P. 51, l. 915. The speech of the Muse seems like the writing of a poet who is, for the moment, tired of mere drama, and wishes to get back into his own element. Such passages are characteristic of Euripides.--The death of Rhesus seems to the Muse like an act of vengeance from the dead Thamyris, the Thracian bard who had blasphemed the Muses and challenged them to a contest of song. They conquered him and left him blind, but still a poet. The story in Homer is more terrible, though more civilised: "They in wrath made him a maimed man, they took away his heavenly song and made him forget his harping." Thamyris, the bard who defied Heaven; Orpheus, the bard, saint, lover, whose severed head still cried for his lost Eurydice; Musaeus, the bard of mystic wisdom and initiations--are the three great legendary figures of this Northern mountain minstrelsy. P. 52, l. 950. These short speeches between Hector and the Leader of the Guard make a jarring note in the midst of the Muse's lament. Perhaps it would not be so if we knew how the play was produced, but at present this seems like one of several marks of comparative crudity in technique which mark the play, amid all its daring and inventiveness. P. 52, l. 962 ff., My son shall not be laid in any grave.]--Like other Northern barbaric princes, such as Orpheus (l. 972 below) and Zalmoxis (Herodotus, iv. 95) and Holgar the Dane, Rhesus lies in a hidden chamber beneath the earth, watching, apparently, for the day of uttermost need when he must rise to help his people. There is no other passage in Greek tragedy where such a fate is attributed to a hero, though the position of Darius in the _Persae_ and Agamemnon in the _Choephori_ or the _Electra_ is in some ways analogous. The last lines of the Muse have a very Euripidean ring: cf. _Medea_, l. 1090 (p. 61, "My thoughts have roamed a cloudy land"), _Alcestis_, l. 882. P. 54, ll. 983-end. This curious and moving end--not in death or peace but in a girding of tired men to greater toil--reminds one of the last words of _The Trojan Women_: "Forth to the long Greek ships And the sea's foaming," and the last words of the _Chanson de Roland_ there quoted. The Trojans evidently go forth under the shadow of disaster, though with firmness and courage. The stage direction is of course purely conjectural. If Diomedes left some sign of Dolon's death for Hector to see, as he probably must have done, then Hector must at some time or other see it. If so, this seems to be the place. THE END Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. Edinburgh & London _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM HEINEMANN HISTORY OF ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE. 1897. 6s. CARLYON SAHIB: A Play. 1899. 1s. 6d. ANDROMACHE: A Play. 1900. 1s. 6d. Published by the Clarendon Press EURIPIDIS FABULAE: Brevi Adnotatione Critica Instructae, Vols. I. II. and III. 1901-1909. Third Edition. From 3s. each.