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SOPHOCLES IN LONDON 127
realism and Celtic romance, all details and
suggestions, are implicit.
It states just those
fundamental things of which all the rest are
but manifestations or consequences. There is
as much psychology in the scene between
CEdipus and Jocasta, a matter of some seventy
lines, as could be forced into seventy pages by
a modern novelist. A change of feeling that
it would take Mr. Henry James a chapter to
elaborate is indicated by a statement, a
question, and a reply. Sophocles could never
be satisfied with anything short of the essen-
tial : that he stated the rest he left out.
;
Though Prof. Gilbert Murray is, as every one
knows, a charming and sensitive scholar, he is
not the ideal translator of Sophocles. Perhaps
the Zolas and Merediths especially the Merediths
impress him too easily ; perhaps he loves
too well the literary tradition, the European
tradition of five hundred years, to understand
that the greatest poetry is rarely poetical :
A Voice, a Voice, that is borne on the Holy Way !
What art thou, Heavenly One, O Word of the
Houses of Gold ?
Thebes is bright with thee, and my heart it leapeth ;
yet is it cold,
And my spirit faints as I pray.
I_g! i_e!
What task, Affnghter of Evil, what task shall thy
people essay ?