It is thus, as it were, that, like projectiles, arts describe their parabolas and end. To return in detail to the Greek tragedians. Æschylus determines at all hazards to exhibit the chosen mythus in its entirety, and to give full prominence to his religious idea. Hence we have to put up with much that is tedious--a whole _Choëphoroe_, for example. But hence the unrivalled majesty of the _Agamemnon_. Sophocles manipulates his subject more artistically, so as to make it harmonious without losing sight of its internal source of unity. But he already begins to disintegrate the colossal work of Æschylus--notably in his separation of the trilogy and in his moralizing of the idea of Nemesis. With Euripides the disintegration is complete. He neglects the mythus altogether. The theosophy of Æschylus, always implicit in Sophocles, survives as a mere conventionality in the work of Euripides. Finally, like Praxiteles, he carves single statues of eminent beauty; like Correggio, he conceals his poverty of design beneath a mass of redundant elegance. What we have really to regret in the art of Euripides is that he should have endeavored to compete at all with Æschylus and Sophocles upon the old ground of the tales of Thebes and Troy. Where he breaks new ground, as in the _Medea_, the _Hippolytus_, and the _Bacchæ_, he proves himself a consummate master. Here the novelty of his method shocks no sense of traditional propriety. He is not driven to flippant paradox or sarcastic scepticism in dealing with time-honored myths, or to travesties of well-marked characters, in order to assert his individuality. These plays exhibit a complete unity of outward form, and a profound internal unity of passion and character. They are not surpassed in their own kind by anything that any other poet had produced; and if "the _chef-d'oeuvre_ be adequate to the _chef-d'oeuvre_," Euripides may here be pronounced the rival of Sophocles and Shakespeare.