This fociety may also braft a tenth mufe in the person of the celebrated Rhodope: Her talents are multifarious; poetical, biographical, epiftolary, miscellaneous: She can reason like Socrates, difpute like Ariftotle and love like Sappho; her magnanimity equals that of Marc Antony, for when the world was at her feet, fhe facrificed it all for love, and accounted it well loft. She was a philofopher in her leadingftrings, and had travelled geographically over the globe ere fhe could fet one foot fairly before the other: Her cradle was rocked to the Iambic measure, and she was lulled to fleep by finging to her an ode of Horace. Rhodope has written a book of travels full of moft enchanting incidents, which some of her admirers say was actually sketched in the nursery, and only filled up with little temporary touches in her riper years; I know they make appeal to her ftile as internal evidence of what they affert about the nursery; but though I am ready to admit that it has every infantine charm, which they discover in it, yet I cannot go the length of thinking with them, that a mere infant could poffibly dictate any thing so nearly approaching to the language of men and women: We all know that Goody Two-fhoes, and other amufing books, though written for VOL. V. childrens

I

children, were not written by children. Rhodope has preferved fome fingular curiofities in her mufeum: She has a bottle of coagulated foam, fomething like the congealed blood of Saint Januarius; this the maintains was the veritable foam of the tremendous Minotaur of Crete of immortal memory; there are fome indeed, who profefs to doubt this, and affert that it is nothing more than the flaver of a noble English maftiff, which went tame about her house, and, though formidable to thieves and interlopers, was ever gentle and affectionate to honeft men. She has a lyre in fine preservation, held to be the identi cal lyre, which Phaon played upon, when he won the heart of the amorous Sappho; this also is made matter of difpute amongst the cognofcenti; these will have it to be a common Italian inftrument, fuch as the ladies of that country play upon to this day; this is a point they must settle as they can, but all agree it is a well-ftrung inftrument, and difcourfes fweet mufic. She has in her cabinet an evergreen of the cyprefs race, which is supposed to be the very individual shrub, that led up the ball when Orpheus fiddled and the groves began a vegetable dance; and this they tell you was the origin of all country dances, now in such general practice. She has also in

her poffeffion the original epiftle, which king Agenor wrote to Europa, diffuading her from her ridiculous partiality for her favourite bull, when Jupiter in the form of that animal took her off in fpite of all Agenor's remonstrances, and carried her across the sea with him upon a tour, that has immortalized her name through the most enlightened quarter of the globe: Rhodope is fo tenacious of this manuscript, that she rarely indulges the curiofity of her friends with a fight of it; fhe has written an answer in Europa's be half after the manner of Ovid's epiftle, in which the makes a very ingenious defence for her he roine, and every body, who has feen the whole of the correfpondence, allows that Agenor writes like a man, who knew little of human nature, and that Rhodope in her reply has the best of the argument.

NOT

N° CXXXVII.

OTHING now remains for compleating the literary annals of Greece, according to the plan I have proceeded upon in the foregoing volumes, but to give fome account of the Drama within that period of time, which

commences with the death of Alexander of Macedon and concludes with that of Menander, or at moft extends to a very few years beyond it, when the curtain may, figuratively be faid to have dropt upon all the glories of the Athenian ftage.

This, though the laft, is yet a brilliant æra, for now flourished Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, Apollodorus, Philippides, Pofidippus; poets no less celebrated for the luxuriancy than for the elegance of their genius; all writers of the New Comedy; which, if it had not all the wit and fire of the old fatirical drama produced in times of greater public freedom, is generally reputed to have been far fuperior to it in delicacy, regularity and decorum. All attacks upon living charac ters ceafed with what is properly denominated the Old Comedy; the writers of the Middle Clafs contented themselves with venting their raillery upon the works of their dramatic predeceffors; the perfons and politics of their contemporaries were fafe; whereas neither the highest station, nor the brightest talents were any fure protection from the unreftrained invectives of the comic mufe in her earliest fallies.

The poets under our prefent review were not however so closely circumfcribed, as to be afraid

of

of indulging their talent for ridicule and fatire upon topics of a general nature; without a latitude like this comedy could hardly have existed; but this was not all, for among ft their fragments fome are to be found, which advance fentiments and opinions fo directly in the teeth of the popular religion, that we cannot but admire at the extraordinary toleration of their pagan audiences. Juftin quotes a paffage from Menander's comedy of The Charioteer, in which an old mendicant is introduced carrying about a painted figure of the Great Mother of the Gods, after the manner of the present Popish Rofaries, and begging a boon as ufual on thofe occafions; the perfon addreffed for his fubfcription, contemptuously replies-"I "have no relish for fuch deities as ftroll about "with an old beggar-woman from door to door, "nor for that painted cloth you have the impu"dence to thrust into my prefence: Let me tell

you, woman, if your Mother of the Gods was "good for any thing, fhe would keep to her

own station and take charge of none but those, "who merit her protection by their piety and "devotion." This rebuff is of a piece with the furly answer of the cynic Antisthenes, 'recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, when, being teazed by these mendicants, the philofopher replied-" Let I 3

"the