For

But this being neither poem, nor yet ridiculous, how is it but abusively taxed to be a mime? if every book, which may by chance excite to laugh here and there, must be termed thus, then may the dialogues of Plato, who for those his writings hath obtained the surname of divine, be esteemed

explanation, remain involved in great obscurity. The mimes of Sophron had no accompaniment of music or dancing, and they were written not in verse, but in prose, though perhaps in certain rythmical divisions. This latter circumstance seems quite singular, and without example in the Greek literature which has been transmitted to us. But that it was in reality so, seems improbable, when we remember that there would naturally be an intermediate rhythm, formed at the transition from the metrical to the prosaic style; and with the Dorians this would have taken the form of concise and disjointed sentences, a periodical style being more suited to the Athenians. We are led to this notion by the consideration of some remains of Lacedemonian composition, in which no one can fail to see the rhythmical form and symmetry of the sentences. Thus in the famous letter of Hip

pocrates:

ἔρρει τὰ καλά. Μίνδαρος γ' ἀπεσσούα·

πεινῶντι τὤνδρες ἀπορεομες τί χρὴ δρᾶν.

and also in that of the Lacedemonian women, preserved by Plutarch,

κακὰ τοῦ φάμα κακκέχυται·

ταύταν ἀπωθεῦ, ἤ μὴ ἔσο,

where the rhythm passes insensibly into verse; which is less strikingly the case in other instances.

"Whether the mimes of Sophron were publicly represented or not, is a question not easily answered. It would however be singular, if a poetical work had been intended only for reading, at an age when every thing was written, not for the public eye but for the public ear. It is certainly more probable that these mimes were originally part of the amusements of certain festivals, as was the case with the Spartan deicelicta, which they resembled more than any other variety of the drama. Indeed it can be easily conceived, that farces of this description acted

as they are by that detractor in Athenæus, no better than mimes: because there is scarce one of them, especially wherein some notable sophister lies sweating and turmoiling under the inevitable and merciless dilemmas of Socrates, but that he who reads, were it Saturn himself, would be often

by persons who had a quick perception of the eccentricities and peculiarities of mankind, and a talent for mimicry, should have existed among the Dorians of Sicily, as well as of Laconia, particularly as the former were celebrated for their imitative skill. Even Agathocles the tyrant excited the laughter, not merely of his guests and companions, but of whole assemblies of the people, by ridiculing certain known characters, in the manner of an ethologus, or merry-andrew. Accordingly, the mimes of Sophron, by which these rude attempts were improved, and raised to a regular species of the drama, were distinguished by their faithful imitation of manners, even of the vulgar; and the solecisms and rude dialect of the common people were copied with great exactness, and hence the numerous sayings and proverbs which were introduced. On the other hand, he was most skilful in seizing the more delicate shades and turns of feeling, and in preserving the unity and consistency of his characters, without which he would never have been so much admired by Plato, or the study of his works so serviceable in the composition of the Socratic dialogues, as we know on good authority to have been the case; and hence we should compare the scenery of Plato's dialogues with the poems of Theocritus, which we know to be imitated from the female mimes of Sophron, in order to obtain a proper idea of those masterpieces. His talent for description must however have been supported and directed by moral considerations; which probably preponderated rather in the serious (μîμoι σñovdaĩoɩ,) and were less prominent in the common mimes (uipo yέλoto.) The tribe of Aretalogi and Ethologi, who originally spoke much of virtue and morality but gradually sunk into mere buffoons, appears to have come from Sicily, and was, perhaps through several intermediate links, connected with Sophron.

"In considering these philosophical sports, which mingled in the same breath the grave and solemn lessons of philosophy and

robbed of more than a smile. And whereas he tells us, that "scurrilous Mime was a personated grim lowering fool," his foolish language unwittingly writes fool upon his own friend, for he who was there personated was only the Remonstrant; the author is ever distinguished from the person he introduces.

16. But in an ill hour hath this unfortunate rashness stumbled upon the mention of miming, that he might at length cease, which he hath not yet since he stepped in, to gall and hurt him whom he would aid. Could he not beware, could he not bethink him, was he so uncircumspect as not to foresee, that no sooner would that word mime be set eye on in the paper, but it would bring to mind that wretched pilgrimage over Minsheu's dictionary (") called " Mundus alter et idem," the

the most ludicrous mimicry and buffoonery, we may perhaps find a reason why Persius, a youth educated in the Stoic sect, should have thought of making Sophron the model of his satires. This statement is given by a late, but in this instance a credible writer, and is confirmed by the dramatic character of the Satires of Persius, and the constant use of mimicry in them, particularly the first four; so much so indeed, that a study of Persius is the best method of forming an accurate and lively idea of the mimes of Sophron."-Vol. ii. p. 371--374.

(11) This is a bitter satire on Bishop Hall's Latin romance entitled "Mundus Alter et Idem," said, on the title-page, to have been printed at Utrecht, by Johannis à W'aesberg, in 1643. The frontispiece represents a company of coarse revellers at a feast, an apt illustration of the book, which is a satire on gluttony, drunkenness, and immodesty. The "Civitas Solis," of Thomas Campanella, and Lord Bacon's "Nova Atlantis," are included in the same volume. As both in the text and notes the author scatters round with a lavish hand proofs of his acquaintance with

idlest and the paltriest mime that ever mounted upon bank? Let him ask "the author of those toothless satires," who was the maker, or rather the anticreator of that universal foolery, who he was, who like that other principal of the Manichees the arch evil one, when he had looked upon all that he had made and mapped out, could say no other but contrary to the divine mouth, that it was all very foolish. That grave and noble invention, which the greatest and sublimest wits in sundry ages, Plato in Critias, and our two famous countrymen, the one in his “ Utopia," the other in his "New Atlantis," chose, I may not say as a field, but as a mighty continent, wherein to display the largeness of their spirits, (2) by teaching this our world better and exacter things than were yet known or used this petty prevaricator of America, the zany of Columbus, (for so he must be till his world's end,) having rambled over the huge topography of his own vain thoughts, no marvel if he brought us home nothing but a mere tankard drollery, a venereous parjetory for stews. Certainly,

:

various languages, Milton, to humble his pride, represents him painfully picking up his knowledge from "Minsheu's Dictionary," a very curious book, now little known. It is entitled, "The Guide into the Tongues, with their agreement and consent one with another, as also their Etymologies, that is, the reasons and derivations of all or the most part of Words, in these Nine Languages, viz. English, Low Dutch, High Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, &c. By the industry, study, labour, and at the charges of John Minsheu, published and printed, July 22, 1625. 2nd. Edit. 1627."

(12) Of Plato's Critias, Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and Lord Bacon's New Atlantis, we shall elsewhere have occasion to speak.

he that could endure with a sober pen to sit and devise laws for drunkards to carouse by, I doubt me whether the very soberness of such a one, like an unliquored Silenus, were not stark drunk. Let him go now and brand another man injuriously with the name of mime, being himself the loosest and most extravagant mime that hath been heard of, whom no less than almost half the world could serve for stage-room to play the mime in. And let him advise again with sir Francis Bacon, whom he cites to confute others, what it is "to turn the sins of Christendom into a mimical mockery, to rip up the saddest vices with a laughing countenance," especially where neither reproof nor better teaching is adjoined. Nor is my meaning, readers, to shift off a blame from myself, by charging the like upon my accuser, but shall only desire, that sentence may be respited, till I can come to some instance whereto I may give answer.

17. Thus having spent his first onset, not in confuting, but in a reasonless defaming of the book, the method of his malice hurries him to attempt the like against the author; not by proofs and testimonies, but " having no certain notice of me,” as he professes, "further than what he gathers from the Animadversions," blunders at me for the rest, and flings out stray crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be a serpent, suck from any thing that I have written, but from his own stuffed magazine and hoard of slanderous inventions, over and above that which he converted to venom in the drawing. To me, readers, it happens