oomy despair was too manifestly
driving him; her own conscious desolation, and the orphan weakness of
her son, in the event which she too fearfully anticipates--the final
suicide of Ajax; the brotherly affection of Teucer to the widow and the
young son of the hero, together with the unlooked-for sympathy of
Ulysses, who, instead of exulting in the ruin of his antagonist, mourns
over it with generous tears--compose a situation, and a succession of
situations, not equalled in the Greek tragedy; and, in that instance, we
see an effort, rare in Grecian poetry, of conquest achieved by
idealisation over a mean incident--viz. the hallucination of brain in
Ajax, by which he mistakes the sheep for his Grecian enemies, ties them
up for flagellation, and scourges them as periodically as if he were a
critical reviewer. But really, in one extremity of this madness, where
he fixes upon an old ram for Agamemnon, as the leader of the flock, the
[Greek: anax andron Agamemnon], there is an extravagance of the
ludicrous against which, though not exhibited scenically, but simply
narrated, no solemnity of pathos could avail; even in narration, the
violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than
the hyper-tragic horrors of _Titus Andronicus_ (a play which is usually
printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce
or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than
physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not,
therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when
even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic economy and scenical
propriety, could thus err by an aberration so far transcending the most
memorable violation of stage decorum which has ever been charged upon
the English drama.

[Footnote 8: There is a difficulty in assigning any term as
comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their
antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes
are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say _Trojan_
chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; _Grecian_,
again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far
greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must
explain and (if it can) justify our collective phrase of the Paladins
of the Troad.]

From Homer, therefore, were left, as a bequest to all future poets,
the romantic adventures which grow, as so many c