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English in the best manner my capacity enabled me to do, to a very unfortunate purpofe indeed. The learned reader will bear me witnefs, that thefe fragments have been the admiration of ages; and I am fenfible that very many of them poffefs intrinfic beauty both of ftile and fentiment; and if my tranflations have not robbed them of their original merit, fome pleasure, and let me hope fome profit, may attend their perufal. I have ftudied fo to clafs them, as not to burthen or diftract the reader with a mere fucceffion of mifcellaneous quotations without any reference or connection, which I am fenfible could not be an agreeable mode of publication, though Stobæus, Hertelius and fome others have taken it up; but on the contrary, I have endeavoured to introduce them with fome anecdote or other, which ferves to weave them into the thread of the work. Moft of the tranflations will be found in metre, in which I have ftrove to copy the free ftile of our old metrical comic poets: Some I have turned into rhime, where the thought allowed it, and the expreffions were terfe and epigrammatical: Others I have put into profe; and in all I have been as close and faithful to the original, as the language and my construction of the author would per mit. If the candid reader will accept this pre

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face in apology, I fhall give him no further trouble on the fubject.

Epicharmus, in one of his comedies (we may suppose The Statefman) introduces the following retort from fome man of low birth to a prating old woman, who is vapouring about her ancestry.

Good goffip, if you love me, prate no more : "What are your genealogies to me?

Away to thofe, who have more need of them! "Let the degenerate wretches, if they can, "Dig up dead honour from their father's tombs, " And boast if for their own-Vain, empty boast! "When every common fellow, that they meet, "If accident hath not cut off the scroll, "Can fhew a lift of ancestry as long.

"You call the Scythians barbarous, and defpife them; « Yet Anacharfis was a Scythian born ;

And every man of a like noble nature,

"Tho he were moulded from an Æthiop's loins, "Is nobler than your pedigrees can make him.”

The following is a falfe antithefis, in which bodily ftrength is fubftituted for mental

"It demands the strength of a lion to sub"due the weakness of love."

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"Be fober in thought! be flow in belief! "These are the finews of wifdom.”

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"It is the part of a wife man to foresee "what ought to be done, fo fhall he not repent "of what is done,"

"Throw not away thine anger upon trifles! "Reafon, and not rage, fhould govern.'

"Mankind are more indebted to industry "than to ingenuity: The gods fet up their "favours at a price, and induftry is the pur"chafer."

"A man without merit, fhall live without envy; but who would wish to escape on these "terms?"

"Live fo as to hold yourself prepared either "for a long life, or for a fhort one!"

There is no fubject, which the comic poets whet their wits upon more frequently than marriage. The wives of Syracufe were not much obliged to Epicharmus for the following fally.

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Marriage is like a caft of the dice: If you "get a wife of good morals and a quiet temper "withal, happy is your lot: If you light upon "a gadding, goffipping, extravagant huffy, it "is not a wife you, wed, but an eternal plague "in the apparel of a woman. There is not in "the habitable globe fo dire a torment; I feel it to my forrow; the better luck is his, who " has never tried it??

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Mr. Congreve, in his Double Dealer, has the following paffage between Mellafont and Cynthia upon the very eve of their nuptials.

Cynth. Then I find marriage is like cards; if either. of us have a good hand, it is an accident of fortune. Mell. No, marriage is rather like a game at bowls: Fortune indeed makes the match, and the two nearest, and fometimes the two fartheft are together; but the game depends entirely upon judgment.

Cynth. Still it is a game, and confequently one of us muft.be a lofer.

Mell. Not at all; only a friendly trial of fkill, and the winnings to be laid out in an entertainment.

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Neither this, nor any part of the scene to which it appertains,, is in Mr. Congreve's best manner: The wit does not flow, but is pumped up with labour, and not very clean when it

comes.

Of Phormis, the contemporary of Epicharmus, no fragments are to be found.

Chionides of Athens wrote comedy before the Perfian æra, and is the oldeft writer of the Athenian stage. All the memorials" I can obtain of him are, that he wrote three plays, intitled, The Heroes, The Lyars and The Poor Men.

Magnes was an Athenian, and began to appear as a writer of comedy, whilft Chionides

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was living: Ariftophanes makes mention of him in his play of The Knights, The Scholiaft in his comment on the paffage observes, that all his works are perifhed, nothing remaining but the titles of nine comedies, of which two bear the fame names with two of Ariftophanes, viz, The Frogs, and The Birds; the fame Scholiaft informs us that Magnes bore away two prizes.

Dinolochus was contemporary with Magnes: He used the Doric dialect, and is faid to have produced fourteen plays. Some place his birth at Syracufe, others at Agrigentum. Suidas fays he flourished fo early as Olymp. LXXIII. but this ill agrees with the circumftance of his being the fon, or as others contend, the scholar of Epicharmus. His works have totally perifhed.

These five poets, three of whom were Sicilians, must be called The Fathers of Comedy, and all that now remains of them is comprised in the few short passages here inferted.

Whilft their comedies were in representation, tragedy was advancing under Pratinas and Charilus, and Æfchylus had already taken poffeffion of the ftage: Sophocles and Euripides were born, the former fix years before the latter: Jon, furnamed Xuthis, fon of Orthomenes of Chios, began to write tragedy in the first year

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