it must also have been for contemporary auditors. They abound in the most
involved constructions, the most unusual expressions, and the boldest
images and recondite allusions. Why then should the poets have lavished
such labour and art upon them, if it were all to be lost in the delivery?
Such a display of ornament without an object would have been very unlike
Grecian ways of thinking.

In the syllabic measures of their tragedies, there generally prevails a
highly finished regularity, but by no means a stiff symmetrical
uniformity. Besides the infinite variety of the lyrical strophes, which
the poet invented for each occasion, they have also a measure to suit the
transition in the tone of mind from the dialogue to the lyric, the
anapest; and two for the dialogue itself, one of which, by far the most
usual, the iambic trimeter, denoted the regular progress of the action,
and the other, the trochaic tetrameter, was expressive of the
impetuousness of passion. It would lead us too far into the depths of
metrical science, were we to venture at present on a more minute account
of the structure and significance of these measures. I merely wished to
make this remark, as so much has been said of the simplicity of the
ancient tragedy, which, no doubt, exists in the general plan, at least in
the two oldest poets; whereas in the execution and details the richest
variety of poetical ornament is employed. Of course it must be evident
that the utmost accuracy in the delivery of the different modes of
versification was expected from the player, as the delicacy of the Grecian
ear would not excuse, even in an orator, the false quantity of a single
syllable.