I wonder if you ever would come over here, and either Bed and Board in my
little Ship, or on Shore? Anyhow, do write me a line to tell me about
yourself--yourselves--and do not think I am indifferent to you.

I have been reading Euripides (in my way) but, as heretofore do not take
greatly to him. He is always prosy, whereas (except in the matter of
funeral Lamentations, Condolence, etc., which I suppose the Greek
Audience expected--as I suppose they also expected the little sententious
truism at the end of every Speech), except in these respects, Sophocles
always goes ahead, and makes his Dialogue act in driving on the Play. He
always makes the most of his Story too: Euripides not often. A
remarkable instance of this is in his Heraclidae (one of the better
Plays, I think), where Macaria is to be sacrificed for the common good:
but one hears no more of her: and a fine opportunity is lost when Jocasta
{87a} insults Eurystheus whom they have conquered, and is never told that
that Conquest is at the cost of her Grand-daughter's Life--a piece of
Irony which Sophocles would not have forgotten, I think. I have not yet
read over Rhesus, Hippolytus, Medea, Ion, or the Iphigenias; altogether,
the Phoenissae is the best of those I have read; the interview between
Jocasta and her two sons, before the Battle, very good. There is really
Humour and Comedy in the Servant's Account of Hercules' conviviality in
Admetus' House of Mourning. I thought the story of the Bacchae poorly
told: but some good descriptive passages.

In the midst of Euripides, I was seized with a Passion to return to
Sophocles, and read the two OEdipuses again. Oh, how immeasurably
superior! In dramatic Construction, Dialogue, and all! How can they
call Euripides [Greek text], {87b} putting a few passages of his against
whole Dramas of the other, who also can show sentence for sentence more
moving than any Euripides wrote.

But I want to read these Plays once with some very accurate Guide, oral
or printed. I mean Sophocles; I don't care to be accurate with the
other. Can you recommend any Edition--not too German? I should write to
Thompson about it; but I suppose he is busy with Marriage coming on. I
mean, the present Master of Trinity, who is engaged to the widow of Dean
Peacock; a very capital Lady to preside as Queen of Trinity Lodge.

I have also been visiting dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and
8th Books of the AEneid. I could now