The _Prometheus Vinctus_ of AEschylus is not properly a drama; at least, it has so little of the peculiar interest belonging to that species of poetry, that it can hardly be called such. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the most sublime composition that ever came from the thoughts of uninspired man. It is meant to portray the heroic devotion, the undaunted courage of Prometheus--the friend of man, the assuager of his sufferings, the aider of his enterprises--who was chained to a rock, exposed to the burning heats of summer, the shivering frosts of winter, by Jupiter, for having stolen fire--the parent of art, the spring of enterprise, the source of improvement--from heaven, to give it to the human race. From the expressions he uses on the ultimate results of that inestimable gift, one would almost suppose he had a prophetic anticipation of the marvels of Steam. The opening scene, where Prometheus is chained to a rock in Scythia, by Vulcan, in presence of "Force and Strength," the agents of Jupiter's commands; and the closing one, where he remains firm and unshaken amidst the wrath of the elements, the upheaving of the ocean, and the lightnings of heaven hurled at his devoted head, are of unrivalled sublimity. They literally realize the idea of the poet-- "Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinae." The _Prometheus Vinctus_ is the _Inferno_ of Dante dramatised; but it is fraught with a nobler moral. It does not portray the sufferings of sin for past guilt; it exhibits the heroism of virtue under present injustice. It paints the triumph of devoted benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the _Paradise Regained_, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in _Paradise Lost_. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from external injustice.