صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Nor is it merely by ambushed attacks-side blows or sly inuendos-that this incessant warfare is maintained. The batteries are opened in due form, and with appropriate solemnity; and complete scenes, and acts,-nay almost entire plays, are levelled against the sacred institutions, of which these very representations formed a part. Aristophanes is a great master of this weapon. He can, indeed, where it suits his purposes, as in the latter scenes of the Clouds, where the atheism of the Sophists is to be brought into contempt and detestation, assume a far different tone, and vindicate, in glowing terms, the honours of Olympus. But, generally speaking, the powers of his keen satire, brilliant wit, and humorous imagination, are never so anxiously or so successfully exerted as when he has to expose the crafts of the priesthood, † ridicule the authority of the ora cles, or lash the vices of the celestial personages. This, perhaps, as much as his elegance of style or purity of phrase, might recommend his works to the pillow of St Chrysostom; but we cannot but be struck with surprise at the inconsistency of a people, who could tolerate so unbounded a licentiousness in one class of writers, while they punished so severely the least freedom of the same sort in another.

We would not be supposed to assert, that the circumstances we have described were the sole or the chief causes which tended to favour the Comic writers, and to raise the Grecian Comedy, as we think it was raised, to a much higher pitch of perfection than Grecian Tragedy ever attained. The marked peculiarities of female character, and the wild absurdities which the most orthodox Pagan must have perceived in the heathen theology, were indeed, as we have remarked, of great weight to incline the balance to the side of the Comedian. But Greece, under every aspect in which it can be viewed, was the very land for Comedy, a soil, selected and prepared, on which it might fasten and luxuriate. With Greece for the country,-Athens for the city, and Athenians for the audience, we cannot ima gine a more happy combination for the Comic bard. We must consider the country,-portioned out into a number of petty communities, all differing more or less in their habits, interests, dialects, §' and customs, each state conceiving itself the first in the world, and looking down upon its neighbours with unutterable loathing and disdain. We must add to this a city, split into innumerable factions, with its war party and its peace

Plutus, Equites, &c.

+ Plutus. || Aves, &c. The harsh pronunciation and strange idioms of a Megarensian er Baotian,-the coarse fare er the pantofles of the Spartan,-as

party, its aristocratic and its popular,-its students of philosophy and its lovers of fun,-containing within the circuit of its walls characters the most eccentric, and modes of life the most extraordinary, and offering, as the greatest naval power in Greece, a mart for the regular importation of all the follies, fashions, and vices that foreign countries could supply. We must recollect the constitution of the audience:-the quick susceptibility of ridicule, the lively sensibility to humour, the eager appetite for novelty, that distinguished the Athenians,—and which, as they were a hearing and a seeing, not a reading public (according to the just observation of Mr Mitchell), were best and most easily gratified by the poet from the stage at the seve ral festivals when the comedies were acted before them. Nor can we at all agree with Mr M. in considering this audience as usually made up of a mere rabble,' ripe for nothing but the nonsense of holiday revelry,' and totally unfit to appreciate merit of an higher order. Indeed, Mr M. plainly contradicts himself on this head,-in one place characterizing the composition of the Clouds, as the legitimate ridicule of a Dionysian Festival, '+-while in another he asks, what possible connexion could exist between it and the Dionysian Festival, where every one came to be amused; where he who laughed loudest was the merriest; and he that laughed longest was the wisest?'

6

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

well as the barbarous language of a Persian envoy or Triballian deity, -were reckoned as good subjects of ridicule, and excited full as hearty laughter in an Athenian theatre, as the odd figure and broken English of a Canton or a Foigard may do upon our own stage. See the Acharnians, Wasps, &c.

*Thucyd. Lib. II. c. 38.

+ Prelim. Disc. p. cl.

Ibid. p. cxv. We cannot see why the authority of Ælian should be alternately allowed and rejected as suits the purpose of the writer, (Prelim. Discourse, pp. cxvii. cxiii.); or why it should be laid down so decidedly, that the failure of the Clouds was owing to its matter being too grave for the taste of the audience. The Parabasis of the second Clouds (preserved in the first as it now stands), and the conclusion of that in the Wasps, the play of the succeeding year, are chiefly urged in support of this opinion. But though we should not insist that the vdges Oogrino (Nubes, v. 524.), on whom Aristophanes charges the crime of his discomfiture, might possibly be the xgra or subsequent judges (the Monkir and Nekir of Athenian theatricals,

[ocr errors]

κριται

"

This interpretation is the one given by Beck“ úπ' ¿vdę. Pogt. "judicibus imperitis pronunciantibus. Sic Latini sub judice: omninoque To sub sic dicitur, ut in genere causam alicujus rei indicet. Beckii Comment. in Nubes. The Scholiast gives the same meaning to the words.

The character of the Old Comedy (to which our observations are confined), as it is drawn by the invidious hand of Plutarch, might perhaps warrant the conclusion, that none but the

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

6

6

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

who passed final sentence on a piece after it had lived its one day upon the stage, and assigned the prize of competition according to their pleasure),-still there is no ground for supposing that the majority of the spectators were of that stamp, since the poet seems to specify them as an exception from the δεξιοι θεαλαι,σοφοι θεαται, σοφώματος Bala, the usual terms in which he addresses or describes the body of his hearers. There is a singular degree of confusion in Mr Mitchell's reasoning on this point. He admits that the gentlemen' of Athens, -the xogados,-probably attended at the representation of the Clouds, and assisted in its demolition; and yet he would ascribe that demolition to the Athenian rabble's being cheated of their Baccha'nalian festivity,' and passed off with a lecture, which, though conveyed through the medium of two fighting-cocks, had yet something in it too serious to be sufficiently piquant' for their palate. (Prelim. Discourse, p. cxv.) He goes on,- What was it to them how the education of the higher classes was conducted ; '—(quite forgetting the admitted presence of the xadoxayabo); or what did they care for the opinions of Protagoras or Polus, of Prodicus or Gorgias? The persons and the sentiments of these fashionable sophists would be equally unknown, it is most probable, to the greater part of such an audience as generally filled the comic theatres at Athens.' (Ibid. p. cxvi.); and yet in another place he talks of such personal knowledge' of a philosopher, as must have necessarily happened in a town not of very considerable population, and whose customs and manners brought all persons more into contact, than the habits of modern society do.' (Ibid. p. cxxxvii.)-Leaving these inconsistencies to shift for themselves, we will not lengthen this Note further than to observe, that though we should not credit Ælian's account, that the audience received the Clouds with rapture, crying out that the victory belonged to Aristophanes, and ordering the judges to inscribe his name accordingly, (Var. Hist. b.ii. cap. 13.)yet it is to no want of wit, or even of farcical humour, in which it abounds almost as much as any of that author's compositions, that we are to ascribe its damnation. (Anglicè.) The fact seems to be, that the party of the Sophists, who were of course adverse to the play, was at that time extremely strong; and that Alcibiades (whose early intimacy with Socrates, Xenophon is very far from denying, as Mr M. would make him do), exerted his intriguing abilities to the utmost against an attack aimed at a philosopher whose political sentiments and prejudices so entirely coincided with his own. Whether the spectators, or the gira (as we rather incline to suppose), were the tools this crafty politician would use, we can easily imagine his machinations quite powerful enough to inflame the one or to corrupt the other.

[ocr errors]

-the lowest and meanest of the people,-would endure to witness its exhibitions. The abuse which this most pleasing of biographers, but most blind and bigotted of moralists, and most unfair of critics, pours with such pitiless profusion, in his Symposiacs, upon the Ancient Comedy, must however be considered as little better than a trick of composition. It is the foil and contrast to the high-flown praises of his adored Menander, that Menander whom he esteems as indispensable as wine itself to the enjoyments of a drinking-bout; whose diction he declares as sweet and unambitious as his sentiments are precious and profound; whose erotie lucubrations (a commendation we should have rather expected from Timoxena than Plutarch) he extols as so peculiarly seasonable for revellers who are shortly to retire from the banquet to their spouses; † and whose panegyric he sums up in the enthusiastic sentence-that as the painter, when his eyes are wearied out, turns for recreation to florid hues and verdant colours, so must the philosopher or laborious student find refreshment for his unremitted and intense exertions in the pages of a bard who laps the soul in an elysium' of his own, -a meadow rich in shade, prodigal of flowers, and haunted by the breeze. In fact he proves too much for his own hypothesis. In spite of his declamation, and against his wish, he forces us to a conclusion that the Old Comedy, differing little from the New, § except in coarser personalities and more grotesque buffoonery, could not be altogether without attractions for the philosophic mind, that explores the principles of human nature, or the cultivated taste, that delights in the triumphs of genius.-The Halicarnassensian Dionysius, whose sound sense and exquisite acumen rank him high among the critics of antiquity, displays at once more judgment and more candour, where he talks of those beauties of style which characterized the Comedians in general. They are,

*Plutarch. Sympos. L. vii.

[ocr errors]

† έχει δε και τα ἔρωτικα παρ' αυτῳ καιρον πεπωκοσιν ἀνθρωποις καὶ ἀναπαυομένοις, μέλα μικρον άπισσι παρα τας ξαυίων γυναικας.—Ibid.

Η φιλοσοφοις δε και φιλοπονοις, ώσπερ όταν οι γραφεις ἐκπονηθωσι τας όψεις, ἐπι τα άνθηρα και ποωδη χρωματα τρέπεσιν, ἀναπαυλα των άκρατων (Reiske) και συντονων εκείνων, Μενανδρος ἐσιν, διον ἐυανθεῖ λειμώνι και σκιερῳ και πνευματων μέσῳ δεχομενος την διανοιαν.—Plutarch. Arist. et Me nan. Comp.

We mean, of course, in the points in which they can be compared. A much greater variety of incidents was admitted into the plot of the New Comedy, but we speak merely of the style and the exposition of character.

he says, in their thoughts both clear and perspicuous,terse and yet magnificent,-powerful and ethical.'* Qualities these, somewhat above the coarse apprehension of a mere mob, and fit to gain applause more precious than the unintellectual, roar of plebeian acclamation.

We must be allowed a few words further on this subject, as our veneration for the Old Comedy, as far as its remains are embalmed in the writings of Aristophanes, will not suffer us to let it be imagined, that the Comic poet was no better than a holiday jester, or his audience on a level with the modern deities of the one-shilling gallery. We would ask Mr Mitchell, who seems to regard Aristophanes with the half-parental fondness of a translator,-whether he will be really content to let his author rank with the puppet-showman of a Venetian Carnival, looking for his guerdon to the obstreperous laughter of a rabble, and elevated but one degree above the wiremoved figures on his stage? Would the numerous and potent body of Athenian sophists have been so anxious to crush an opponent, whose blows indeed were heavy, but who could hope for no better witnesses and applauders of his gymnastic energies than a set of Bacchanalian rioters, sworn foes to everything but nonsense and buffoonery? Would they have been so solicitous to close the theatres and banish the comedians, had they not known that the rich and the noble, the gifted as well as the gay, to whom they looked for pupils and admirers, would be found upon the benches, and crowded round the very statue of Bacchus ?+ When Socrates himself was there, where were his disciples? Have we not the testimony of Aristophanes, as well as the voice of his contemporaries, to prove that he of all the Comic writers was incredibly honoured

* Των δε κωμωδων μιμείται τας λεκλικας ἀρείας ἅπασας· εισι γαρ και τοις νοημασι καθαροι, και σαφείς, και βραχείς, και μεγαλοπρεπείς, και † δεινοι, xa xo.-Dion. Hal. de Vett. Script. Censura. We need scarcely add to this the testimony of another great Critic, Quinctilian,- Antiqua comœdia cum sinceram illam sermonis Attici gratiam prope • sola retinet, tum facundissimæ libertatis, etsi in insectandis vitiis præcipua, plurimum tamen virium etiam in ceteris partibus habet. Nam et grandis, et elegans, et venusta, et nescio an ulla, post Homerum tamen, quem, ut Achillem, semper excipi par est, aut si• milior sit oratoribus, aut ad oratores faciendos aptior.'-Quinctil. Institut. p. 897. Burman. Vide etiam Cic. de Offic. Lib. I. c. xxix.

ed. Fac.

+ The best place in the Athenian comic theatre.

Dionysius, who wrote an express treatise gras deivolntos An

podsves, well understood the value of this epithet.

« السابقةمتابعة »