Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/31

while the special kind of artistic excellence in which we are told that Sophocles alone attained consummate perfection was not pursued, was not essayed, after his day, but became like some lost art, for the productions of which changed conditions of society have destroyed all demand, the peculiar feature of Euripides' genius which appealed to the ancient world, which came to them like a revelation, has been developed continuously through later times, and more especially since the dawn of Christianity. The sympathies that had not been voiced till Euripides gave them utterance, the chords in our nature on which no hand had fallen before his, have since his time touched men and thrilled men through many generations. Some of us may be inclined to undervalue early examples of a type of literary excellence which the world has since cultivated assiduously through many centuries, and to overvalue a type of artistic excellence which is so absolutely a thing of the past that we cannot even recover with certainty the standpoint from which its results were viewed by those to whom the Athenian drama was part of the ordinary experience of their lives.

In estimating the literary standing of Euripides with his contemporaries, and his artistic and ethical influence, it would be well to bear in mind that his salient characteristic was originality—the originality of a workman who, rigidly coniined to certain prescribed materials, tools, patterns, and general style of treatment, yet, by sheer force of genius, sets the stamp of his own individuality on every piece of work he touches.

The "Ideal Treatment."The class of characters to be represented on the stage was already fixed by tradition. when Euripides appeared.^[1] The Gods and Heroes of myth and legend must be the leading person-