ABSTRACT
I propose now to make some few remarks on the plays of Sophocles, and to consider the especial rank which we should accord this great writer among poets: and I perceive, indeed, that I have undertaken a task in which I run the risk of giving no slight offence. For you know how keenly people resent any question being raised concerning the merits of great poets, and especially in the case of those to whom they themselves have been devoted in their youth. For some reason they seem to take such criticism as a personal wrong or insult: just as if these writers with whose poems they had been familiar from childhood were connected with them either in blood or by some sacred bond; and this is indeed a proof how great is the influence of genuine and divinely inspired poetry, when any imitation of it, however deceptive, touches the mind so deeply.
