Augier, Racine, Shakespeare, Aristophanes in
Hookham Frere's translation, Sophocles and AEschylus in Lewis
Campbell's, such were some of the authors whom he introduced to his
public. In putting these upon the stage, he found a thousand
exercises for his ingenuity and taste, a thousand problems arising
which he delighted to study, a thousand opportunities to make these
infinitesimal improvements which are so much in art and for the
artist. Our first Greek play had been costumed by the professional
costumer, with unforgetable results of comicality and indecorum:
the second, the TRACHINIAE, of Sophocles, he took in hand himself,
and a delightful task he made of it. His study was then in
antiquarian books, where he found confusion, and on statues and
bas-reliefs, where he at last found clearness; after an hour or so
at the British Museum, he was able to master 'the chiton, sleeves
and all'; and before the time was ripe, he had a theory of Greek
tailoring at his fingers' ends, and had all the costumes made under
his eye as a Greek tailor would have made them.
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