parties, as are needed to leave Medea at the point of conducting her so far triumphaut lover to the cavern, where the ulterior prize of his great adventure is mysteriously and fearfully guarded. The new emotion which invades her bosom, has in a few hours wrought such alteration there, that when, on her reappearance amongst ber damsels on the following morning, with which the Second Act begins, one of them, whose charge he was, comes, full of trepidation, to tell her, that, during the confusion of the night, her favourite Tiger-Horse has escaped, she answers simply that "it is well;" -and upon Peritta, whose disgrace is fresh in the reader's recollection, presenting herself to her, to implore as sistance in her distress, her husband having been made a prisoner, and their hut burnt by the strangers, Medea leans her head upon her shoulder and bursts into tears. Either she does not understand her feelings, or seeks to hide them from herself; for, in conversing with Gora (who witnesses all this mutation with surprise enough) on the transactions of the night, she communicates to her her conviction, which the shrewd old woman can by no means be brought to partake, that the stranger, whose sudden presence disturbed her ceremonies, was Heimdar, the God of Death! Heimdar, wont to manifest himself to mortals at the point of their passing under his power -who had come to set on her his seal -(we did not say that Jason, ere he yielded to retreat from the arms of Absyrtus and his followers, had placed on her lips a hasty and unresisted kiss) and presignify her approaching fate. She could know, by the annihilation of her spirit as he stood be fore her, that he was not of terrestrial birth; as the oppression that gathers over her, the fading away of her senses, and the desire that draws her to the grave, all give promise of her near dissolution. If she has deceived herself, she is speedily undeceived. For her father, entering with her brother, demands account of her conduct, in rescuing the bold violator of her mysteries from the sword bent to punish him, and placing it out of question that he was no God, but a Greek, taunts her quiet endurance of the insult offered her. She is overwhelmed with shame, and impatiently proffers VOL. XXIV.

herself to assist in the destruction of the invaders.

The Scene changes to an open place in the forest, with the King's tent in the background. Eight delegates of the Argonauts appear, on the King's invitation, to a conference. Whilst they await him, under some dismay, from the prolonged absence and surmised possible loss of their leader, Jason and Milo join them. Presently the King enters to the conference. Jason-in whom is fitly represented the adventurer of a desperate, almost of an impossible enterprise, that must speed, not by prudence, but out of the hope of prudence, by a will moving, rushing irresistibly to its aim, kindling at the show of opposition, and leaping, like one allured, into the arms of danger,-in a few words exchanged, so daunts and masters the spirit of the Barbarian with haughty and reckless defiance, as to betray him into acknowledging, after he had denied, his possession of the Fleece: if that information indeed, may be needed, from his mouth, by the Argonauts, who appear to have come well instructed in respect not only to the country which contains it, but the particular art and terrors by which it is secured. The King is not so, however, disarmed of his wiles. A question which he, in his turn, extorts from Jason respecting the tower in the forest, uncovers the power which he holds over him, and he sends for Medea; who brings, as on the like former occasion, the draught, by her father again required, of fatal sleep. She is veiled, but Jason recognises her habit, and though he has till now steadily refused the offer of Aietes' dangerous hospitality, giving solid and plain reasons for doing so, he instantly accepts the offered cup, and would drink, when Medea warns him of the treason mingled with it, and he throws it from him. He now plucks away her veil; and twice saved by her, begins on this plea to press with eager words, the pretensions of his passion; from which she escapes into her father's tent.

The curtain falls and rises again, the interval sufficing to transfer the audience from without to the interior of the Royal Pavilion, into which Jason is seen endeavouring to force an entrance, opposed by Aietes. The Colchian soldiers, hitherto inactive as

X

As may easily be supposed, the river during the night, in flood, has "disdained its bridge," and the first intelligence which meets Absyrtus on setting out, is that the only road open to him is that which endangers his sister's falling into the hands from which she flies. Accordingly, the escort has not proceeded far when it finds itself engaged with the lately retreating Argonauts, who have taken up, on the way to their camp, a position favourable, as they think, for cutting off the King's communication with his interior. The eight or ten Greeks-if, as we incline to think, the reinforcement sent for cannot yet have come up,-drive out the forty or fifty Colchians, leaving Jason to urge his suit alone with Medea. He woos her characteristically, with passion that will not be withstood, and successfully, if it could appear to him success to shake her spirit from height to depth, with uncontrollable, unconcealable emotion. But he finds her inexcusably self-willed and perverse; and he conceives that he does nothing unless he wring from her what is not easy, and it seems, in truth, too early to exact, an avowal, in words, of her love. At the moment when he is compelled to confess himself in this point frustrated-(we regret not to insert the scene, or monologue, as it might almost be called-it is long, eloquent, and original,)-Aietes, who has in the meantime succoured his son, follows the now in turn again retiring

Argonauts; and Jason, utterly impatient of his discomfiture, without difficulty or hesitation, on the first word said, makes over to him his daughter Medea.

It might seem that the advantage of the accident which had effected their meeting to the movement of the drama was, with the assistance of Medea to the Argonautic enterprise, for the present, at least, here lost. On the contrary, she no sooner feels herself again under the protection of her father, than her inflexibility, unmoved whilst she seemed to be in her lover's power, falters; and when he, eager to prosecute his perilous achievement unaided, bids her a passionate and final farewell, she is conquered, and breathes his name. Quite satisfied, he herewith claims her as his wife; with one hand taking her by the arm, whilst with the other he throws off her father's hold, and leads her back amongst his own party. More fighting does not, for the present, ensue. Aietes challenges his daughter to elect between passion and duty; and, when she has answered him by her silence, pouring out on her his parental maledictions, he gives her over to the selfchosen miseries which he foresees awaiting her, turns from her, and departs.

Jason now desires her to lead him to the Fleece, which she refuses He will go alone. With importunate and pathetic entreaty, as prescient of the

wholly unrequired, we might seem left to guess, from the ingenious, if we should not almost say excessive pains which he ever afterwards takes to attach the mischiefs successively arising,

and every turn almost of his drama's varying fable, to what the reader, no doubt, will own to be now enough weighted with blood and retributionthe Golden Fleece.

The Second Part renews the history, after an interval, apparently, of years. Medea, stricken, if this can be said, with remorse of her father's crime, (in which, however in a degree minister ing to it, the poet does not consider her as participating,) bowed with agony of the deed-still more, perhaps, with the terrific foresight which haunts her of its consequences-the vision glaring in the prophetess's soul, and refusing to be dispelled, of wrath disturbed out of darkness, inexorable, inexpia ble-has fled from human commerce, and shut up in an old desolate tower amongst woods, there mixing past and future in her ceaseless miserable dream, she broods over woe. Hither, by night, Aietes, with his son Absyr. tus, now first introduced, comes, seek ing her counsel and succour; for the Revengers, the ARGONAUTS, claiming the spoils of the murdered Phryxus, and above all, the splendid and fatal Fleece, are on his land. Absyrtus, whose innocence of extreme youth, joined with the aspirations of dawn ing heroism, and with much manly tenderness of filial and brotherly affection, is very happily thought and depicted, leads, with the sprightly pride of a boy, making their way through the thicket with his newly given sword. The old King follows, full of irritation and apprehensions, incensed by the approach of his enemies, trembling at once with belief of their power, and with reflections that rise and are not to be kept down on the cause of their coming, and seeing listeners or spectres, in stones and trees. After some words which explain the posture of affairs, Medea's altered temper, and her manner of life made available by her, it appears, for the prosecution of her magical studies, Absyrtus, at the King's bidding, summons her to descend. She hesitates, till compelled by her father's will and

7

voice, which, either from an habitual irresistible ascendancy, parental and kingly, held by him over her-or from the sense of duty, she does not disobey. She bears a torch, which the king, whom light offends, desires her to extinguish. He then asks, by what leave, forsaking the protection of the paternal roof, and holding fellowship but with the desert and her own wild mood, she has refused compliance with a message from him, calling her to him. Her answer is in a strain, meant, doubtless, as more deeply tinged with imagination, to be the expression of a mind acting upon itself in long solitude, with vehement and extraordinary thought. It well expresses, though perhaps too apparently in the forms of a later and different age of thought, one distinguishing constitu ent in our author's invention of his heroine's character-boldly assigned and well applied, for the most part, to support the interest of his poem-and not often much taken out of its dramatic propriety-the Moral Sensibility with which he has endowed her and to which, if the reader will add passion measureless in depth and force

self-reliance indestructible-and an understanding in comprehensiveness, insight, and clearness, of the highest order he will possess the outline of Grillparzer's Medea. Need we observe to him, that the impressions which she appears here as suffering, the consternation, from retrospect and prospect, fallen upon her spirit, evidenced indubitably in the manner we have de scribed, and seeking utterance in her words, all tell in tragic effect, far be yond the moment of the drama in which they are made present to sight and hearing, that the gloom thus loaded upon its opening scenes, passes not along with these from the spectator's heart.