TO PROFESSOR LEWIS CAMPBELL.
11 Scroope Terrace,
Cambridge, 4th, March 1876.
Aias arrived here about a
week ago. I read
him with pleasure. He recalled the year 1851, when I got him up.
The
outline of the play seems very bare and unpromising compared with some
others, but this is relieved by other features which
are not in the "argument," as e.g. the loyalty of the chorus and of
Tecmessa
to Aias under all circumstanoes (for the chorus in general
veers about, and backs occasionally, according as the wind blows or the
cat jumps). This contrasts favourably with the character of Athena, who
is but so so, only not so comic as the
Atreidæ.
But why do Ulysses and Aias
not name each other
in the same language? I suppose the last syllable of
Odysseus,
pronounced Anglicé, is somewhat unpleasant in verse, and Ajax,
though
familiarized by Pope, has lost the interjectiona1
sound
of your hero's name.
Two Aberdonians, Chrysta1 and
Mollison, are
working at the Cavendish Laboratory. I think Chrystal's work is
of
a kind not comparable with that done in "a third-class German
university,"
which was the charitable hope of Nature as to what we
might aspire to in ten years' time. He has worked steadily at the
testing
of Ohm's Law since October, and Ohm has come out
triumphant,
though in some experiments the wire was kept bright red-hot by
the
current.—Your afft. friend.