may be said by the satellites of the son, for the general eye his disgrace would completely outshade his father's. Pheres arrives then calm and decorous, resolved, as we see, to show that he at least has no reason to avoid the ceremony, and well-pleased, as we may imagine, that he can do this with so little discomfort. That his son will make a scene he naturally cannot suppose. But Admetus is too sore and too undisciplined to reason. The unreason of his self-refuting invective measures for us how intensely his conscience hates and fears an unfriendly eye; or, as Browning excellently puts it,
So in old Pheres young Admetus showed
Pushed to completion: and a shudder ran,
And his repugnance soon had vent in speech:
Glad to escape outside, nor, pent within,
Find itself there fit food for exercise.
"Neither to this interment called by me
Comest thou, nor thy presence I account
Among the covetable proofs of love. . . ."
You see what all this poor pretentious talk
Tried at—how weakness strove to hide itself
In bluster against weakness—the loud word
To hide the little whisper, not so low
Already in that heart beneath those lips!
Ha, could it be, who hated cowardice
Stood confessed craven, and who lauded so
Self-immolating love, himself had pushed
The loved one to the altar in his place?
The exposition of this scene is indeed the best part of Balaustion's Adventure regarded as a commentary, and so far as the scene itself is concerned leaves nothing to add. But beyond the mere situation, and not less essential for a complete understanding, is the bearing of it on the action of the play as a whole: and this is, that when we have heard the retorts of Pheres, turning as they do insistently upon the disgrace and contempt attaching to the appearance of Admetus in the character of mourner, we understand, if we did not before, why he has schemed to elude, even at the cost of an offence against humanity, a performance in which he must have borne, without even the consolation of reply, to read such things on the eyes and the lips of a thousand malign spectators.
