The work

April 7th [1871] was a notable day at Ephesus. men, in opening up new ground on the north side of the excavations, came upon an earthenware vessel about five feet under ground, containing more than two thousand coins and some lumps of the metal of which the coins were made. The three cavasses [foremen] then employed were fortunately on the spot, and prevented what might otherwise have proved a general scramble for the treasure.

[When examined at the British Museum, these coins proved to belong to the period between 1285 and 1370 A.D., the greater number being issued by Robert I. of Naples.]

The discovery of the remains of three temples on the same site and of the same size accounts for Pliny's statement that the temple was two hundred and twenty years in building, the earliest of the three having been probably commenced, as I have supposed, about 500 B.C., and the latest in the time of Alexander the Great. Nearly four feet above the lowest of the three pavements was found the highly polished white marble pavement of the last temple but one-the temple burned by Heros'tratus. Large patches remained in position, and were only discovered on the removal of the foundation-piers of the church. Connected with this pavement were found near the west wall of the cella* two large marble blocks, resting upon a massive and solid foundation, in which was cut the groove for the outer bronze wheel on which the door of the temple moved; also the corresponding sinking for the inner wheel. The groove was eight inches wide and three and a quarter inches deep, and was much worn. The mortise for the door-frame was also cut in one of these stones. The exact width of the whole door was thus ascertained—namely, fourteen feet eight and a half inches in two parts as folding doors. It must therefore have been

nearly thirty-five feet high.

The temple itself was one hundred and sixty-three feet nine and a half inches, by three hundred and forty-two feet six and a half inches, and was octastyle †-i.e., having eight columns in front; and dip'teral-i.e., having two rows of columns round the cella. These columns were, as Pliny described them, one hundred in number, twenty-seven of which were the gifts of kings. *The part of the temple where the image of the goddess stood. Trisyllable; octastyle and dipteral are explained in context.

SWINBURNE'S "ATALANTA IN CALYDON."

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN (b. 1833).

[The Atalanta in Cal'ydon appeared in 1864. Three years previously Mr. Swinburne had published the Queen Mother and Rosamond, a drama in the Elizabethan manner. The stride from Catherine de' Medici back to the dawn of Greek mythology was scarcely greater than the poet's advance from his first volume to the artistic perfection of his classical tragedy.]

I wish to speak upon the one faculty in which Swinburne excels any living English poet; in which I doubt if his equal has existed among recent poets of any tongue, unless Shelley be excepted, or possibly some lyrist of the modern French school.

In

This is his miraculous gift of rhythm, his command over the unsuspected resources of a language. That Shelley had a like power is, I think, shown in passages like the choruses of Prometheus Unbound;* but he flourished half a century ago, and did not have (as Swinburne has) Shelley for a predecessor! A new generation, refining upon the lessons given by Shelley and Keats, has carried the art of rhythm to extreme variety and finish. Were Shelley to have a second career, his work, if no finer in single passages, would have, all in all, a range of musical variations such as we discover in Swinburne's. So close is the resemblance in quality of these two voices, however great the difference in development, as almost to justify a belief in metempsychosis. A master is needed to awake the spirit slumbering in any musical instrument. Before the advent of Swinburne we did not realize the full scope of English verse. his hands it is like the violin of Paganini. The range of his fantasias, roulades, arias, new effects of measure and sound, is incomparable with anything hitherto known. The first emotion of one who studies even his immature work is that of wonder at the freedom and richness of his diction, the susurrust of his rhythm, his unconscious alliterations, the endless change of his syllabic harmonies, resulting in the alternate softness and strength, height and fall, riotous or chastened music, of his affluent verse. How does he produce it? Who taught him all the hidden springs of melody? He was born a tamer of words; a subduer of this most stubborn yet most copious of the literary tongues. In his poetry we discover qualities we did not know were in the language,—a softness that seemed Italian, * See Professor Masson's studies in Shelley, reprinted in this Reader. + Literally "whisper;" here "the murmuring ripple."

a rugged strength we thought was German, a "blithe and debonair" lightness we despaired of capturing from the French. He has added a score of new stops and pedals to the instrument. He has introduced, partly from other tongues, stanzaic forms, measures, and effects untried before; and has brought out the swiftness and force of metres like the anapæstic, carrying each to perfection at a single trial. Words in his hands are like the ivory balls of a juggler, and all words seem to be in his hands............... There is a resemblance, both of temperament and intellect, between Swinburne and what is known of Landor in his youth. The latter remained for a comparatively brief time at college, but the younger poet, like the elder, was a natural scholar and linguist. He profited largely by his four years at Oxford, and the five at Eton which preceded them; for his intuitive command of languages is so unusual, that a year of his study must be worth a lustrum† of other men's, and he had developed this gift by frequent and exquisite usage. No other Englishman has been so able to vary his effects by modes drawn, not only from classical and Oriental literatures, but from the haunting beauty of medieval song. I should suppose him to be as familiar with French verse, from Ronsard to Hugo, as most of us are with the poetry of our own language; and he writes either in Greek or Latin, old and new, or in troubadour French, as if his thoughts came to him in the diction for the time assumed. No really admirable work, I think, can be produced in a foreign tongue, until this kind of lingui-naturalization has been attained.....

Whatever may be said of the genuineness of any reproduction of the antique, the Atalanta in Calydon is the best of its kind. One who undertakes such work has the knowledge that his theme is removed from popular sympathy, and must be content with a restricted audience. Swinburne took up the classical dramatic form, and really made the dry bones live,—as even Landor and Arnold had not; as no man had before or after Shelley; that is to say, as no man has: for the Prometheus Unbound, grand as it is, is classical only in some of its personages and in the mythical germ of its conception,—a sublime poem, full of absorbing beauty, but antique neither in spirit nor

*Quoted from Milton's Allegro, 24.

+ The Roman term for a period of five years.

Ronsard, Pierre de, French poet of sixteenth century (1524-1585); Victor Hugo, a contemporary French poet and novelist (b. 1802).

in form. Atalanta is upon the severest Greek model, that of Æs'chylus or Soph'ocles, and reads like an inspired translation. We cannot repeat the antique as it existed, though a poem may be better or worse. But consider the nearness of this success, and the very great poetry involved.

Poetry and all, this thing has for once been done as well as possible, and no future poet can safely attempt to rival it. Atalanta is Greek in unity and simplicity, not only in the technical unities-utterly disregarded in Prometheus Unboundbut in maintenance of a single pervading thought, the impossibility of resisting the inexorable high gods.

Victorian Poets (1875).

FROM THE CHORUSES IN "ATALANTA IN CALYDON." [The story of Atalanta (or Atalante) and the Calydonian Boar-hunt, is said to have formed the subject of one of the lost tragedies of the Greek poet Eschylus. Mr. Swinburne's skill is shown in the transfusion of Greek thought, feeling, and belief, into English poetry of marvellous sweetness and music. The opening chorus is an invocation to Artemis (Diāna) the goddess of the chase. The fourth line has already become famous as the most perfect example of alliterative word-painting in the language :-

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain ;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
Maiden most perfect, lady of light,

With a noise of winds and many rivers,

With a clamor of waters, and with might;

Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,

Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;

For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,

Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

SECOND CHORUS.

Before the beginning of years,

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And Madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light;

And Life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be

In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after

And death beneath and above,

For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,

And love, and a space for delight,
And beauty and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;

In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death; He weaves, and is clothed with derision; Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.