القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [و‎‎١‎٠‎٧] (٢٤٤/٢١٨)

1892
NOTICEABLE
703
sions of simple men and women. The office of feeling, the oneness .and end of
humanity, the completeness of man's future being, the reign of righteousness,
existence in God—these were the truths which Euripides felt after. His religious
teaching corresponds in a word with that most touching and noble sentence which
Plato, in this case perhaps with more than usual truth, quotes from a conyersa-
tion with Socrates on the evening of his death. ' In regard to the facts of a future
life, a man,' said Phfedo, ' must either learn or find out their nature, or if he can
not do that, take, at any rate, the best and least assailable of human words, and,
borne on this as on a raft, perform in peril the voyage of life, unless he should be
able to accomplish the journey with less risk and danger on a surer vessel—some
word divine.'
And here I may remind the Bishop of Durham of a fragment
of Euripides—very striking and significant, it seems to me—which
presents a close analogy with this quotation from Plato, and which
he has apparently overlooked:
Hefifov pep (pS>s
to I s jSouXo/xei'ot?
noOevffSkauTov, pt£a kcikcop,
tlvo. del jiandpcov
evp elv fiox^cavavairavKav.
Surely in this aspiration for light which shall reveal the source
of human wretchedness and the Deity that will deliver from it, we
may hear the voice of
the prophetic soul of the great world.
Dreaming on things to come.
' Poets,' said Plato, ' utter great and wise things which they them
selves do not understand.'
W. S. L illy.
6.
POEMS BY EMILY DICKENSON. 1
A n American lady, who nearly missed being the most distinguished
poetess her country has yet produced, died in middle age some six
years ago. In life she was but little known, and rarely even seen.
This aloofness, tinged with eccentricity, and possibly attributable to
some early sorrow, characterises all she wrote. Her scattered verse
has only been published since her death; and such fame as Emily
Dickenson has achieved as yet is, therefore, posthumous. She avoided
1 Poems. By Emily Dickenson Boston : Eoberts Brothers.