-horses that have been defunct for
twenty-five centuries, chariots that were crazy in his own day, and
contests with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. Then his
digressions about old genealogies are no whit better than his main
theme, nor more amusing than a Welshman's pedigree. The best
translator of any age, Mr. Carey, who translated Dante, has done what
human skill could effect to make the old Theban readable; but, after
all, the man is yet to come who _has_ read Pindar, _will_ read Pindar,
or _can_ read Pindar, except, indeed, a translator in the way of duty.
And the son of Philip himself, though he bade 'spare the house of
Pindarus,' we vehemently suspect, never read the works of Pindarus;
that labour he left to some future Hercules. So much for his subjects:
but a second objection is--his metre: The hexameter, or heroic metre
of the ancient Greeks, is delightful to our modern ears; so is the
Iambic metre fortunately of the stage: but the Lyric metres generally,
and those of Pindar without one exception, are as utterly without
meaning to us, as merely chaotic labyrinths of sound, as Chinese music
or Dutch concertos. Need we say more?

[Footnote 14: Viz. the supposed dragging of Hector three times round
Troy by Achilles--a mere post-Homeric fable. But it is ludicrous to
add, that, in after years--nay, when nearly at the end of his
translation of the _Iliad_, in 1718--Pope took part in a discussion
upon Homer's reasons for ascribing such conduct to his hero, seriously
arguing the _pro_ and _con_ upon a pure fiction.]

Next comes the drama. But this is too weighty a theme to be discussed
slightly; and the more so because here only we willingly concede a
strong motive for learning Greek; here, only, we hold the want of a
ready introduction to be a serious misfortune. Our general argument,
therefore, which had for its drift to depreciate Greek, dispenses, in
this case, with our saying anything; since every word we _could_ say
would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this
field of the Greek literature, deliver one oracular sentence, tending
neither to praise nor dispraise it, but simply to state its relations
to the modern, or, at least, the English drama. In the ancient drama,
to represent it justly, the unlearned reader must imagine grand
situations, impressive groups; in the modern tumultuous movement, a
grand stream of action. In the Greek drama, he must conceive the
presiding pow