Thus the consummation of the trilogy is cheerful, though each of the two former pieces is tragic; and the poet artfully conduces the poem to the honour of his native Athens and the venerable Areopagus.

Regarding the three as one harmonious and united performance, altogether not so long as one play of Shakspeare's, they are certainly not surpassed in greatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustained vigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor, observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we do right to subscribe to those who deny to Aeschylus the skill of the artist, while they grant him the faculty of the poet.
The ingenious Schlegel attributes to these tragedies symbolical interpretations, but to my judgment with signal ill-success.

These four tragedies--the Prometheus, the Agamemnon, the Choephori, and the Eumenides--are in grandeur immeasurably superior to the remaining three.
XII.

Of these last, the Seven against Thebes is the best.

The subject was one peculiarly interesting to Greece; the War of the Seven was the earliest record of a league among the Grecian princes, and of an enterprise carried on with a regular and systematic design.