O learn'd Mecenas, hear Cratinus speak,
And take this maxim from the gay old Greek;
No verfe fhall please, or lafting honours gain,
Which coldly flows from water drinker's brain.

As for the love of wine, it feems to have stood in the place of a merit with the Greeks; but Cratinus's excess was attended in his old age with fome marks of weakness and want of retention, incidental to an exhaufted conftitution, which gave a handle to Ariftophanes, who was a younger man (and not much more abstemious) to bring his old competitor on the fage, and hold him up to ridicule for this infirmity. The charge was unmanly, and roused the aged veteran to return the attack: Cratinus, then nearly approaching to an hundred, had left off writing, but he was not yet fuperannuated, and lived to compleat a comedy, which he appofitely entitled The Flaggon. In the plot of this piece he feigns himself married to Comedy, whom he personifies, and represents the lady in difguft with her husband for his unconjugal neglect, on which account she states her charge, and roundly fues for an actual divorce: Upon this hearing, certain friends and advocates are introduced on the scene in behalf of the party accufed, who make fuit to the dame to stay her proceedings, and not be over

hasty

hafty in throwing off an old spouse; but on the contrary recommend to her to enter calmly into an amicable difcuffion of her grievances: To this propofal fhe at length accedes, and this gives occafion to take up the charge of Ariftophanes, accufing the old bard of drunkennefs and the concomitant circumstances, which had been published with fo much ill-nature to make him ridiculous at the end of life. Then follows a very pleasant refutation of all these libels, by which he contrives to turn the laugh against Aristophanes, and fo concludes the comedy. One feels a fatisfaction even at this diftance of ages to know, that the old poet bore away the prize with this very comedy, and foon after expired in the arms of victory at the age of ninety-feven, in the first year of Olymp. LXXXIX,

The Athenians gave him a monument, and an epitaph, in which they omit all mention of his fine talents, and record nothing but his drunkenness. He fpared no man when living, and even death itfelf could not protect him from retaliation.

σε Θανόντος ἀνδρὸς πας' απόλλοται χάρις.”

(STESICHORUS.)›

I

The

The evil that he did liv'd after him,

The good was all interred with his bones.

(SHAKESPEAR.)

There is fearce a fragment of this poet, once fo great a favourite, that is now to be found; the very few scraps of fentences remaining are too imperfect to merit a tranflation: One little fpark of his genius however will be feen in the following epigrammatic turn of thought upon the lofs of a statue, which being the workmanship of Dedalus, he fuppofes to have made use of its privilege, and efcaped from its pedestal.

"My ftatue's gone! By Dedalus 'twas made.
"It is not stolen therefore; it has fray'd.”

EUPOLIS.

Eupolis became a very popular author fome years before the death of Cratinus: The bold ftrong spirit of his fatire recommended him to the public more than the beauties and graces of his ftile, which he was not studious to polish. He attacked the most obnoxious and profligate characters in Athens, without any regard to his perfonal fafety; to expose the cheat, and ridicule thé impoftor was the glory of his mufe, and neither the terrors of the magistracy, nor the mysteries of fuperftition

could

could divert him from it. He wrote two comedies profeffedly against Autolycus the Areopagite, whose misbehaviour in the Charonenfian war had made him infamous, and he called them after his name The first and fecond Autolycus In his famous comedy called The Bapta he inveighs against the effeminate turpitude of his countrymen, whom he exhibits dancing after the manner of the lascivious priests of Cotytto (viz. the Bapta) in the habits and fashion of female minstrels.

Talia fecreta coluerunt orgia tedâ
Cecropiam foliti Bapta laffare Cotytto.

(JUVEN.)

The prevailing account of his death is, that the perfons, whom he had satirized in this play of the Bapta, fuborned certain affaffins to throw him into the sea, as he was paffing the Hellefpont with the Athenian forces then on an expedition against the Lacedæmonians; and several autho rities impute this revengeful deed to Alcibiades, who had been severely handled in that piece; but Cicero in his firft epiftle of the fixth book to Atticus speaks of this report as a vulgar error, and quotes Eratofthenes for the fact of Eupolis having written certain comedies after the time, when the event of his death is dated -redarguit

-redarguit Eratofthenes; affert enim quas ille poft id tempus fabulas docuerit.

Paufanias tells us, that his tomb was erected upon the banks of the Afopus in Sicyonia, and as it is not likely this honour should be paid to his memory by the Sicyonians, he being an Athenian born, unless he had died in their country; the authority of Paufanias feems to confirm the account of Eratofthenes, and difcredit the fable of his being thrown into the Hellefpont.

In his comedy called The People, by the fiction of the scene he raifes the fhades of their departed orators and dæmagogues from the dead; and when Pericles, laft of the troop, arifes, the poet demands, "Who it is that ap

pears?" The queftion being answered, and the fpirit of Pericles difmiffed, he pronounces his encomium-"That he was pre-eminent as cc an orator, for man never spoke as he spoke : "When he started like a courfer in the race, "he threw all competitors out of fight, fo rapid IC was the torrent of his eloquence; but with "that rapidity there flowed fuch fweetness and "perfuafion from his lips, that He alone of all "orators ftruck a fting into the very fouls of "his hearers, and left it there to remain for "ever."

"

I think