nant women into miscarriage by his Chorus of Furies, and that, in consequence thereof, a decree of the state diminished the number of the chorus from fifty (an army of players not often poured, we imagine, even on the stage of Covent Garden) to fifteen. Of all the advantages which spectacle could give him, Aristophanes, probably, found it necessary to make use, as he was supporting the old comedy against the rival writers of the middle school, and as his partisans, therefore, must have been chiefly among the populace, who may be supposed most likely to be taken with the tricks and finery of the play-house.

We say that the partisans of the old comedy must have been principally among the populace: for the personality and scurrility of its satire was such, as we can scarcely conceive to have been tolerated among persons of any high degree of civilization. Not only was the greatest possible freedom taken with the names of notorious individuals, but the very persons were introduced upon the stage, and masks devised, that copied and caricatured their countenances. Thus Socrates is the hero of the "Clouds;" the "Knights" was written against Cleon, who had been imprudent enough to hint at the expediency of restraining the petulance of Aristophanes's muse. Euripides is one of the dramatis personæ in several plays. Eschylus, Demosthenes, Nicias, and others, all play their parts in turn. Of the personality of the dialogue the reader may take a few specimens. "Si quis erat dignus describi," says Horace, " multa cum libertate notabant.” On the first entrance of the Chorus of Clouds, Strepsiades asks,

"If these be clouds, (d'you mark me?) very clouds,
How came they metamorphos'd into women?

Socr. This it is in short:

Hast thou ne'er seen a cloud which thou could'st fancy
Shap'd like a centaur, leopard, wolf or bull?

Streps. Yea, marry, have I, and what then?

Socr. Why then

Clouds can assume what shapes they will, believe me;
For instance; should they spy some hairy clown,

Rugged, and rough, and like the unlick't cub

Of Xenophantes, straight they turn to centaurs,
And kick at him for vengeance.

Streps. Well done, Clouds!

But should they spy that peculating knave,

Simon, that public thief, how would they treat him?

Socr. As wolves-in character most like his own.

Streps. Aye, there it is now; when they saw Cleonymus, That dastard runaway, they turn'd to hinds

In honour of his cowardice.

Socr. And now,

Having seen Clisthenes, to mock his lewdness

They change themselves to women." Pp. 35-37.

In the "Frogs," Bacchus tells Hercules he is going to the shades to bring back Euripides.

"Herc. With what design?

Bac. I want a clever poet. We've none left:-
Our modern ones are wretched.t

Herc. How? I pray,

Is Jophont dead?

Bac. The only good one he

Remaining, if he's certainly a good one:-
But that's a question I am not so clear in.

Herc. But if to th' shades you go to seek a poet,
Say why not Sophocles, as he's the senior.
Bac. Not him by any means, unless indeed
I could keep Jophon separate from him,
To try what he without his sire can do.
Besides, Euripides, a crafty fellow,
Will do his best to get away with me;
But Sophocles, as here, is there content.
Herc. Where's Agatho?

Bac. He's gone away from me,

A worthy bard, the darling of his friends.
Herc. Poor fellow! where?

Bac. To th' banquet of the blest.

Herc. Where's Xenocles?

Bac. I care not;-hang the dog!

Herc. Pythangelus ?

Xanth. Why talk you not of me?

I'm sure this shoulder's bruis'd most horridly.

Herc. Say, are there not besides an endless tribe

Of beardless dramatists, who prate so fast

They beat Euripides by many a mile?

Bac. Aye, those young sprigs, that chatt'ring nest of swallows,

Corrupters of good taste; and wondrous vain,

If by uncommon luck they chance to get

A single play appointed for performance.

I want a clever poet. Bacchus was supposed to be interested in the composition of tragedy, as his festivals were the principal occasions upon which tragedies were exhibited.

t

We've none left :

Our modern ones are wretched.

An application of a line out of the Eneus of Euripides.

Jophon. A tragic poet, the son of Sophocles, supposed to avail himself of his father's writings.

But wheresoe'er we seek, we ne'er can find
A bard endow'd with powers to produce
Some work of genuine fancy." Pp. 284-286.

It must be remembered that these were names well known to the audience; and the reader will best perceive the unlimited freedom of the Athenian stage, by supposing for a moment such notorious names substituted in the foregoing passages, as Castlereagh, Whitbread, Wellington, Wilberforce, Canning, Mrs. Clarke, or as Walter Scott, Baillie, Montgomery, Rogers. What employment for the counsellors! What discussions of the libel-law !

Nor is Aristophanes a whit more tender of his immortals. When Bacchus makes his descent, in the Frogs, he puts on an old lion's-skin of Hercules's. Now Hercules himself had once descended to the shades, and stolen away the "mastiff Cerberus," and the lion's-skin is recognised by Æacus, one of the judges of the dead, who thereupon threatens Bacchus with all the punishments of Tartarus, and goes out to prepare them. Bacchus, in his fright, persuades his slave Xanthias to put on the fatal dress. Then

"Enter a Maid Servant of Proserpine.

M. S. Welcome, dear Hercules! Walk in, I pray.
Soon as the goddess heard of thy arrival,

She straightway bak'd new bread, put on her pots

With herbs and pulse for porridge, on the fire

Laid a whole ox, and made most curious cheese-cakes.
So pray walk in.

Xanth. Thou'rt very kind.

Boy! follow with my things.

Bac. Stir at thy peril.

Because in sport I made thee Hercules,

Art thou for being so in earnest? Cease
This idle jesting, Xanthias, and again
Hoist up thy pack and carry it.

Xanth. How's this?—

Thou can'st not think of stripping me so soon

Of thy own gift?

Bac. Not soon, but instantly.

Down with the skin.

Xanth. I do attest the fact;

And to the gods commit my cause.
Bac. What gods?

O foolish vanity! to hope to pass

For Hercules, when but a slave and mortal.

Xanth. 'Tis well. Here take it; but ere long, please God, Thou may'st again perhaps be suing to me." Pp. 317, 318.

Plutus is described as (Plutus, v. 260. of the original) "a dirty, hunch-back'd wretch, all over wrinkles, with no hair on his head, nor a tooth in his gums"-and Mercury gets off no better.

Nor are the solemnities of the Pagan religion less pertinaciously devoted to ridicule. When Plutus is carried to the temple for the recovery of his eyesight, Cario the slave goes with him, and the next morning thus reports the matter to his mistress, who asks him what other invalids were present.

One Neoclides, a blind man, but such
As can outshoot in knavery and theft
Many with two eyes in their heads; and others
Plenty, with sore diseases of all kinds,

From all parts. Well, the priest put out the lamps,
And wished us all good night, forewarning us,
If any one should chance to hear a noise,
He must say nothing. So we all lay down
In order due; but I to little purpose—

I could not sleep; a porridge-pot, which stood
At an old woman's head, had wrought in me
Such aspirations after it: at last

I ventured to look up;-good heaven! the priest
Was sweeping from the sacred table all

The wafers, and the figs, and after that

Visited every altar in its turn

To see if any eatables were left.

All these he set apart-in his own bag.

I thought there must reside in that same act

Some mighty virtue, so I started up
To the porridge-pot directly.

Mistress. Oh you wretch!

Had you no fears of the god?
Cario. Aye, marry had I,

Lest with the advantage of his crown he might

Get to the pot before me; the old priest
Had taught me what to look for in that case.
The ancient crone, listening the noise I made,
Put out her hand. I gave a hiss, and caught it
Between my teeth, as if I'd been a serpent.
She drew it back into the bed at once:
And there she lay, coil'd up in perfect silence,
Sweating for very fear. And so I supp'd
The porridge up, and when I'd had my fill
Gave over.

PLUTUS, V. 665. of the original.

The Knights furnishes us with a mock oracle. Demosthenes and Nicias are contriving how to deprive Cleon (the tanner) of the ascendency he has acquired over the populace. De

1

mosthenes finds it written in an oracle that the tanner is to be succeeded by a sausage-seller, and meeting with a sausageseller, reads him the oracle.

"When as the tanner-bird of crooked claws,
Shall once have seized the dragon in his jaws,
Stupid and gorged with blood; then perish, then,
The o'erbearing Paphlagonians, leek-fed men,
For sausage-sellers mighty glories spring,
Unless they stick to trade and tripe-selling.
Sausage-Seller. And how does this, then, point at me?
Come, tell me.

Dem. The tanner-bird is this Paphlagonian Cleon.
S. S. But then the crooked claws.

Dem. This only means,

His hands are admirably formed for filching.
S. S. What does the dragon point at?
Dem. This is plainest

Of all; a dragon's long, and so is a sausage;

A dragon's gorged with blood too, so is a sausage."

KNIGHTS, V. 197. of the original.

The political and moral tendency of an unbounded freedom so unmercifully used, we are not grave enough, after rising from the farces of Aristophanes, to consider at any length. The religion, however, which could invite and tolerate such abuse of itself, its ceremonies and its gods, could not be worth defending from it. As to the benefits resulting to society from the poet's having a lash put into his hand, wherewith to scourge corruption and immorality from the land, we think it pretty evident that, where he gave one stroke out of regard to the public good, he would give two from personal pique, and twenty to make the spectators laugh.

Leaving this question, however, the poetical effect of the freedom of the stage is evident enough. It tended to produce farce instead of comedy. That comedy, whose province it is to imitate life and manners, should then degenerate into farce, when it attempts the character of an existing individual, may at first sight seem a paradox. But the truth is this: If the poet looks out among the notorious personages of his day, for a subject whereupon to fasten his satire, and wherewith to make his audience laugh, he will be caught, not by those minute traits at which comedy smiles, and which he might mingle and mould into an original character, but by those bolder oddities and eccentricities which he may at once embody in farce, and by which he may safely challenge the "broad grins" and horse laughs of goodnatured spectators. Why, for instance, was Socrates chosen as the hero of a