SENECA'S TRAGEDIES.*
'Ins tragedies of Seneca are to-day rarely read in England, and the old edition of Gronovius, which by chance lies before the present writer, inscribed "J. D. Coleridge e 'dont) penis Eton Coll. 1838," seems a relic of a dead past, for there are probably now not ten schoolboys who have any acquaintance with a single play. The result is due partly to a general decline of classical study, partly to the tendency, even among those who still pursue it, rather to follow some well-beaten track than to range at will over a wider field, but chiefly, we think, to the essential defects of the tragedies themselves. No doubt, as Mr. Miller states, they are "unique" as being the only remaining specimens of Roman tragedy. They have, fop, an historic interest as having largely influenced the Elizabethan drama ; and Munro, who notes that "during a portion only of the seventeenth century at least twenty editions were published of Farnaby's recension," states that "again and again" in Shakespeare "his ear catches some echo" of the sayings of Seneca, while the brilliant displays of word. fencing, of which Richard III. affords such notable examples, have not improbably a like origin. But, indeed, although he long served as a model for plays exhibited before Masters of Arts at the Universities or staid Benchers at the Inns of Court, Seneca is too wholly wanting in life and reality to please a natural and healthy taste. He is above all a rhetorician of the schools, a fashioner of phrases, a declaimer who never touches the heart but is content occasionally to surprise the intellect. The discourses which he places in the mouths of his - characters are such as might be composed by a clever youth and recited as a prize-exercise. on speech-day. In the Medea, -.or instance, the nurse explains What her mistress is . about to do in a learned oration of seventy lines ; next Medea herself . develops the same theme for over a hundred lines more, and • The Tragedies of Seneca. Translated by F. 3. Miller. Chicago t University Press. London T. Fisher Unwin. [12a 61 net.]
then, after a short chorus and fifteen lines of dialogue devotes . . , eighty lines to stating that, having now destroyed her rival Cqmsa, she must also slay her children. "Cur leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent," says Seneca himself, but he never observes his own rule. . With him "great sorrows" produce' not "stupor" but loquacity, and passion "tears itself tolattere " in verbal conceits. When Medea is in a frenzy she flies to a dictionary to express her feelings " Qute Scylla, quo3 Charybdis Ausonium mare Siculumque sorbens, quteque, anhelantem premens Titana, tantis .Etna fervescit minis?"
Or again, to stir our sympathy, she laments that, unlike Niobe, she hats only two children whom she can murder before her husband's eyes :— " Utinam superbte turba Tantalidos moo Exisset utero, bisque septenos parens Natos tulissem ! Sterilis in pcenas fui."
To read such mawkish stuff is to learn what decadence means, while those who wish to understand what morbid taste is should turn to the closing lines of the Hippolytus, which describe Theseus gathering up the remains of his son, and puzzled how to arrange one particularly mangled fragment:—
" QUI13 pars tui sit dubito, sod pars eat tui. hic repone ; non suo, at vacuo loco."
But however repulsive such lines may be, it must not be supposed that Seneca is wholly wanting in merit. On the contrary, be is full of those abort sententious sayings which no language can express better than Latin, and of which no Latin writer has a greater mastery than he has, while at times he rises from rhetoric to eloquence. Such words as " Sola est quies, Mecum mina cuncta si video obruta. Mecum mania abeant," have the true tragic greatness; and, when she has put aside all a mother's yearning, how could the sorceress of Colchis express murderous resolve with more force than in the terrific utterance : "Medea nunc sum" ? About the art of words, indeed—and it is a rarer and more valuable art than many imagine—Seneca has learned all that Professors can teach. He wants imagination, invention, and real insight into life ; but although he could never please upon the stage, he is admirably adapted for the lecture-room. His tragedies are born in it, and are at home there, so that we are not surprised to learn that in America they are "regaining their place in college curricula." They do, in fact, admirably illustrate that practice of rhetorical " declamation " which had so large a place in Roman education, but which to-day is perhaps too largely neglected. Carried to excess, as it was in Rome, it leads no doubt to a puerile admiration for mere verbal trickery ; but none the less the spoken word is an instrument of such power that "rhetoric," as the art which deals with its use, must always deserve careful study. No rules, indeed, can make a speaker; but some knowledge of them might at least correct that loose, shambling, disordered style of discourse which so often renders speeches and addresses at once painful and ineffective, while the very absence of all genius in Seneca really increases his usefulness for educational purposes. A great tragedian would not have written speeches which are in fact school exercises; but Seneca has kindly provided an admirable text-book, and work which delighted scholars in the sixteenth century may be of service to schoolboys even in the twentieth. Whether, however, a translation of the tragedies. will interest general readers is a very different question. Only masterpieces, as a rule, will bear the in- evitable loss which attends reproduction, and Seneca depends so much on mere form and finish that he presents special difficulties to the translator. Take, for instance, these lima in which Clytemnestra says of herself :— "Periere mores, ius, deem, pietas, fides, Et qui redire, cum petit, nescit pudor."
Their epigrammatic felicity is obvious, and the second line expresses a commonplace of morality in just such a way that it stamps itself upon the memory. But look at this rendering :— "But now long since has faith the palace fled, The homely virtues, honour, piety, And chastity which goes but ne'er returns."
The English equally misses that rhetorical effect of which we have spoken ; and on the whole Mr. Miller's version, though fluent and easy, is wanting in force, and often fails to catch the nervous energy of those terse, telling phrases in which Seneca delights. On the other hand, his rendering of horal passages is often full of poetry and life, while no one oan refuse a warm welcome to a volume which affords fresh proof that classical study, though daily more neglected in England, is waking to a new life in the Western world.
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