female piety still more deeply affecting. The lamentations of Antigone and Ismene over their brothers form a terrible duo, to which no translation has ever done, or probably ever will do, justice. The scene of the tragedy of Agamemnon is laid at the palace of Mycene, and opens with the speech of a watchman who has been looking out all night from the top of a tower for the sight of the signal flame that was to bring intelligence from the beseigers of Troy. In a short time he descries the distant token that Troy has been taken. The fire on Mount Ida had told the tidings to Lemnos, and from thence the signal had travelled from station to station till it reached Arachne and Argos. The Chorus of Argive elders then enter, but evidently not till after the exit of the watchman. After a long description of past events, that shows them ignorant of the latest tidings, they are informed of them by Clytemnestra, whose ferocious pride they offend by a momentary incredulity. A herald, however, arrives, who announces the approach of Agamemnon, and farther relates, that the royal ship had been parted from the fleet in a storm, and had reached the haven unaccompanied. This information in some, though but in a small degree, softens to our imagination the improbability of the monarch's rapid arrival; at the same time it gives a greater probability to Clytemnestra's power of fulfilling her guilty purpose, than if the king had arrived surrounded by all his friends and his army. Meanwhile Clytemnestra continues to shroud her atrocity in dissimulation; and the poet justly represents her over-acted show of joy, the officious honours which she pays to Agamemnon, and the querulous prolixity of the descriptions of her grief for his absence, as the very reverse of what would have come from the lips of natural and tumultuous affection. She implores him not to leave his chariot, nor to set his foot upon the ground, till her maidens shall have spread it with embroidered carpets. Agamemnon with sense and manliness replies,— Daughter of Leda-guardian of my house, Thy words are (correspondent to my absence) As to some proud barbaric king, that loves Loud acclamations echoed from the mouths Potter's Eschylus. In the train of Agamemnon comes the young and beautiful captive Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, endowed with the gift and ensigns of prophecy; and though destined never to be beloved, yet not likely, even with this drawback on her powers of prescience, to be a welcome guest under the roof of a murderess. In the presence of Clytemnestra, Cassandra attempts to speak, but her agony is too great to be articulate. But entering the fatal Palace, her spirit, desolate with the memory of Troy and the sense of her captivity, scents the slaughter-house to which she is brought. The horrors of the past history of the house rise upon her mind; and an obscure expression from Clytemnestra as she departs, hints to the imagination, that the last glance of the Queen's eye had lighted up a vision in the Prophetess's mind, of her own as well as Agamemnon's fate. For Clytemnestra, in her parting words, insinuates that the disordered mind of the Princess might be cured by the flow Roll'd with the wolf, the generous lion absent, The murder of Agamemnon closely follows this prediction ; and with more effect, that it is only heard behind the scenes; after which Clytemnestra comes forward, not only to avow, but to glory in the deed. Her apology, however, which is that her child Iphigenia had been sacrificed by Agamemnon, as well as Ægisthus's recital of the wrongs which his ancestors had experienced from those of Agamemnon, are coldly received; and the tyrant is at last obliged to have recourse to what is generally the most convincing logic of tyrants, namely, to threaten his opponents with chains and dungeons. The Chorus reply, with becoming spirit," An Argive scorns to fawn on guilty greatness." Swords are mutually drawn, and Ægisthus, advancing to the Chorus, tells them that he dares to die. The Greeks were superstitiously attentive to ominous words; and the Argives, seizing upon this expression, cry out, "Prophetic be thy words!" But the scene closes without the decision of their quarrel; and we are left to infer that the people submitted sullenly to the hated usurper. The subject is continued in the Choëphora with that wild and mournful solemnity, which is the spell of Eschylus's genius. The shade of Agamemnon is unappeased. The dreams of Clytemnestra are haunted with terror. A mysterious horror hangs over the house of Atrides, and there are rumours of the dead that stalk at midnight from their tomb. In the mean time Orestes has grown up to manhood, and has been warned, by the most tremendous threats of the Oracle at Delphi, to avenge his father's death on Ægisthus and his own unnatural parent. In secret he returns to the paternal palace, accompanied by his faithful friend Pylades, whose presence is of no other use in the drama than to support the hero's courage in an enterprise from which Nature recoils, and to exhibit the heart of Orestes, though compelled to this task, to be naturally alive to all human sensibilities. At the grave of his father he deposits a lock of his hair, a religious ritual of regard among the Greeks; but retires when he perceives a train of female suppliants approaching. It is his forlorn sister Electra, and the Chorus of Captive Trojan females, sent thither by Clytemnestra with propitiatory libations to the shade of Agamemnon. By the gift which she finds at the tomb, and the colour of the lock of hair, she guesses that it is her brother's. Orestes, after hearing her benedictions on his own name, comes forward, and reveals himself. The recognition is, perhaps, not unexceptionably managed; but its circumstances are strongly conceived, and, on the part of Electra, it is affecting. As the catastrophe approaches, Electra takes a stern interest in its fulfilment, that would shock us in a woman, if we regarded her as merely yielding to the dictates of personal revenge; and unless we forced ourselves to recollect that the spirit of her father and his mangled corpse, the wrongs of her brother, and the threats of Heaven, were constantly speaking to her imagination. But, though a counsellor, and a confidant of the act, she is with propriety kept back from the scene when it takes place. To a modern mind the being barely told that an Oracle commanded so hideous an execution, can be no such antidote to our abhorrence of it, as it was to the superstition of a Pagan; and it must be owned, that to us the subject is fraught with horror. Yet still we are to judge of the Poet as an ancient, and as an artist; and considering his subject, not only the strength, but the moral taste of its management, is highly admirable; for every possible circumstance that can justify the revolting parricide, is pourtrayed with the deepest colouring, and, in the struggle between compulsion and nature, instinct is brought to combat with instinct-a father's with a mother's malediction. At last Orestes is wound up to the deed; but it is scarcely done, before his remorse rises as dreadful as had been his reluctance, and, having delivered his country, and crushed, as he says, "the dragons in their den," he sees the Furies of his mother's curse. "Orestes.-Ha! look, ye female captives, what are these, Their tangled locks vested with knots of vipers? Orestes. These are no phantoms, no unreal shadows; And thence these terrors sink into thy soul. And the foul gore drops from their hideous eyes! His shrine, the god will free thee from these ills. Potter. The Eumenides, or Furies, conclude this great trilogy: to which I can advert but shortly, in my present limits. Powerful as the opening of this tragedy is, beyond any extant picture of superstition, I cannot think that its conclusion, in which Orestes is acquitted by the pleadings of divinities, before a human tribunal, for an action commanded by the gods, is one of the traits by which Mr. Schlegel himself would recognize its affinity of character to the drama of Macbeth. The summoning of Orestes before the Areopagus was a political, and not a dramatic idea; a compliment to the Athenians, and not the better for being offered to their aristocracy. LORD BYRON'S LAST PORTRAIT, With Records of his Conversation, &c. during his sittings. Ir has been a subject of universal regret amongst the admirers of genius, that, in an age in which portrait-painting is approaching so rapidly to the excellence of its best days, and the art of engraving has advanced so far beyond its former limits, we should still want a satisfactory resemblance of one of the most interesting persons who has figured in it. It is far from my wish to underrate the picture of Lord Byron by Phillips, or the drawing of him by Harlow; nor indeed, were it possible that it could be like any thing that ever existed, would I deny the accuracy of the attempt by Westall, exhibited last year in Somerset-house. But these were all made in the outset of his career, when the novelty of reputation transported him to an affectation of singularity in appearance, and he chose to be represented as nothing but corsairs and misanthropes-long too ere the troubles of a life, perhaps not altogether embittered by himself, had blanched a hair of his head, or added a line to his countenance. What we have wanted of Lord Byron is a resemblance of him at a period when his variable character had gone its utmost length towards being fixed. When his assumption of an aching heart controlled by a haughty spirit, had given place to the reality, and the triflings of his pen were used for the far different and more interesting affectation of gaiety and happiness-when his dislikes and his prejudices had been mellowed down by usage in the world, and the things which would once have embittered his life, or roused his indignation, were dismissed with a smile or a sigh of forbearance-a revolution of character like this must necessarily be apparent on the features; and in Lord Byron it was so much so, that they who only knew him latterly, are able to trace scarcely any likeness whatever in the portraits which we have possessed hitherto. It happens most unexpectedly, that there exists another portrait which fully supplies the deficiency of which we have been complaining a portrait for which Lord Byron sat so late as August 1822, and which has remained obscurely in London for many months, from the circumstance of the artist having been a perfect stranger. This gentleman is an importation from the country which has to boast of the artists Alston, Leslie, and Newton. He is a namesake of the late president of the Royal Academy. As the fidelity of the above memorial is of course the matter of first consideration, it will be gratifying to the public to learn that such of Lord Byron's latter companions as have seen it, have been unanimous in their approval. But, amongst the mass of attestations, by no means the least satisfactory one is that of Lord Byron himself, whose anxiety to have the picture engraved is a sufficient proof that he esteemed it over every other that had been painted of him. The following is from a letter from him to Mr. West, after the latter had left him at Pisa, and returned to his residence at Florence. "Pisa, September 19th, 1822. "Dear Sir, I am anxious to have an engraving from your picture, by Morghen. Would you have the goodness to propose this to the engraver, Morghen, at his own price, and at my expense? You will oblige me by an answer addressed to me at Pisa, as usual." In consequence of this, Mr. West applied to Morghen, who proved unable to furnish the desired engraving in less than three years, at a price of 4000 dollars. The next letter, written upon this information, proves at any rate that Lord Byron was not satisfied with his picture as a mere matter of course. "Pisa, September 23rd, 1822. "Dear Sir,―Three years !-Of course it is out of the question. However, I shall not think of any other engraver-he is the only one. Will you just look at the thing which he has done from Bartolini's bust. I do not mean as a work of art, for the incision is excellent, but for the effect. It is like a superannuated Jesuit. Had he 4000 dollars for that too? You will see it at Bardi's, the print-seller. I wonder who ordered it. I would have given any thing to have suppressed it altogether.-I am going to Genoa.-Your's ever, R. B. "P. S.-Address your answer to Pisa for the present." There is, however, another evidence more strong perhaps than the foregoing. It is that of the Countess Guiccioli, who, in a letter to Mr. West, says "L'altro giorno li è arrivata da Firenze una incisione di Morghen, che mi ha veramente messa in collera; hanno convertito Mi Lord in uno stupido Prete di 60 anni-ma la colpa è dello scultore; e sono certa che se il Sig. Morghen assume l' impegno (come spero) d' incidere il tuo rittratto di Lord Byron, mi farà dimenticare il dispiacere che mi ha cagionata la prima incisione." When Mr. West, shortly after the death of Lord Byron, arrived in Paris, on his way to England, his picture was soon sufficiently known and appreciated to fill his rooms with a crowd, and to produce such offers from publishers as perhaps few would have had the resolution to reject. England, however, being the adopted land of his labours, it was naturally his wish to reserve for it so good an introduction to public notice; and it is not to be anticipated that the superior difficulty of being known, where talent, in his branch of the arts, is allowed to be so much more abundant, will leave him ultimate cause to regret his preference. To those who feel an interest in such matters, it will be gratifying to learn that the picture is now at Mr. West's house, in Leicester Square, and that I suppose there will be no difficulty in seeing it. A portrait, painted for Lord Byron, of the Guiccioli, hangs beside it, and will give them an opportunity of settling the doughty disagreement between his biographers and some of their reviewers, respecting the poet's taste in beauty. As nothing relating to Lord Byron can be devoid of interest, it is to be hoped that Mr. West will think no undue advantage has been taken of his civility in transferring from his mouth to the pages of the New Monthly the following little history of his labours: In the month of July 1822, Mr. West found a friend at Florence who was personally acquainted with Lord Byron, then living on the sea-shore at a place called Monte Nero, four miles from Leghorn. By this gentleman he was favoured with an application soliciting that his lordship would sit to him for his portrait, in order that it might be transmitted to America. Lord Byron politely returned for answer, that he considered the request an honour, and would sit to Mr. West when and where he pleased. In consequence of this reply, Mr. West repaired to Leghorn, to which place Lord Byron sent his carriage for him on the day following, that they might make arrangements for the sittings. My reverence," such is Mr. West's account," for Lord Byron's genius made me almost afraid to encounter him; I expected to see a 66 |