The Agamemnon of a Schylus, Tr. [And] Illustr. by a Diss. on Grecian Tragedy, by J.S. Harford (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831. Excerpt: ... A DISSERTATION GRECIAN TRAGEDY. To assign with critical accuracy to a particular age or people the origin of dramatic, or interlocutory poetry, is as impossible as to trace to their fountain-head the earliest streams of genius and invention. The researches of Oriental scholars render it probable that this form of poetry existed in the East in times beyond the ken of history, and Vide Sir William Jones's third and seventh discourses before the Asiatic Society, and his preface to the Sacontala, in the course of which he says, "dramatic poetry must have been immemorially ancient in the Indian empire." The invention of the drama in India, according to a B2 that it was indigenous among various nations. If, however, the claims of Indian or Chinese literature to the honours of remote antiquity should be disputed, those of the muse of Sion cannot be denied. The Book of Job, in which sublime poetry and divine wisdom are so beautifully blended, and the Song of Songs of Solomon, are positive examples of the existence, in the East, of this species of composition, at a period when the echoes of Delphi and of Helicon were mute to the voice of the muses, and the banks of the Ilyssus'were trodden only by barbarian tribes. The Asiatic origin of the Greek language may now be regarded as an admitted fact, and a similar origin must consequently be assigned to a large proportion of the first settlers of Greece. Not only their language, but also their mythology, rich later writer on Hindoo literature, Mr. Hayman Wilson, is referred to an inspired sage, named Bharata, but, he adds, some authorities ascribe to it the still more elevated origin of having been communicated to the Vedas by the god Brahma. in Asiatic fables, images, and allusions, leads to this conclusion. These po...