den by no means does justice, and whom no commentator except Casaubon seems to have thoroughly understood,-is the only writer we can mention who comes at all near to Aristophanes in this quality of inexhaustible fertility. Perhaps the consciousness of such resemblance might heighten the enthusiasm with which that Roman hails him as the PRÆGRANDIS SENEX * of the Grecian comedy; but it is an epithet to which the audacious' Cratinus, or the angry' Eupolis himself, could hardly have objected.-The boast Aristophanes has put into the mouth of his Chorus in the Acharnians,ὁὕτω δ ̓ ἀυτου περι της τολμης ήδη πορρω κλεος ήκει, ότε και Βασιλευς, Λακεδαιμονίων την πρεσβειαν βασανίζων, ἠρώτησεν πρωτα μεν αύτους, ποτεροι ταις ναυσι κρατουσιν· είτα δε τουτον τον ποιητην, ποτέρους ἐποι κακα πολλά. τουτους γαρ ἔφη τους άνθρωπους πολυ βελτιους γεγενησθαι, και τω πολέμῳ πολυ VIXNGELY, τουτον ξυμβουλον έχοντας. † -may appear plausible enough to have been more than 6 jeu de théâtre,' if our readers shall think that we are borne out by the reality in the praises we have bestowed upon the boldness of his patriotism, and the richness of his satire. a mere Language and versification are points of scarcely less importance, when we are considering the merits of a Poet; and in these, says Mons. Schlegel, his excellence is not barely acknowledged it is such as to entitle him to take his place among the first poets to whom Greece has given birth.' He might have said still more:-Aristophanes is wholly without a competitor in these respects. The tripping lightness and airy grace of his trochaic metres, and the majestic swell of the anapæstic tetrameter that has taken its name from him, are fraught with mu * Pers. Sat. I. v. 124. †Thus rendered by Mr Mitchell.— And so far, sirs, hath Fame tongued his boldness and name, Her ambassadors tell, how the king sifting well, And foremost ask'd he, of the twain who at sea shew'd most prowess, commanding the ocean; "In which nation next teach does the bard by his speech Who, 66 says he, most incline to that poet divine, to his counsels of wisdom low bending; In war shall that state most her fortunes make great Achar. v. 653. Trans. p. 88. gave sic the most eloquent,' even under all the disadvantages of neglected accents and modern pronunciation: while a single glance at Suidas or Hesychius is sufficient to convince us how much of his native tongue owes its preservation to his writings, and how vast those treasures must be, from whose repositories the Grecian Lexicographers have drawn such overflowing stores. Had the flames of Omar reached the whole of his productions, posterity could never have rightly estimated the exhaustless power, the endless flexibility, the prodigal exuberance of the magnificent language in which they are embodied: -could never have tasted the true relish of that Attic Salt, which though sometimes harsh and acrid-the 'sales venenati' of Seneca-might oftener seem to have been collected from that which birth to Aphrodite very wave * herself:-nor have traced to one maternal womb so many of what appear, on a superficial inspection, the idiomatic graces of other tongues.-If we allow the name of Plutarch once more to cross our pages, it is not for the purpose of confuting his ridiculous charges under this head, which even the zealous Frischlinus dismisses with a smile, but merely to show how far the ardour of a thorough Platonist--(for Plutarch, as the devoted admirer of Socrates and Plato, had his own motives for endeavouring to depreciate Aristophanes)-could hurry him, in spite of the conviction of his very ears. The following is his atrocious + criticism, as Frischlin justly terms it: There is, sooth to say, in the structure of his phraseology something tragi-comic, bombastic as well as pedestrian, there is obscurity,-there is vulgarity,-there are turgidity and pompous ostentation,-together with a garrulity and trifling that are enough to turn the stomach !'-Bona verba Plutarche!-we well may cry with honest Nicodemus. It is amusing enough to find such blasphemies as these in a writer, who reckons it one of the worst symptoms of malignity to use rough or violent expressions where milder phrases are at hand (iiięwy Tugovówv), ¶—and who would soften down the ferocious insanity of Cleon into the gentle reprobation of a futile levity! 6 *The compliment of Plutarch to Menander. + Nicod. Frischlini defensio Aristophanis contra Plutarchi criminationes. Η ένεςι μεν ἐν ἐν τη κατασκευή των ονοματων αὐτῷ το τραγικον, το κωμικόν, το σοβαρον, το πεζον, ασάφεια, κοινότης, όγκος και διαρμα, σπερμολογία και Cλvagia vautiwdns.—Plut. Aristoph. et Menandri Comp. De Herodoti Malignitate Comment. Η ή θρασύτητα και μανιαν Κλέωνος μαλλον, ή κεφολογια. De Herodot. Malig. Comment. p. 395. edit. Xylan. It is an observation of Mons. Schlegel, that in many passages of serious and earnest poetry, which (thanks to the boundless variety and lawless formation of the popular comedy of Athens) he has here and there introduced, Aristophanes shows himself to be a true poet, and capable, had he so chosen, of reaching the highest eminence even in the more dignified departments of his art. 'This is in fact a very strong point in his poetical character, and our applause is due, not only to the great intrinsic merit of the passages themselves, but to the extreme taste with which they are uniformly introduced. There is no false glare, that would be misplaced and unnatural if diffused over the surface of comic composition:-they are but the streaks of sunshine, that give variety and beauty to a landscape. We are never disagreeably reminded of the purpureus pannus,' -the purple rag botched in to shame the circumjacent meanness of a beggar's apparel. It is the illusæ auro vestes, '-the garment tricked with gold, but not overloaded.-It always seems suited to the texture it adorns,-and truly the ground is rich enough to bear a little embroidery.-Aristophanes is no ostentatious coxcomb to drag down Poetry from her car of fire, and parade her in the common eye, merely for the vanity of displaying his acquaintance, yet he will sometimes fling the reins into her hands, and is not the man to balk her if she invite him to her side. There are a thousand places we could refer to, that bear the stamp of this communion high.'-We question whether the united genius of Pindar and Euripides,— fond as the latter is of the nightingale,--could have produced any thing superior to that burst of lyric ecstacy* in which he calls on Philomela from her leafy yew' to challenge the minstrelsy of Heaven.-Nor will the descriptions of Ovid or of Milton, stand a competition with that tone of melancholy grandeur in which he opens the Parabasis of the Birds and penetrates the mysteries of Chaos and Old Night.' +-Indeed we might safely stake the justice of our panegyric upon the whole conception and execution of that fascinating drama,-the most fantastic production of his fantastic genius,—that seems meant for fays alone to act in fairy-land;-that Midsummer'sNight-Dream of the Grecian stage, of which it is not too much to say, that it is what Shakespeare, had he been an Athenian, would have written, or, had he read Greek, would have admired. We have much too slender data to proceed upon, did we wish to institute a comparison, in this respect, between Aristo * Ayes. v. 209. + Ibid. v. 685. phanes and his precursors or contemporaries in the same line, of whose works nothing but the most meagre fragments have escaped the ravages of time. But with regard to his immediate rivals; the remains of Cratinus are by no means of a nature to justify the praises of Quinctilian;-and the precocious talent of Eupolis ++ fails in competition, when we find it employed upon the same subject with the muse of Aristophanes. That celebrated verse of the Acharnians, in which we seem yet to hear the eloquence of Pericles convulsing Greece,—that verse which Cicero and Pliny, ‡ Diodorus || and Lucian, § have alike appealed to as the best monument of the orator's fame,-if contrasted with the cold and laboured eulogy of Eupolis, will leave little doubt upon the mind, that his superior vigour in the passages of serious poetry was one of the grounds upon which the title of Aristophanes to the acknowledged sovereignty of the ancient comedy was founded. * So many brilliant qualities almost required a foil; or at least may cover one transgression. It is the severity of impartial criticism that forces us to admit, that although Aristophanes undoubtedly moderated the spirit of unrestrained and profligate obscenity that wantoned in the old hags and drunkards of preceding bards,¶ enough of it remains in his writings to form a foul blot upon a mind which, in the language of a well-known epigram, the Graces had selected for their peculiar portion. tt Those Powers of the Ce Eupolis is said to have written 17 comedies by the time that he had lived as many years. + Cic. in Oratore ad Brutum. Num. 29. Ed. Gronov. Plin. Sec. Lİ. ep. 20. Diod. Sic. LXII. p. 307. § Lucian. in Demosth. encom. p. 693. Ed. Amst. *The lines of Eupolis referred to are as follows: Όποτε παρελθοι, ώσπερ οι άγαθοι δρομείς, Πεθω τις ἐπεκάθισεν ἐπι τοις χείλεσιν. ἐν Το κέντρον έγκατελιπε τοις ἀκροωμένοις. Eupolis & Δημοσ ¶ Vid. Nubes. v. 555. ++ This epigram is ascribed to Plato,-it runs thus, Ai χαριτες τέμενος τι λαβειν, όπερ οὐχι πεσταται, VOL. XXXIV. NO. 68. T phisian wave, ‡‡-who plant their thrones at the right hand of Phoebus, and dispense to mortals the three best of heavenly gifts, -wisdom, beauty, and fame, ‡‡-should have shrunk away from such contamination, or have expelled it from the chosen temple, that was never to fall. It is an unnatural coalition of ugliness with elegance,-a Caliban basking on the lap of an Ariel. Yet, without allowing the spirit of the Advocate to interfere with the calmer duties of the Judge, we may urge for Aristophanes, that his greatest grossness is always playful, and his longest indulgence in it comparatively short. It is a sop-and nothing more --for the Cerberus of the prevailing taste of the age. This at least is the case in eight out of the eleven of his plays that remain with posterity. It was certainly not the bent of his mind to be immoral,-though, like Swift, he might not care to wade through a little nastiness for the sake of a joke. There is no wallowing in the mud; no indecency that clings to its ground, or reluctantly gives way with many a longing, lingering look behind.' His most indelicate writing is generally introductory to some passage of exceeding spirit or poetical beauty, which his mind returns with an elastic impulse from having been forced out of its native inclination. Like Antæus he may grovel on the earth for a moment,-but it is only to rise into the fresh air again with increased alacrity and renovated vigour. Springing from such sources as the Phallic Hymn and the Margeites of Homer, the Ancient Comedy could not be expect-ed, under any management, to become a perfect model of uninterrupted purity. We cannot be surprised to find some pollutions in the stream, when its fountain-heads were these,—nor offended at detecting those pollutions in the earlier part of its course, when we know that it had not left them all behind, even when filtered-through into the pages of Menander. Omnis Luxuria Interpres'—the character which Pliny bestows upon that poet,-is pretty intelligible testimony against him, although we had not Terence for a stronger and more substantial evidence. to We are persuaded that what we have advanced concerning the nature of the Old Comedy, and the merits of him who was its prince, however extravagant it may appear to superficial students or to timid reasoners, will be fully admitted by all that are thoroughly acquainted with the Aristophanic writings:-and we have the rather avoided any attempt at overstrained ingenuity, ‡‡ Pindar. Olymp. XIV. v. 1.—9.—15. *Vide Ran. v. 236. Nubes. v. 975. Aves. v. 669, &c. &c. |