produced his comedy of The Knights, in which he perfonally attacks the tribune Cleon. In the first year of Olymp. LXXXIX. he produced his first comedy of The Clouds, and in the year following his second of that title, which is now in our hands, and ranks as third in the volume. In the fame year was acted his comedy of The Wasps, in which he fatirizes the General Chares for his conduct in the unfortunate expedition to Sicily.. In the fourth year of Olymp. XC. we may place, his comedy intitled The Peace. In the first of Olymp. XCI. The Lysistrata; and in the second of the fame Olympiad that of The Birds. The Thesmophoriagufæ, or Cerealia Celebrantes, and Concionatrices, fall within the period of Olymp. XCII. before the death of Euripides, who is fatirized in the former of these pieces. The Frogs were performed in the last year of Olymp. XCIII. after the death of Euripides. The Plutus, which completes the eleven co medies still remaining, and the last, to which he prefixed his own name, was produced in the fourth year of Olymp. XCVII. It is generally fuppofed that we owe these remains of Ariftophanes to St. Chryfoftom, who happily happily rescued this valuable, though small, portion of his favourite author from his more fcrupulous Christian contemporaries, whose zeal was fatally too successful in destroying every other comic author, out of a very numerous collection, of which no one entire scene now remains. I N° LXXVIII. SHALL now proceed to mention some other principal writers of the old comedy, of whose works, though once the favourites of the Athenian stage, few memorials survive, and these so small and imperfect, and withal so separated from each other (confifting only of short quotations in the scholiafts and grammarians) that it is a task to collect them, which nothing would compensate but the hope of being in some degree the instrument of saving from absolute extinction the names of authors once fo illuftrious. AMIPSIAS was a contemporary of Ariftophanes, and no mean rival; we have the titles of ten comedies of this author. In some of these his fatire was perfonal, but all of them feem by their titles to have been levelled against the reigning vices of his time, such as The Gamefters, The Glutton, The Beard (in which he inveighed against the hypocrify and affectation of the priests and philosophers), The Adulterers, The Sappho (wherein the morals of the fair fex were expofed), The Purse, a second attack upon the gamefters, and The Philofopher's Cloak, in which it is understood he glanced pretty feverely at Socrates. PLATO was a comic poet, high in time and character; a collection of no less than forty titles of his comedies has been made by the learned Meurfius, but very few fragments of these are remaining. Clemens afferts that Aristophanes and Plato were mutually charged of borrowing from each other, which in one fenfe makes greatly to the reputation of our poet, He is quoted by Plutarch in his Alcibiades, and very honourably mentioned by the famous Galen, by Athenæus, Clemens, Julius Pollux and Suidas. There is a fragment containing four lines and a half, upon a ftatue of Mercury cut by Dædalus, which has an epigrammatic neatness and point in it, that induced me to render it in rhime: rhime: He addresses the statue, mistaking it for a living figure: " Hoa there! who art thou ? Answer me-Art dumb ?" "Warm from the hand of Dædalus I come; " My name Mercurius, and, as you may prove, "A statue; but his statues speak and move." Plato wrote a comedy personally against the General Cleophon, and called it by his name; there are others of the same description in his catalogue, and some of the middle fort: There are a few lines upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better tranflation than I can give, "On the Tomb of Themistocles. "By the fea's margin, on the watery strand, " Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand: "By this directed to thy native shore "The merchant shall convey his freighted store; " And when our fleets are fummon'd to the fight, " Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in fight." The following fragment of a dialogue, between a father and a fophift, under whose tuition he had placed his fon, probably belonged either to the comedy called The Beard, or The Philofopher's Cloak: It is pretty much in the spirit of our old English drama. "FATHER.. "Thou hast deftroy'd the morals of my fon, "SOPHIST. "And if I did, what harms him? Why complain you? "He does but follow what the wife prefcribe, "The great yoluptuous law of Epicurus, "Pleasure, the best of all good things on earth; "And how but thus can pleafure be obtain'd? "FATHER. "Virtue will give it him. "SOPHIST. "And what but virtue "Is our philofophy? When have you met "One of our fect flush'd and difguis'd with wine? "Or one, but one of those you tax fo roundly, "On whom to fix a fault? "FATHER. "Not one, but all, "All who march forth with fupercilious brow " And, |