Thus, in the burlesque contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in the comedy of "The Frogs," the former is censured, not for too rude a neglect, but for too elaborate a cultivation, of theatrical craft--such as introducing his principal characters, his Niobe and Achilles [30], with their faces hid, and preserving long and obstinate silence, in order by that suspense to sharpen the expectation of the audience.
Aeschylus, in fact, contrary to the general criticism, was as earnest and thoughtful an artist as Sophocles himself.

There was this difference, it is true; one invented the art and the other perfected.
But the first requires as intense a study as the last; and they who talk of the savage and untutored genius of Aeschylus, are no wiser than the critics who applied the phrase of "native wood-notes wild" to the consummate philosophy of "Hamlet," the anatomical correctness of "Othello," the delicate symmetry of "The Tempest." With respect to the language of Aeschylus, ancient critics unite with the modern in condemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of his images; yet they appear to me a necessary part of his genius, and of the effect it produces.

But nothing can be more unsatisfactory and inconclusive than the theory of Schlegel, that such metaphors and images, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are the characteristics of a literature in its infancy.

On the contrary, as we have already seen, Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, was as much characterized by sweetness and harmony, as Aeschylus by grandeur and headlong animation.

In our own time, we have seen the cold classic school succeeded by one full of the faults which the German, eloquent but superficial, would ascribe to the infancy of literature.
The diction of Aeschylus was the distinction of himself, and not of his age; if it require an apology, let us not seek it in false pretences; if he had written after Euripides, his diction would have been equally startling, and his metaphors equally lofty.