The vague horror which in the commencement of the play prepares us for the catastrophe by the dream of Clytemnestra--how a serpent lay in swaddling-clothes like an infant, and she placed it in her breast, and it drew blood; the brief and solemn answer of Orestes-- "Man's visions never come to him in vain;" the manner in which the avenging parricide interrupts the dream, so that (as in Macbeth) the prediction inspires the deed that it foretells; the dauntless resolution of Clytemnestra, when she hears, in the dark sayings of her servant, that "the dead are slaying the living" (i.e., that through the sword of Orestes Agamemnon is avenged on Aegisthus), calls for a weapon, royal to the last, wishing only to "Know which shall be the victor or the vanquished-- Since that the crisis of the present horror;" the sudden change from fierce to tender as Orestes bursts in, and, thinking only of her guilty lover, she shrieks forth, "Ah! thou art then no more, beloved Aegisthus;" the advance of the threatening son, the soft apostrophe of the mother as she bares her bosom-- "Hold! and revere this breast on which so oft Thy young cheek nestled--cradle of thy sleep, And fountain of thy being;" the recoil of Orestes--the remonstrance of Pylades--the renewed passion of the avenger--the sudden recollection of her dream, which the murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm Orestes to its fulfilment, and he pursues and slays her by the side of the adulterer; all these passages are full of so noble a poetry, that I do not think the parallel situations in Hamlet equal their sustained and solemn grandeur.

But the sublimest effort of the imagination is in the conclusion.

While Orestes is yet justifying the deed that avenged a father, strange and confused thoughts gradually creep over him.

No eyes see them but his own--there they are, "the Gorgons, in vestments of sable, their eyes dropping loathly blood!" Slowly they multiply, they approach, still invisible but to their prey--"the angry hell-hounds of his mother." He flies, the fresh blood yet dripping from his hands.

This catastrophe--the sudden apparition of the Furies ideally imaged forth to the parricide alone--seems to me greater in conception than the supernatural agency in Hamlet.