STYLE OF SOPHOCLES.—As Æschylus is the impersonation of grandeur, so is Sophocles of beauty and harmony. He descends from the sublime heights Æschylus loved to tread, and, appealing to our sympathy with humanity, finds his way into the secret chambers of the heart. His language is pure; his style, elegant, dignified, vivacious—faultless; in allusion to his sweet diction, he was called by the ancients _the Bee of Attica_. The type of manly beauty and intellectual power, æsthetic culture and lofty morality, it seems as if Sophocles had been “specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection.” THE MASTERPIECE OF SOPHOCLES is “King Œdipus.” Laïus, a Theban monarch, told by an oracle (such was the legend) that his children would be the cause of his death, had his infant son Œdipus exposed on Mount Cithæron, hoping thus to escape his destiny. But the boy was discovered by some herdsmen and carried to Corinth, where he grew to man’s estate as the adopted son and heir of the king. Warned at the Delphic shrine to beware of his native land lest he should imbrue his hands in his father’s blood, and believing Corinth to be his birthplace, he withdrew to Thebes; but on the way he met Laïus, and, not knowing who he was, killed him in a quarrel. Arrived at Thebes, he won the hand of the widow Jocasta, his own mother, who bore him four children. All went well for a time. At length, however, an epidemic broke out; and the oracle assigned as its cause the presence of the late king’s murderer. Œdipus strained every nerve to discover the offender, and at last, to his horror, fastened the crime, and the more terrible guilt of parricide, upon himself. Unhappy Jocasta hanged herself in the palace, and Œdipus in his frenzy beat out his eyes with her gold-embossed buckles. The play opens at Thebes, during the plague. Œdipus, in conversation with a priest and Creon, Jocasta’s brother, is informed of Apollo’s will,—that, to avert the evil, the land must be purified by the punishment of the assassin. After the catastrophe above related, blinded Œdipus bemoans his lot in heart-rending utterances, but finally accepts his fate with resignation. We give the CLOSING SCENE OF KING ŒDIPUS. [_Enter Creon._] “CREON.—I have not come, O Œdipus, to scorn, Nor to reproach thee for thy former crimes; But ye, if ye have lost your sense of shame For mortal men, yet reverence the light Of him, our King, the Sun-god, source of life, Nor sight so foul expose unveiled to view, Which neither earth, nor shower from heaven, nor light, Can see and welcome. But with utmost speed Convey him in; for nearest kin alone Can meetly see and hear their kindred’s ills. ŒDIPUS.—Oh! by the gods! since thou, beyond my hopes, Dost come all noble unto me all base, In one thing hearken. For thy good I ask. CREON.—And what request seek’st thou so wistfully?