more fell tortures: the “winged hound of Zeus” will come each day to tear his liver; a convulsion of the earth will hurl him into Hades. The nymphs again urge submission, but when the messenger declares that unless they leave Prometheus they will perchance suffer too, they haughtily refuse to listen. Amid an upheaval of the whole of Nature, the Titan, still defiant, sinks from sight. The _Prometheus Vinctus_ has impressed all generations of readers with wonder and delight; in particular it has inspired poetry only less magnificent than itself. Shelley’s _Prometheus Unbound_ is a gorgeous amplification of its spiritual and material features. The sinister and terrific figure which dominates the early part of _Paradise Lost_ is but Prometheus strayed at an untoward hour into Christian mythology. Again, this play is the noblest surviving example of the purely Æschylean manner. The _Oresteia_ is greater, perhaps, certainly more interesting to us; but there Æschylus has reacted to the spirit of Sophocles. Here, the stark hauteur of the _Supplices_ has developed into a desolate magnificence. The lyrics which, since the _Seven_, have again dwindled in size, have yet grown in beauty, variety, and characterization. On the other side, there is a development of the dialogue which is amazing. Long speeches are still the rule, but line-by-line conversations are frequent. Characters in the _Supplices_ and the _Seven_ talk as if blank-verse dialogue were a strange and difficult art—as indeed it was till Æschylus forged it into shape. Throughout, whether in lengthy speeches or in conversation, the iambic metre has found a grace and suppleness which is too often ignored by those who come to the _Prometheus_ fresh from the _Medea_ or the _Œdipus Tyrannus_. Above all, the maturity of Æschylus’ poetic strength is to be seen in the terrific perspectives which he brings before us—perspectives of time, as the voice of the tortured prophet carries us down a vista of centuries through the whole history of Io’s race to the man of destiny; perspectives of scenery, as the eye of the Ocean-Nymphs from the summit of earth gazes down upon the tribes of men, horde behind horde fading into the distance, all raising lament for the sorrows of their saviour; perspectives of thought, as the exultant history of civilization leaps from the lips of him who dies hourly through untold years to found and uphold it, telling how that creeping victim of his own helplessness and the disdain of Heaven goes from weakness to strength and from strength to triumph.