"Why, I ask myself, do I see much that I can easily admire in Homer,
Thucydides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristophanes, Theocritus, parts of
Lucretius, Horace's satires and epistles, to say nothing of other
ancient writers, and yet find myself at once repelled by even those
works of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides which are most
generally admired.
"With the first-named writers I am in the hands of men who feel,
if not as I do, still as I can understand their feeling, and as I am
interested to see that they should have felt; with the second I have
so little sympathy that I cannot understand how anyone can ever have
taken any interest in them whatever. Their highest flights to me are
dull, pompous, and artificial productions, which, if they were to
appear now for the first time, would, I should think, either fall dead
or be severely handled by the critics. I wish to know whether it is
I who am in fault in this matter, or whether part of the blame may not
rest with the tragedians themselves.
"How far, I wonder, did the Athenians genuinely like these poets,
and how far was the applause which was lavished upon them due to
fashion or affectation? How far, in fact, did admiration for the
orthodox tragedians take that place among the Athenians which going to
church does among ourselves?
"This is a venturesome question considering the verdict now
generally given for over two thousand years, nor should I have
permitted myself to ask it if it had not been suggested to me by one
whose reputation stands as high, and has been sanctioned for as long
time as those of the tragedians themselves, I mean by Aristophanes.
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