I had written thus far when your letter of the 16th arrived, franked on the 23d from Weymouth, with a polite apology from Mr. Bedingfell (if I have rightly deciphered the name) for its detention. I am vexed I did not write immediately on my return home, but I waited, day after day, in hopes of the "Orestes," etc. It is an old proverb that "extremes meet," and I have often regretted that I had not noted down as they _in_curred the interesting instances in which the proverb is verified. The newest subject, though brought from the planets (or asteroids) Ceres and Pallas, could not excite my curiosity more than "Orestes." I will write immediately to Mr. Clarkson, who resides at the foot of Ulleswater, and beg him to walk into Penrith, and ask at all the inns if any parcel have arrived; if not, I will myself write to Mr. Faulder and inform him of the failure. There is a subject of great merit in the ancient mythology hitherto untouched--I believe so, at least. But for the _mode_ of the death, which mingles the ludicrous and terrible, but which might be easily altered, it is one of the finest subjects for tragedy that I am acquainted with. Medea, after the murder of her children [having] fled to the court of the old King Pelias, was regarded with superstitious horror, and shunned or insulted by the daughters of Pelias, till, hearing of her miraculous restoration of Æson, they conceived the idea of recalling by her means the youth of their own father. She avails herself of their credulity, and so works them up by pretended magical rites that they consent to kill their father in his sleep and throw him into the magic cauldron. Which done, Medea leaves them with bitter taunts of triumph. The daughters are called Asteropæa, Autonoe, and Alcestis. Ovid alludes briefly to this story in the couplet,--
"Quid referam Peliæ natas pietate nocentes, Cæsaque virgineâ membra paterna manu?" Ovid, Epist. XII. 129, 130.
What a thing to have seen a tragedy raised on this fable by Milton, in rivalry of the "Macbeth" of Shakespeare! The character of Medea, wandering and fierce, and invested with impunity by the strangeness and excess of her guilt, and truly an injured woman on the other hand and possessed of supernatural powers! The same story is told in a very different way by some authors, and out of their narrations matter might be culled that would very well coincide with and fill up the main incidents--her imposing the sacred image of Diana on the priesthood of Iolcus, and persuading them to join with her in inducing the daughters of Pelias to kill their father; the daughters under the persuasion that their father's youth would be restored, the priests under the faith that the goddess required the death of the old king, and that the safety of the country depended on it. In this way Medea might be suffered to escape under the direct protection of the priesthood, who may afterwards discover the delusion. The moral of the piece would be a very fine one.