‘Æschylus,’ begun in 1838, had taken twelve years to transmute into English, but only the first three and the last three of those years were specially devoted to the work. It was dedicated to Chevalier Bunsen and Professor Gerhard. The translator likened his labour to that of Medea with her “renovating kettle,” “who, having cut a live body to pieces, engaged to produce it again reinvigorated in all its completeness.”

In translating ‘Faust,’ he had aimed at a “recasting” rather than at a “transposing” of the original. So his aim in translating ‘Æschylus’ was, in Southey's words, “faithfully to represent the matter, manner, and spirit of the original,” rather than to offer “in the guise of the English language an image of Æschylus in every minute verbal feature.” He desired that his version of the great dramas should do Æschylus justice in so far that the reader should be satisfied that their author was a man of genius, essentially Greek, imbued with lofty conceptions of the divine sovereignty of Zeus, of the immortal influence of human action, of the impossibility of escape from the barriers within which man's lot is cast,—those barriers of human relationship and divine limitation which are imposed on all. And he sought to do this through the medium of a language unsuited to express all that Greek meant when wielded by Æschylus,—unsuited to reproduce his tremendous phrases, his marvellous combinations, but sufficiently worthy to deprive the translator of all apology for failure.