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this piece, of a very bitter caft, for he makes one of his female characters roundly affert

"No animal in nature can compare

"In impudence with woman; I myself
"Am one, and from my own experience Speak."

I flatter myself an English audience would not hear fuch calumny; the modern ftage encourages more refpectful fentiments

Oh! woman, lovely woman! nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without thee.

Our poet must have been in an ill-humour with the fex, when he wrote this comedy, or elfe the Athenian wives must have been mere Xantippes to deferve what follows

"Nor houfe, nor coffers, nor whatever else "Is dear and precious, fhould be watch'd fo closely, "As the whom you call wife. Sad lot is our's, "Who barter life and all it's free delights, "To be the flaves of woman, and are paid "Her bridal portion in the lucklefs coin "Of forrow and vexation. A man's wrath "Is milk and honey to a woman's rage; "He can be much offended and forgive, "She never pardons thofe the moft offends :

"What she should do fhe flights, what the fhould not

"Hotly purfues; falfe to each virtuous point,
"And only in her wickednefs fincere."

"Who

"Who but a lunatic would wed and be
"Wilfully wretched? better to endure
"The fhame of poverty and all it's taunts
"Rather than this. The reprobate, on whom
"The Cenfor fet his brand, is justly doom'd
"Unfit to govern others, but the wretch,
"Who weds, no longer can command himself,
"Nor hath his woc a period but in death."

So much for matrimony according to our author's picture of it! he has left us a defcription of love, which he has fketched in more pleafing colours

"The man, who holds true pleasure to confift
"In pampering his vile body, and defies
"Love's great divinity, rashly maintains
"Weak impious war with an immortal God.
"The gravest master that the schools can boast
"Ne'er train'd his pupils to fuch discipline,
"As love his votaries, unrivall'd power,
"The first great deity-and where is he,

So ftubborn and determinedly stiff,
"But fhall at fome time bend the knee to love,
"And make obeifance to his mighty shrine?

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"One day as flowly fauntering from the port, "A thousand cares conflicting in my breast, "Thus I began to commune with myself"Methinks thefe painters mifapply their art, "And never knew the being which they draw; For mark! their many falfe conceits of love. "Love is nor male nor female, man nor god, "Nor with intelligence nor yet without it, "But a strange compound of all these, uniting

"In one mixt effence many oppofites;
"A manly courage with a woman's fear,
"The madman's phrenfy in a reafoning mind,
"The ftrength of steel, the fury of a beast,
"The ambition of a hero-fomething 'tis,
"But by Minerva and the gods I fwear!
"I know not what this nameless fomething is."

This riddling defcription of love I confider as a very curious fragment of the Greek comedy, as it has more play of words and lefs fimplicity of thought and ftile, than I can recollect in any writer of this age and country. In general I think I can difcover more antithefis in the authors of the Middle Comedy than in any others, and I take it to have been one of the confequences of parody. Phædria's picture of love in the opening scene of Terence's Eunuch is fomething in the ftile of this fragment of Alexis, and the particular expreffion of-ut cum ratione infanias-feems of a piece with-'H ävoia pavías, δε λόγος φρονῶντος, Which I have rendered

"A madman's phrenfy in a reafoning mind."

Our Shakespear is ftill clofer to it, when Romeo defcribing love calls it

A madness moft difcreet.

And again

Why then, O brawling Love! ✪ loving Hate!
Ob! any thing of nothing firft create;

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Oh, heavy Lightness! serious Vanity !
Misshapen chaos of well-feeming forms!
Still-waking fleep, that is not what it is..

Before I take leave of Alexis I fhall fubjoin one more paffage from his remains, which conveys the strongest marks of deteftation, that language can supply, of that very vice, which Athenæus would perfuade us he was addicted to; but I will never be perfuaded that a glutton wrote the following lines in the face of his own example, nor would it be an easy matter to convince me, that if any glutton had the will, he would poffefs the wit, to write them.

"You, Sir, a Cyrenean as I take you, "Look at your fect of desperate voluptuaries; "There's Diodorus-beggary is too good for him--"A vaft inheritance in two short years,

"Where is it? Squander'd, vanifh'd, gone for ever:
"So rapid was his diffipation.Stop!

"Stop, my good friend, you cry; not quite so fast!
"This man went fair and foftly to his ruin;
"What talk you of two years? As many days,

Two little days were long enough to finish
"Young Epicharides; he had fome foul,
"And drove a merry pace to his undoing-
"Marry if a kind furfeit wou'd furprise us,
"Ere we fit down to earn it, fuch prevention
"Wou'd come most opportune to save the trouble
"Of a fick ftomach and an aching head:
"But whilft the punishment is out of sight,
"And the full chalice at our lips, we drink,

"Drink all to-day, to-morrow faft and mourn,
"Sick, and all o'er oppreft with nauseous fumes;
"Such is the drunkard's curfe, and Hell itself
"Cannot devife a greater-Oh that nature
"Might quit us of this overbearing burthen,
"This tyrant-god, the belly! take that from us,
"With all it's beftial appetites, and man,
Exonerated man, fhall be all foul.".

ANTIPHANES.

Antiphanes of Smyrna, or, as fome will have it, of Rhodes, was born in or about Olymp. XCIII. His father's name was Demophanes, and his mother's Enoe, people of fervile degree; yet our poet, thus ignoble in his birth, lived to fignalize himself by his genius, and was held in fuch respect by his Athenian patrons, that a public decree was made for the removal of his remains from the ifle of Chios, where he died at the age of feventy-four, and for depofiting them in the city of Athens, where his funeral honours were fumptuously performed at the charge of the ftate.

Various accounts are given of the number of his comedies, but of all the Greek dramatifts he appears to have been the most prolifick, for the lowest lift of his plays amounts to two hundred and ninety, and fome contend that he actually composed three hundred and fixty-five, a number

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