B OOKS.

A NEW PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.*

Tars is a singular and striking drama, one of the many which have shown us of late years how keenly the thought of to-day strives to throw itself into the old Greek moulds,—to elevate and widen the burden of the great tragic poems which summed up the religious Wisdom of antiquity. The reason we take to be that there is a special charm to the modern imagination in em- bodying Christian sentiments and feelings in those vague and visionary forms in which they do not raise questions of science, fact, and evidence at all,—but under the disguise of legends which no one ever pretends to believe, shadow forth high arguments, vague trusts, and sweet anticipations of a final peace. The delight shown in returning to the subjects of Greek tragedy, and penetrat- ing them with a new weight of religious emotion and ethical conviction, seems, as far as we can judge, to be due to the liberty which is thereby gained for delineating what we feel and believe, without danger of being challenged, even by ourselves, as to the intellectual grounds on which we believe it. Mix it up with facts that nobody believes, and the admitted fiction protects the faith • Prometheus Unbound. A Tragedy. By Charge Augustus Sitneoz, ILA. Loudon: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1867'.

against the appearance of laying regular siege to any one's spirit, and so only the more easily wins the acquiescence of those who would be startled into a thousand protests by any such regular siege.

Whether this has really been the charm which Mr. Simcox has found in this curiously statuesque (though modernized) study of an old Greek subject, it is of course impossible for any one but himself to say, yet we do not doubt that this will be its chief fascination to most of his readers. His conception of Prometheus is not the common one of a being of nobler but weaker type refus- ing to bend to the mere volition of sovereign omnipotence. It is not Shelley's,—

" To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite, To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy power which seems omnipotent ; To love and fear ; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent ; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and glorious, beautiful and free ; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory."

On the contrary, the conception of Prometheus which we have presented here is one of a being of even more than mortal passions, who, possessing absolute foreknowledge of the future, as well as of what we may call an alternative foreknowledge of what the future would be, ?f a certain event happened which he yet knows will not happen, can so little bear to give up his revenge, that he fights against his own perfect prescience, and strives to bring about the alternative issue which in his true self he is well aware is not to be, in order to humble his great adversary the sooner, and satisfy his own deep thirst for vengeance. Prometheus knows that if Thetis wed Zeus, Zeus will fall by the hand of his son. Yet he has also a knowledge within that knowledge, that Thetis will not wed Zeus ; that he himself shall reveal the danger which awaits the marriage, and so prevent it ; and yet for centuries he fights against this inner belief, and by burying the secret in his own heart, and even urging Thetis to this disastrous alliance, strives to promote that speedier downfall of Zeus which he knows is not to be. Mr. Simcox owns in his preface that "it is doubtful whether his [Pro- metheus] struggles against his own foreknowledge are a fit subject for dramatic art, and whether the open secret about Zeus' mar- riage will bear to be brought into the foreground of a play." As our author has treated this struggle of Prometheus "against his own foreknowledge," it is certainly not in the modern sense dramatic.

As in the old Greek plays themselves, the individual figures, instead of being studied as characters, are rather shadowed dimly forth as representatives of the darker problems of humanity. We see on the stage not the action and reaction of- limited motives and human resources, but "the stir of the forces whence issued the world." We have, in Prometheus, intellect stretching far beyond the vehement fiat of self-will, and yet the latter refusing to yield even to the absolute certainty of its own defeat. We have in Peleus, fierce human remorse for a sin of passion, passing into the penitence which eagerly embraces its own purifying anguish, and lov- ing at a distance and with pious reverence the silvery meekness of Thetis' spiritual quietism, who, in her turn, without disdaining Zeus, still cannot love his stormy force, and believes that there is a divine law over him which even he must obey. We see in Thetis this divine love of healing; peace, and of obedience, in all things natural, to the law of Zeus, yet of deeper obedience to the law of her own inner nature, which she feels takes precedence even of the will of Zeus. We have in Herakles the representative of noble strength obeying its own highest impulses, even against the warning of far-sighted wisdom, and striving blindly to confute Prometheus' deep saying that complete knowledge must paralyze will, that strength of will must generally be blind to the issues of any distant future. Such are the vague and shadowy figures on the stage of this drama,—if drama, with such a dramatis personte, it can be called. Still, in the Greek sense undoubtedly it is a drama, and a fine one. And the dim mysterious forms which mingle, and wrestle, and separate again upon the stage have, with something of the vagueness of Titanic shadows, far more, of course, of the mystery of universal problems about them, than the figures of any modern drama.

The finest thing in the play is the expression by Prometheus of his own view, to which we have already referred, that fore- knowledge weakens will, and is, indeed, so as far it is perfect, almost inconsistent with it, and this, in spite of the immense efforts of will which he is himself at the very time making, to bring about an issue contrary to that of -4eetiny. This is chiefly brought out in the dialogue between Prometheus and Herakles,—the wisest and the strongest

" HERAKLES.

"I seek to learn what lies upon my path, That I may meet it as becomes a man, And purpose as a man to recompense

Thine ancient love of men and slay thy plague, And hope to loose thy fetters ; for my sire Hath made me much the strongest of his works, As thou art wisest: men would have great gain If we could wed thy wisdom and my strength, And pay thy love, for all thy weary pain. But pardon, ere my hand approve my tongue My promise, made too soon to show my love.

" PRomitrazus.

"0 very noble son of evil sire!

I thank thee so much more for thy goodwill That I am naught advantaged thereby, Thy father's world being other than thy thought, My lore much narrower than thy towering hopes.

I also know those twain can never meet

Whose meeting feeds thee with a vain desire.

Fashion one spirit wise and strong at once Thou canst not ; Kronos would not ; Zeus will not ; But captive each to each in endless war, The wise are ever weak, the strong unwise.

• "ThatAxiss.

"But this is profitable, if one look From the beginning even to the end : Since often it bath been my evil hap To hurt where I would heal, by hindering help.

" Pitopurnurus.

"This plague is common among gods and men ; It doth not touch me, but I have my own,

And hang on Kaukasos for only this—

Because I am not blind to baulk my will.

Thou, therefore, keep thy feet from such a snare, And keep thine eyes from prying into shame, Since who knows much has also much to hide, And who knows all knows more than can be hidden ; And all who know have little left to love, Little to hope, little indeed to fear ; But still their fear is nearer than their hope, And if their fear could cease their will would die.

But blind wills live and change, and find new food In things that wholly slay the seeing will There still lives a free purpose in thine eye ; Be warned, and set thy strong face to the west. • "PROMETHEUS.

"0 Herakles ! all labour is but evil,

All knowledge but an evil tool of toil, Knowledge like mine a tool that wounds the hand.

Hope throws a ray upon one spot of work, It matters little which ; it hides the end.

But pabiying knowledge reaches on and on, Forward and backward, till we lose the now.

Time lies before me like an open book, Writ in a tongue that only I can read, Where fiery letters swim before mine eyes, Rolled and unrolled by hands which are not mine.

Once I could read at will—then I was strong ; Now I read all, I grow more weak and wise.

Wherefore my heart is hardened unto men,

My work, Zeus' prey, and now his pampered slaves."

This last conception of Prometheus, that he was strong only when he opened the book of the future at will and read what suited him, but so soon as he kept it ever before his eyes, his creative power was dissolved away in the very light of his intelligence, is grandly conceived. And this would, no doubt, be the result of any infinite power combined with other finite powers in the same nature. But as human will is commensurate with human intelligence, so we have no reason to suppose that, even in God, omniscience drowns the free volition, or the free volition hides anything which perfect wisdom could foresee.

Very fine, too, is Thetis's rebuke to Prometheus for his impiety in triumphing over the downfal of Zeus, at the very time when she is asserting the right of something within her to rebel against the will of Zeus to make her his bride, Prometheus all the while counselling obedience :—

"PROMETHEUS.

"Well, I have yet one comfort in my pain, One little jest to chuckle at alone :

The fire is lighted that will burn up heaven And hell, and thee and Zeus, and gods and men. Ah! wilt sing hymns to Zeus, when thou and he Are burning ? He !lath made such holy laws For thee,—for thee, remember, not for him.

"Tams.

"Prometheus, thou haat spoken fearful words Against the holy Quiet over heaven, Elder methinks than heaven, and Zeus and thee, And in that Quiet, venerable laws

Nestle about a throne we have not seen. Such speech is ill. Prithee now comfort me, Me, an immortal, sick with many dreams. Me, though immortal, trembling before Zenik Whom I have never cursed or disobeyed.

For, shepherding the flocks which have no fleece, When I would lay them to their rest, and sleep, Methonght the silver sceptre of the seas Brake, piercing the closed lily of my hand; Then waking, or else dreaming that I dreamt, I walked upon deep waters, stirred by wind, That danced, and leapt, and swarmed with weltering things.

Lumbering round my vesture and.my feet,

All ravenous after woe and wrecks of men.

Then, when the cheerful daylight came again, The seaweed curtains of my maiden bower Were shrivelled up with lightnings, rent with storms, And fiery fingers paddled in my hair, And wrote on pearly walls, 'False queen of seas, Thy place is on Olumpos, and not here.'

So Zeus confounds my mind with prophecies."

Very fine, too, is the dialogue of Peleus with the Erinnys (Mr. Simcox insists on spelling her in the Greek fashion, Erinnus, which has a disagreeable masculine sound to an English eye), who finally purges him from his guilt for the murder of his brother, Phokos. It is in this part of the drama that we chiefly see the Christian conceptions which Mr. Simcox has embodied in the old Greek legend:— " Ciroaus.

"Where are the Titans, for I see them not ; Surely it was their shadow passed on me?

"Etuteins.

"They shun to see me in the light of day, Whom long ago they know in Tartaros.

PELEUS.

'0h, mother ! or a much more dreadful god, Have I received enough for all my sin ?

" ERINNUEL

"Not yet, my son; but thou shalt rest on earth, And rest when earth is purified with fire.

" PELEIIS.

"And Phokos,—hath he rest among the dead, Who in his life had little strength or joy ?

" Earserus.

"Half of thy pangs had made an end of him, Pangs which shall yet be multiplied on thee.

" PELEUS.

"Surely I had wrong, And I have suffered long ; Long and very bitterly, for the passion of an hour.

Where is then the power, Which baffles all my will, And holds me still On the marbleeof thy breast, With txnaverted face, In thy terrible embrace, Like a little child at rest?

"Farms.

"After a little space Of looking on my face,

Drinking with a thirsty lip of my cup of blood and tears,

Filling all thy ears With Phokos' dying cry, Thou shalt know why I am sent with burning rods Of ageless memories, To the dwellings of the wise, To the darlings of the gods."

On the whole, we may thank Mr. Simcox for an exceedingly fine study of an 2Eschylean subject, at once, after lEschylus's manner, statuesque and yet undefined, full of vague mysterious shapes looming through the twilight of our knowledge, and yet with a reflected light turned back on them from Christian faith, which touches the antique form with a fresh beauty for modern eyes.