Agamemnon was forgotten fast enough, we take it, after his wife was slain. We venture to think, too, that Mr. Paley's " ingeniously expressed " view of a certain subject is approved too hastily. For, pace Max Muller and Mr. Cox, we are stout enough Philistines to asseverate, and if need be and permitted, to asseverate with an oath, that "modern science" has not yet conclusively proved that the life and labours of Hercules are a "solar myth." But however this may be, Professor Campbell is much too sober a critic to admit that this theory has any bearing upon the inter- pretation of the Traehiniae. And here we must close this rather one-sided notice of a very valuable book. If we have not spoken of it as it is, we have certainly set down naught in malice, and we gladly repeat that it is beyond a doubt the best English edition of Sophocles now extant.