Literary and General Lectures and Essays | Page 3

may be the Chorus was composed--as in the comedies of
Aristophanes, the greatest humorist the world has ever seen--of birds,
or of frogs, or even of clouds. It may rise to the level of Don Quixote,
or sink to that of Sancho Panza; for it is always the incarnation of such
wisdom, heavenly or earthly, as the poet wishes the people to bring to
bear on the subject-matter.
But let the poets themselves, rather than me, speak awhile. Allow me to
give you a few specimens of these choruses--the first as an example of
that practical and yet surely not un-divine wisdom, by which they
supplied the place of our modern preacher, or essayist, or didactic poet.
Listen to this of the old men's chorus in the "Agamemnon," in the
spirited translation of my friend Professor Blackie:
'Twas said of old, and 'tis said to-day, That wealth to prosperous stature
grown Begets a birth of its own: That a surfeit of evil by good is
prepared, And sons must bear what allotment of woe Their sires were
spared. But this I refuse to believe: I know That impious deeds conspire
To beget an offspring of impious deeds Too like their ugly sire. But
whoso is just, though his wealth like a river Flow down, shall be
scathless: his house shall rejoice In an offspring of beauty for ever.
The heart of the haughty delights to beget A haughty heart. From time
to time In children's children recurrent appears The ancestral crime.
When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed And the Fury
burns with wrathful fires, A demon unholy, with ire unabated, Lies like
black night on the halls of the fated; And the recreant Son plunges
guiltily on To perfect the guilt of his Sires.
But Justice shines in a lowly cell; In the homes of poverty,
smoke-begrimed, With the sober-minded she loves to dwell. But she
turns aside From the rich man's house with averted eye, The
golden-fretted halls of pride Where hands with lucre are foul, and the
praise Of counterfeit goodness smoothly sways; And wisely she guides
in the strong man's despite All things to an issue of RIGHT.

Let me now give you another passage from the "Eumenides"--or
"Furies"--of AEschylus.
Orestes, Prince of Argos, you must remember, has avenged on his
mother Clytemnestra the murder of his father, King Agamemnon, on
his return from Troy. Pursued by the Furies, he takes refuge in the
temple of Apollo at Delphi, and then, still Fury-haunted, goes to Athens,
where Pallas Athene, the warrior-maiden, the tutelary goddess of
Athens, bids him refer his cause to the Areopagus, the highest court of
Athens, Apollo acting as his advocate, and she sitting as umpire in the
midst. The white and black balls are thrown into the urn, and are equal;
and Orestes is only delivered by the decision of Athene--as the
representative of the nearer race of gods, the Olympians, the friends of
man, in whose likeness man is made. The Furies are the representatives
of the older and darker creed--which yet has a depth of truth in it--of
the irreversible dooms which underlie all nature; and which represent
the Law, and not the Gospel, the consequence of the mere act,
independent of the spirit which has prompted it.
They break out in fury against the overbearing arrogance of these
younger gods. Athene bears their rage with equanimity, addresses them
in the language of kindness, even of veneration, till these so
indomitable beings are unable to withstand the charm of her mild
eloquence. They are to have a sanctuary in the Athenian land, and to be
called no more Furies (Erinnys), but Eumenides--the _well-
conditioned_--the kindly goddesses. And all ends with a solemn
precession round the orchestra, with hymns of blessing, while the
terrible Chorus of the Furies, clothed in black, with blood-stained
girdles, and serpents in their hair, in masks having perhaps somewhat
of the terrific beauty of Medusa-masks, are convoyed to their new
sanctuary by a procession of children, women, and old men in purple
robes with torches in their hands, after Athene and the Furies have sung,
in response to each other, a chorus from which I must beg leave to give
you an extract or two:
Eldest Fury (Leader of the Chorus).
Far from thy dwelling, and far from thy border, By the grace of my

godhead benignant I order The blight which may blacken the bloom of
the trees. Far from thy border, and far from thy dwelling, Be the hot
blast which shrivels the bud in its swelling, The seed-rotting taint, and
the creeping disease. Thy flocks be still doubled, thy seasons be steady,
And when Hermes is near thee, thy hand be still ready The
Heaven-dropt bounty to seize.
Athene.
Hear her words,