84     THE EARLY LIFE OF ROBERT SOUTHEY
druids in Caractacus. These are mostly in the strophic
balance, with one or two exceptions in favor of the irregular
form "for music." Such treatment of the chorus contained
the most important idea which was to be derived from
Mason by Sayers and Southey.
The two plays we have been discussing were presented 1
at Covent Garden, Elfrida in 1772, with alterations by
C9lman, and Caractacus in 1776. Southey says that they
were well received, and he remembered having as a child
seen Mrs. Siddons in the role of Elfrida at Bath.2 Mason's
chief influence, however, was upon Sayers, whom Southey
commends for taking such a model,3 adding that, if he had
been one of the mocking-birds of Parnassus, he would have
followed rather the example of Cowper, Darwin, or Merry,
"then each in full sail upon the stream of celebrity, which
very soon floated two of them, by a short cut, into the
dead sea."
The purpose of Sayers which distinguished him so strik-
ingly from the followers of the men just named, especially
in the mind of a boy with such tastes as Southey's, was
frankly " mythological." The preface to his Dramatic Sketches
opens with the statement: "Among the variety of mytho-
logical systems which have contributed at different periods
to decorate the poetry of England, it is much to be la-
mented that we should discover only the faintest traces of
the splendid and sublime religion of our Northern Ances-
tors." Gray he distinguishes as the only one who had
"deigned to notice the sacred fables of the Goths."
"It is certain, however, that the most magnificent features of Scan-
dinavian superstition have hitherto been chiefly concealed in the
Sagas of Iceland, or have appeared only in the tragedies of Klop-
stock and a few other pieces, little known except among the Ger-
mans and Danes to whom they owe their existence. This being
1 Eng. Poets, ed. by Alexander Chalmers, v. XVIII, 309-310.
2 Quar. Rev., v. 35, 195 and note.  Quar. Rev., v. 35, 197.