This fociety may also boast a tenth muse in the perfon of the celebrated Rhodope: Her ta lents are multifarious; poetical, biographical, epiftolary, miscellaneous: She can reason like Socrates, difpute like Aristotle 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 set one foot fairly before the other Her cradle was rocked to the Iambic measure, and she was lulled to fleep by singing to her an ode of Horace, Rhodope has written a book of travels full of moft enchanting inci dents, 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 fo nearly approaching to the language of men and women: We all know that Goody Two-fhoes and other amusing books, though written for VOL. V. children,

I

children, were not written by children. Rhodope has preferved fome fingular curiofitics in her museum: 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 profess to doubt this, and affert that it is nothing more than the flaver of a noble English mastiff, 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 Phaan played upon, when he won the heart of the amorous Sappho; this alfo is made matter of dispute amongst the cognofcenti; thefe 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 music. She has in her cabinet an evergreen of the cypress race, which is fuppofed to be the very individual fhrub, that led up the ball when Orpheus fiddled and the groves began a vegetable dance; and this they you was the origin of all country. dances, now in fuch general practice. She has alfo in

tell

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 remonftrances, and carried her across the sea with him upon a tour, that has immortalized her name through the moft enlightened quarter of the globe: Rhodope is fo tenacious of this manufcript, that fhe rarely indulges the curiofity of her friends with a fight of it; fhe has written an answer in Europa's behalf after the manner of Ovid's epiftle, in which the makes a very ingenious defence for her heroine, 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.

NOTE

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 most 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 last, 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 characters ceafed with what is properly denominated the Old Comedy; the writers of the Middle Class 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 muse in her earliest fallies.

The poets under our present review were not however fo closely circumfcribed, as to be afraid

of

of indulging their talent for ridicule and satire upon topics of a general nature; without a latitude like this comedy could hardly have existed; but this was not all, for amongst 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 relifh 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 c 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 Antifthenes, recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, when, being teázed by these mendicants, the philofopher replied—“ Let