The next question that calls for answer is: it being admitted that a rhythmical translation of a Greek poem is preferable to a prose one, should we content ourselves with a blank rhythm (such as Shelley has used in Queen Mab, and Southey in Thalaba), or should we adopt also the sonorous ornament of rhyme. On this subject, when I first commenced this translation, about twelve years ago, I confess my feelings were strongly against the use of rhyme in translations from the antique; but experience and reflection have taught me considerably to modify, and, in some points of view, altogether to abandon this opinion. With regard to this matter, SOUTHEY has expressed himself thus:--"Rhyme is to passages of no inherent merit what rouge and candle-light are to ordinary faces. Merely ornamental passages, also, are aided by it, as foil sets off paste. But when there is either passion or power, the plainer and more straightforward the language can be made, the better."[f3] This is the lowest ground on which the plea for rhyme can be put; but even thus, it will be impossible for a discriminating translator to ward off its application to the Greek tragedy. In all poetry written for music, there will {5} occur, even from the best poets, not a few passages on which the mere reader will pronounce, in the language of Horace, that they are comparatively "Inopes rerum nugaeque canorae." To these, rhyme is indispensable. Without this, these "trifles" will lose that which alone rendered them tolerable to the ancient ear; they will cease to be "canorous." One must consider at what a disadvantage an ancient composer of "a goat-song" is placed, when the studiously modulated phrase which he adapted to the cheerful chirpings of the lyre, or the tumultuous blasts of the flute, is torn away from that music-watered soil which was its life, and placed dry and bloodless on the desk of a modern reader, beside the thought-pregnant periods of a Coleridge, and the curiously-elaborated stanzas of a Wordsworth. Are we to make him even more blank and disconsolate, by refusing him those tuneful closes of modern rhythmical language, which scarcely our sternest masters of the lyre can afford to disdain? It appears to me that rhyme is so essential an accomplishment of lyrical language, according to English use, that a translator is not doing justice to his author who habitually rejects it. I have accordingly adopted it more or less in every play, except the PROMETHEUS, the calm statuesque massiveness of which seemed to render the common decorations of lyric poetry dispensable. In the SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, I have, in the first two choral chaunts, rhymed only in the closes; and in the opening chorus of the Agamemnon, I have used irregular rhyme. In the FURIES, again, I have allowed myself to be borne along in the most free and luxuriant style of double rhyme of which I was capable, partly, I suppose, because my admiration of that piece stimulated all my energies to their highest