THE 'AGAMEMNON' AND 



No one, without comparing some portion of Mr. Browning's 

 rendering of the ' Agamemnon ' with the text of ^Eschylus, can 

 have any idea of the closeness with which the original has been 

 followed. The translator has not been content with the ordinary 

 Liddell and Scott version, but has endeavoured, often with success, 

 to give even the etymological force of the original words. Careful 

 toil marks every line, and to some few this transcript will be a 

 source of real enjoyment, but these few must possess the rare 

 power of putting life and poetry into such literal translations as 

 are published in Bohn's series. This is said not as a sneer, for 

 we have known men of true poetic temperament who, ignorant 

 of Greek, read the dramatists by preference in Bohn's series, 

 wishing to feel certain that ' where they were gaping for 

 -^Eschylus they did not get Theognis.' Well, such men as 

 these may read Mr. Browning's ' Agamemnon ' with more im- 

 plicit faith than they could give to many prose literal transla- 

 tions, but they must also possess the qualification, happily not 

 rare nowadays, of being able to understand Mr. Browning's 

 manner of expressing himself. Moreover, it would be well that 

 they should have at their elbow some fairly literal translation 

 such as Mr. Conington's to help them when, after reading a 

 passage two or three times, they quite fail to see what the poet 

 means to say. 



To the general British public Mr. Browning's version will 

 be almost as completely a sealed book as the original of 



1 A review of The Agamemnon, a transcript by Robert Browning: The 

 Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, translated into English verse by E. O. A. Morshead, 

 M.A. : and Three Plays of Sophocles, translated into English verse by Lewis 

 Campbell, M.A., LL.D. From the Edinburgh Review, April, 1878. 



B 2 



