Waked  at  thy  voice  and  touch,  again  the  chords

Restore  what  restless  years  hath  moved  away,
Restore  the  glowing  cheeks,  the  tender  words,

Youth's  short-lived  spring  and  pleasure's  summer-day."

Extracts  express  an  original  book  badly,  whether  in  matter  or
manner,  although  the  above  have  some  interest  in  themselves ;  but
the  three  scenes  in  which  Aspasia  completes  the  story  of  Agamemnon
it  will  be  best  to  leave  untouched.  The  first,  wherein  the  shade  of
Iphigenia,  unconscious  of  her  mother's  double  crime,  meets  on  his
descent  from  death  the  shade  of  her  father,  by  whose  hand  she  had
herself  perished,  is  for  the  originality  of  its  conception  unsurpassed  ;
and  the  second  and  third,  representing  the  fate  of  Clytemnestra  and
the  madness  of  Orestes,  are,  in  my  judgment,  for  the  intensity  and
vividness  of  their  dramatic  expression,  unequalled  in  the  dramatic
writings  of  our  time.  "  My  Agamemnon,"  wrote  Landor  (14th  April,
1836),  "was  composed  in  bed,  all  night  and  half  the  morning,  on
my  recollecting  what  defects  the  Greek  tragedians  had  left  in  their
management  of  the  house  of  Atreus.  And  yet  it  is  on  this  ground
that  their  laurels  have  grown  so  high.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  do
anything  admirable,  for  men's  admiration  will  spring  from  something
worse.  Critics  admire  the  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus  far  above  his
Prometheus.  .  .  .  There  is,"  he  wrote  in  the  same  letter,  "  only  one
thought  of  another  man  beside  myself,  in  the  whole  book,  and  this
I  have  given  twice,  wishing  it  to  be  the  one  that  weighed  most  with
Pericles,  —  that  he  never  caused  an  Athenian  to  put  on  mourning.
