HIPPOLYTUS.

THESEUS, when he attended Hercules in his expedition against the Amazons, became enamoured of the beauteous Hippolyta, who yielded not to his love till he had vanquished her in single combat; this was a dangerous and difficult labour even for Theseus: She then accompanied him to Athens, and bore him a son named from her Hippolytus. This young prince, educated by the philosophic Pittheus, was generous as his father, and chaste as his mother; he excelled in every manly exercise, and was adorned with every virtue: yet there was one imperfection in his character, which was the fatal cause of his unhappy destruction ; benevolent and courteous to all mankind, but averse to the female sex, and a stranger to the tender passion of love, though he paid a religious regard to the gods, yet, devoting himself chiefly to Diana, he not only neglected Venus, but treated her temples and her worship with disrespect: this drew upon him the indignation of that goddess, which could not be appeased but by his ruin. The poet

intended this as a monition to his countrymen not to neglect any religious worship, but to pay a religious reverence to all the gods: thus he makes Venus say,

Those, who with reverence own my pow'r, I grace
With honour; but chastise the hostile pride
That vauuts itself against me: for a sense
Of pleasure touches e'en the heav'nly race,
When mortals pay them homage.

Hippolyta dying, Theseus married Phædra the daughter of Minos king of Crete. At the first sight of the young and accomplished Hippolytus this unfortunate princess felt the passion of love in its full force conscious of its indecency, feelingly alive to a sense of honour, and careful of her fame, she concealed, she struggled with her guilty passion, she called in her reason and her virtue to her aid, and when she found that she was unable to subdue it, she determined to die: thus far she may be considered as unfortunate, but not guilty, as she was influenced by the irresistible power of Venus, who inspired this love to effect the ruin of the hated Hippolytus. At length her Nurse, a character highly respected by the ancients, extorted the guilty secret from her, and revealed it to Hippolytus without her knowledge, and contrary to her positive command: the consequence was such as might be expected from this chaste and virtuous youth, who expressed his abhorrence of the declaration with

no small degree of asperity. The unhappy Phædra, betrayed and disgraced, resolved upon an immediate death, but with a menace against the innocent cause of her misery; she dies with a letter fastened to her hand, in which she accuses Hippolytus to his father of having violated his bed by force. This is the fatal progress of a guilty passion in a mind naturally generous, sensible to virtue, and impatient of shame; not without some touch of resentment, to be expected from a woman whose love had been rejected with disdain. Her accusation of Hippolytus arose first from the disappointment of her intention to die with glory, and an apprehension that her shame would be divulged: there is something generous in her regard to reputation, her care for the honour of her children, and her determination not to disgrace her high-traced ancestry; but the menace with which she quits the scene, and which she immediately puts in execution, shows that the thought of vice, if not instantly suppressed, gathers strength and fury, till it extinguishes every principle of virtue, and goes on to the most dangerous and fatal extremes.

The unfortunate Phædra, a character so finely touched by Euripides, who was compelled to love by the impulse of Venus, yet sensible to honour, shame, and virtue,

never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek;

2 H

who, having dropped an unguarded expression which she thought disclosed too much, was ashamed of what she had said, and commanded her face to be veiled to hide the blush glowing on her cheek; who at last was prevailed upon to discover the cause of her malady only that she might die with the glory of having sacrificed her life to extinguish a guilty flame, which she abhorred in herself; who, when her officious and wicked attendant had, contrary to her injunction, betrayed the fatal secret to Hippolytus, and he came into her presence, unveiled not her face, nor uttered a word till he had departed; then lamented her condition, severely reproved her base servant, and died to avoid the shame consequent on the discovery: this Phædra of Euripides has lost all this delicacy under the hands of Seneca, and is a shameless and abandoned woman, untouched with the feelings of female modesty, deaf to the remonstrances of her nurse, though strongly urged, and determined to indulge her guilty passion through all its consequences; nay she so far forgets her sex as herself to reveal her love to Hippolytus, and to urge her plea with all the vehemence of ungoverned passion. scene indeed is beautiful and striking, but nothing can atone for that total extinction of character; yet the soberest of critics, P. Brumoy, pronounces it to be very happily imagined; and Mr. Racine has sanctified it by his imitation: we may be sure that it would lose nothing of its beauty under his hands;

The

indeed this excellent and chaste writer was sensible of the impropriety of character in the Phædra of Seneca, and in his own tragedy has been studious to preserve great delicacy and decorum, though he suffered himself to be misled by this splendid fault. Racine has a sublimity of conception, a dignity of expression, an impassioned sensibility, a purity of moral, and a religious attention to virtue, which entertain, and move, and instruct us, while we admire the poet, and approve the man; yet with all his powers he has failed in the two great characters of this play, and that necessarily from the change of religion and manners. The wretched theology of the ancients admitted this agency of Venus, and Euripides with great art availed himself of the popular belief; the appearance of this goddess was therefore not only proper, but necessary; hence Phædra is considered as an unhappy woman, compelled by an irresistible power to love, and to disclose her love, against all the struggles of reason, modesty, and virtue, which are finely described; she is therefore the object of pity: but this plea cannot now be urged, nor does any other succeed in its place; for the doctrine of fatality or destiny

can amount to no more than

That when weak women go astray,

The stars are more in fault than they;

and this the chaste dignity of the tragic muse disdains to admit: Phædra therefore on a modern