Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/53
Knit in love unto her husband, is Discretion's secret told.
These her gifts are:—though her lord be all uncomely to behold,
To her heart and eyes shall he be comely, so her wit be sound;
('Tis not eyes that judge the man; within is true discernment found):—
Whensoe'er he speaks, or holds his peace, shall she his sense commend,
Prompt with sweet suggestion when with speech he fain would please a friend:—
Glad she is, if aught untoward hap, to show she feels his care:
Joy and sorrow of the husband aye the loyal wife will share:—
Yea, if thou art sick, in spirit will thy wife be sick with thee,
Bear the half of all thy burdens—nought unsweet accounteth she:
For with those we love our duty bids us taste the cup of bliss
Not alone, the cup of sorrow also—what is love but this?"
(Fragment 901.)
Thirdly, here and there through his plays we find an angry speech, or a malicious epigram uttered, of course in character, by some speaker who thus vents his spleen against a woman. We find, on examination, that such utterances are always put into the mouths of speakers who are in the wrong, and would fain gloze their villainy, like Jason and Polymestor, or are under a false impression at the time, like Hippolytus. There are some dozen similar passages preserved among the fragments of his lost plays, and we are certainly justified in concluding that these also were spoken in character.
Here, in fact, is but another instance of that old, old slavery to texts, which has in like manner led to so much misuse of the Bible. A striking passage is often remembered apart from its connection; and it was so easy for the cynic to use such to point a sneer, for the malicious critic to turn them against the author, and for the angry husband to carry away and to quote, apart from the conveniently forgotten