in their public compositions.

Of seventy-five tragedies which this admirable poet wrote and had
represented, nineteen only are in existence. The best of those are his
PHOENISSAE, his ORESTES, MEDEA, ANDROMACHE, ELECTRA, IPHIGENIA IN AULIS,
IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS, HERCULES, and the TROADES.

Euripides is particularly happy in expressing the passion of love,
especially when it is exalted to the most lively, ardent tenderness.
His pieces are not so perfect as those of Sophocles, but they are more
replete with those exquisite beauties which strike the heart with the
electrical fire of poetry, and his language is more soft and persuasive.
The drama is on the whole, however, much more indebted to Sophocles, to
whom Aristotle, who is certainly the very highest authority, gives the
precedence in point of general arrangement, disposition of parts, and
characteristic manner, and indeed in style also.

The most obvious point of inferiority in Euripides is the choice of his
subjects, which are charged with meanness and effeminacy; while
Sophocles and Aeschylus chose for theirs the most dignified and noble
passions. He has moreover given very disgraceful pictures of the fair
sex, making women the contrivers, the agents, and the instruments of
the most impure and diabolical machinations. This unjust perversion
was attributed to a hatred he had to women, which occasioned him to be
called +misogunes+, or the woman-hater; but this he sturdily refuted by
insisting that in those bad characters he had faithfully copied the
nature of the sex. Notwithstanding this, he was married twice; but was
so injudicious in his choice of wives, that he was compelled to divorce
both. In his person Euripides was noble and majestic, and in his
deportment grave and serious.

No poet ever took more pains than Euripides in polishing and perfecting
his tragedies. He composed very slow, and laboured his periods with the
greatest care and difficulty; anticipating the valuable instructions
long afterwards given by Horace to poets. A wretched author, whose heart
was as malicious as his poetry was miserable, once sarcastically
observed that _he_ had written a hundred verses in three days, while
Euripides had written only three. "True," replied Euripides, "but there
is this difference between your poetry and mine; yours will expire in
three days, but mine will live for ages."

The disputes between Sophocles and our poet, the jealousy and envy of
his great fame an