the severity of his fatire, or that his characters of depravity are in general overcharged, and his pictures of human nature more deformed than. their originals. As for the rest of the comic: fraternity, their fragments only can plead for them; but they are fragments of such a nature, as prove them to have been moralifts of the fublimeft fort, and they have been collected, translated, and applauded, by the graveft and. moft fententious of the Chriftian writers for many ages. I will venture to say, that in these. fcattered reliques of the comic ftage, more useful knowledge and good sense, better maxims for right conduct in life, and a more generous difplay of benevolence, juftice, public spirit, and all the moral virtues of natural religion are to be found, than in all the writings of the philofophers, which are so much more entire.

Socrates, it is true, could hardly be prevailed upon to enter the comic theatre, but I infer very little against the poets on that account; Plato, I am aware, though an intimate of Ariftophanes, banished the drama out of his vifionary republic; but what is that more than to fay, that if all men were virtuous there would be no need of fatirifts? The comic poets in return lafhed the philofophers over the tage, and they had what they merited, the

public applause on their fide; the schools and. academies of fophifts furnished an inexhaustible fund for wholefome ridicule; their contradictory first principles, their dæmons and clouds, and water and fire, with all their idle fyftems and hypotheses, their fabulous conceits, dreams and devices to catch the vulgar, and the affected rigour of their manners, whilft in fecret they were addicted to the groffeft debauchery and impurity, were continual fubjects of fatire; and if hypocrify is not the comic poet's lawful game, what is? There is not a play of Ariftophanes to be named, in which thefe fanctified finners have not their share in the ridicule; and amongst the fragments above mentioned, a very large proportion falls to their lot.

Ariftotle, who had very little feeling for Plato and his academy, or indeed for practical philofophy in general (which he seems to have profeffed only in opposition to Xenocrates) concerned himself no further about the ftate of the ftage, than to comment and remark upon the tragedies of the three chief writers above mentioned; and it is humiliating enough to the pride of criticism to observe, that tragedy, after all his pains to hold it up to the standard of Sophocles and Euripides, funk with thofe authors, and was no more heard of; whilft co

ΙΟ

medy,

medy, without his help, and in defiance of his neglect, rofe in credit with the world, till it attained perfection under the aufpices of Menander.

I have spoken of tragedy as a written poem before comedy of the fame defcription, because I think that Sufarion did not write comedy, though he acted it fo early as the fiftieth Olympiad; and I alfo think that Thefpis did write tragedy in the fixty-firft Olympiad, if not fooner; in other words, although the complexion of the original drama was comic in the most extravagant degree, yet it appears probable that tragedy had the start in point of publication. The nature of the first comedy, compared with that of the first tragedy, feems to warrant this opinion; for it is easy to fuppofe that the raillery and fatire of the village mafques, which would pass off at a lawless feftival, fpoken off-hand and without the malice of premeditation, would not fo readily have been committed to writing by the poet, as the tragic drama; which being compofed in honour of deceased heroes, or on religious and grave fubjects, not only called for greater deliberation on the part of the author, but would also be made public without danger or offence.

It

It now remains to enquire into the chronology of the written comedy,

I have already obferved, that Ariftotle afcribes the first written comedy to Epichar

mus,

Both Ariftotle and Horace call him a Sicilian, but in what particular place he was born is not agreed; fome contend that he was a Syracufan, fome that he was a native of Craftum, others of Megara in Sicily: Diomedes the grammarian fays he was born in Cos, and derives the word comedy from the name of that ifland, a derivation that fets afide his authority altogether. The father of Epicharmus was named Chimarus, or according to others Tityrus, and his mother Sicida. Cicero in his Tufculans calls him, acutum nec infulfum hominem: Demetrius Phaleræus celebrates him for the elegant and appofite choice of his epithets, on which account the Greeks gave the name of EpicharImion to his ftile, making it proverbial for its beauty and purity. It is difficult to fix the precife time when he began to write comedy, efpecially as he lived to the great age of ninetyfeven: It is certain however he was ftill writing in the reign of Hiero, in or about Olymp. LXXIV. at which time Phormis alfo wrote comedy in Sicily; and Chionides, Dinolo

chus and Magnes, comic poets, flourished at Athens.

Suidas's chronology does not agree with Ariftotle's, for he makes Chionides antecedent to Epicharmus, and calls him the first writer of comedy; adding, that Evetes, Euxenides and Mylus, all Athenians, were his contemporaries; he allows, however, that Epicharmus and Phormis were the first writers in the island of Sicily; but this is in the vague manner of his dates, and not to be relied upon: He takes no notice of Ariftotle's exprefs affertion, that Epicharmus was long fenior to Chionides; and yet he might have recollected, that facts are fo far in favour of Ariftotle's chronology of thefe poets, that there is a title upon record of one of Chionides's plays called The Perfians, which muft have been pofterior to the Perfian æra, when it is on all hands agreed that Epicharmus was living.

Amongst the epigrams of Theocritus, publifhed by Henry Stevens in 1579, there are fome lines upon Epicharmus, which appear to have been infcribed upon the pedestal of a statue of brafs, which the Syracufans had fet up in his honour as their fellow-citizen: It confifts of ten lines in the Doric dialect, which he ufed; it fettles the point of his birth, exprefsly