Pièce 330 - Letter from Sir George Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

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Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Glad that Elizabeth is 'more comfortable and easy'; such a shame that she had to leave 'in pain'. Agrees about [Sophocles's] Philoctetes, 'the most perfect of the Greek dramas for acting, and reading'; has however started a 'course of interest in Euripides' which came to great men like Coleridge, Macaulay, and Schlegel in middle life; now understands the 'novel and passionate delight and relish' of the Greek audiences when Euripides gave them 'the human element in the old religious framework' for the first time; has read the "Medea", "Alcestis", "Bacchae", "Orestes", "Ion" and "Hecuba"; is now reading the "Helena", which he did his first May Term at Trinity, and which Schlegel liked best. Intends now to read a great deal of Elizabethan dramatists for the story, as 'Euripides has taught [him] to read dramatic poetry as a pastime, without troubling to criticise'.