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REMARKS ON THE TRAGEDY OF HECTOR.
This little cento was, we are informed, originally composed as an exercise to show the dramatic beauties of the Iliad. It would be superfluous to offer any opinion on the merits of the dialogue; but the translation may have claims on the indulgence of the critical scholar, which few will probably be disposed to admit.
For the public stage the Tragedy of Hector is obviously unfit; but as a school drama it perhaps deserves consideration, and we are acquainted with no piece to which less objection could be made by parents or masters. The shortness of it is also a recommendation to the private amateur, if his knowledge of the original is not extensive or minute, otherwise he will doubtless be offended at the liberties of transposition which the compiler has taken, and find in the second and third acts more of Pope than of Homer. We cannot dismiss this article without expressing our regret that the simple and manly topics of the great poets seem now to be altogether neglected, and the vagaries of fancy and distorted feeling substituted for those rational and vigorous compositions of judgment and genius which held the mirror up to nature.
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