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in a ludicrous situation, such as was peculiarly acceptable to the leveiling disposition of the Athenians. Having thus prepared his audience, he opens his battery; and the boldness with which he directs his assault, when we consider the powers of those subjected to his lash, places him on very high ground indeed. It is here that we feel the character of sublimity in our author, which Longinus applies only to the apt collocation of his words and sentences. His undaunted denunciations of public villainy; his bold appeals in favour of his own patriotic intentions; his sudden and unexpected turns of wit, drawn from new and peculiar sources; his pointed, short and resistless sarcasm, are among the finest specimens of moral reprehension. The addresses of Dicæus and Adicus in the Clouds, are both grand n their display; the cutting satire with which the former gives up e contest, and throws himself upon the audience as an universal ass of villainy, is more than grand; it is a stroke of true sublimity.

Of those who suffered from this writer's ridicule, there are three so conspicuous, that we cannot avoid saying a few words on each; -we mean Socrates, Euripides, and Cleon. His motives for attacking the former are not sufficiently clear. The idle story of his being suborned by Melitus, to write the comedy of the Clouds, and thus to pave the way for the death of Socrates, is refuted by the dates of his pieces, from which it appears that that event did not take place till more than twenty years after the performance of the play in question. Besides, though Aristophanes had a strong turn for the ridiculous, he does not seem to have had much malice in him: his satirical strokes are in general short and pointed; he sometimes fastens, indeed, upon the tender parts, but he exhibits one of the marks of a determined and cold-blooded satirist; he does Not coolly gaze upon the wound which he has laid open, nor watch he agonies which he has excited. To a man who, like Aristophanes,

things on the side of ridicule only, Socrates might easily appear ittle more than an officious meddler. The nature of his discourses too, which regarded ends more than means, and not unfrequently pleaded what was fallacious, in order to elicit what was true, laid him very open to witty mistake and misrepresentation. The aphorism of Donne respecting scriptural texts may not unaptly be applied to the Socratici sermones: 6 sentences in scripture,' says he, like hairs in horse-tails, concur in one root of strength and beauty; but being plucked out one by one, serve only for springes and snares.' We have the greatest veneration for the name of Socrates; but we cannot see that personality in the Clouds, which some have ascribed to it. It appears to us that the play was principally intended to retort the indignity thrown upon the coinic stage by the sophists, in restraining its exhibitions; and that the character of Socrates, (how

VOL. IX. NO. XVII.

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ever petulantly and unjustly assumed,) was little more than a name for the whole body of them collectively. The audience, who knew the men, appropriated the respective charges, and while they appeared to be amused with the buffooneries of the great philosopher, were, perhaps, laughing at the follies and impieties of Hippo of Thrace, Democritus, Protagoras, &c.

The character of Euripides we must imagine to have particularly excited the spleen of Aristophanes. He is the cushion, on which his wit reposes at all times.

The poet seems to have considered him as a piece of private property, always at hand. The warmest admirer of Euripides must be amused with the attacks of his witty and unwearied assailant. This mighty master of the drama, inferior to Shakespeare only in those powerful touches which go at once to the heart, and to Racine for knowledge of his art, had yet points, that laid him very open to ridicule. He was at times languid and affected; finical in his expressions and conceited in his ideas: he seemed to write too with a lofty contempt of his audience, and to demand their acquiescence as a master, and not their suffrages as a candidate for favour. His perverse morality, and diseased state of religious sentiment; his prolix, though eloquent messengers; his interminable prologues, preventing curiosity and anticipating surprize; his affectation of deep thinking, (visible even in the lowest of his dramatis personæ,) together with the occasional meanness of his phraseology, and the snip-snap of his dialogue, which is sometimes continued for a page or two together, all become in their turn the property of Aristophanes, who puts them in a thousand ridiculous lights. He is not, indeed, blind to his merits, but he is more than eagle-eyed to his defects; and he that has not Euripides at his finger-ends, must be content to lose a great share of the wit of Aristophanes.

Of all the characters whom our author brought upon the stage, none seems to have excited his detestation so sincerely as Cleon; and the glee with which he records his victory over this turbulent demagogue, comes from his very heart. The following picture of him seems to have pleased Aristophanes, for he has repeated it in two of his comedies, the Wasps, and the Peace.

When first your poet undertook this trade
Of dealing out instruction, men were not
His game, but monsters; huge leviathans,
That ask'd the mettle and appliances

Of Hercules, to quell them: first, he grappled
With that fell portent, that huge, saw-tooth'd beast,
Lick'd into fashion by the slavering tongues

Of sycophants accurst; whose eyes shot fire,

Fierce as the flames of Cynna, and whose voice
Rose hoarser than the raging whirlpool's, when
The birth-pains of the coming storm are on it.—
A whale's ill-savour, loins, that, Lamia-like,
Had never known the luxury of water,

These, with a camel's hinder parts, made up

Th' uncouth, distasteful compound, &c.-WASPs. 1030. The comedy which our poet composed for the express purpose of bringing this obnoxious but dangerous demagogue before the people, is called the Knights. It is a strain of coarse but very powerful humour throughout, and will remind the English reader of the facetious history of John Bull by the dean of St. Patrick. There is in fact a very close resemblance between these two writers; and had Swift turned his thoughts to the stage, and been allowed the privileges of the old comedy,' we are of opinion that the Greek poet would have been his model. The two writers are alike distinguished by their bitter satire; they have the same love for bomely imagery, the same tendency to revel in those ideas which most people sedulously exclude from their thoughts: the Attic bard too possesses a slight portion of that misanthropic contempt for his species, which so strongly marks the English wit, and both evince the same public spirit, and the same talent for pointing out the true interests of their country by comparisons so familiar, that the meanest understandings cannot mistake them. The character of Demus, by which the poet collectively characterised the Atheian populace, is so evident a prototype of Swift's John Bull, that our readers, we think, will not be displeased to see a translation of it. The play opens with a ludicrous dialogue between the two distinguished Athenian generals, Demosthenes and Nicias, who complain bitterly of the miseries which they had undergone since the introduction of a Paphlagonian tanner (Cleon) into the service of their common master, Demus. They talk at first of going over to the enemy: upon second thoughts, however, they determine to lay their case before the spectators; and Nicias having first begged the audience to shew by their looks whether the subject was agreeable, and they, we suppose, assenting, his companion begins as follows:--and never, surely, was the sovereign people' depicted with greater force and humour.

With reverence to your worships, 'tis our fate
To have a testy, crossgrain'd, bilious, sour
Old fellow for our master; one much giv'n
To a bean diet; somewhat hard of hearing:

• Alluding to the beans which the Athenians, who were a nation of judges, made of in their courts. The poet continually ridicules the fondness of his countrymen for attending these courts.

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Demus, his name, Sirs, of the parish Pnyx, here.
Some three weeks back or so, this lord of ours
Brought home a lusty slave from Paphlagonia,
Fresh from the tan-yard, tight and yare, and with
As nimble fingers and as foul a mouth

As ever yet paid tribute to the gallows.
This tanner-Paphlagonian (for the fellow
Wanted not penetration) bow'd and scrap'd,

And fawn'd and wagg'd his ears and tail, dog-fashion;
And thus soon slipp'd into the old man's graces.
Occasional douceurs of leather-parings,

With speeches to this tune, made all his own.
'Good Sir, the court is up-you've judg'd one cause,
Tis time to take the bath; allow me, Sir,-
This cake is excellent, pray sup this broth,-
This soup will not offend you, tho' crop-full-
You love an obolus;* pray, take these three-
Honour me, Sir, with your commands for supper-
Sad times meanwhile for us! With prying looks,
Round comes my man of hides, and, if he finds us
Cooking a little something for our master,
Incontinently lays his paws upon it,

And, modestly, in his own name presents it!
Then, none but he, forsooth, must wait at table;
(We dare not come in sight;) but there he stands
All supper time, and, with a leathern fly-flap,
Whisks off the advocates; anon the knave
Falls to his oracles, and, when he sees
The old man plunged in myteries to the ears,
And scared from his few senses, marks his time,
And enters on his tricks. False accusations
Now come in troops; and, at their heels, the whip:
Meanwhile, the rascal shuffles in among us,
And begs of one, brow-beats another, cheats
A third, and frightens all. My honest friends,
These cords cut deep, you find it-I say nothing,
Judge you between your purses and your backs.
I could, perhaps -We take the gentle hint,
And give him all: if not, the old man's foot,
Plays such a tune upon our hinder parts,

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That flogging is a jest to 't, a mere flea-bite.

It would lead us too far to enter into the humorous scenes which follow; suffice it to observe, that in consequence of this play, Cleon was condemned to pay a fine of five talents: and the poet thus records his victory, in the Acharnians.

This is bitter. The Athenian populace were paid three oboli, every time they at tended the court to sit as judges. This drew them thither in crowds, and together with their fondness for litigation, forms, as we have just observed, an inexhaustible source of satire for Aristophanes.

Out,

Out, out, upon it: I am sick; heart-sick:

My joys are few, heav'n knows! some three or four:
But for my plagues, they come in whole battalions,
In numbers numberless, like ocean's waves.-
Yet, I have had my touches too of joy,

Pure, genuine joy-when was't? stay, stay-'twas when
I saw those same five talents, dropping from
The full gorg'd maw of Cleon. Oh, the sight

Was milk and honey to me!

Let it be remembered to the poet's honour, that his vengeance ceased with the life of Cleon. In the Clouds, he observes with honest pride,

I struck the living Cleon to the heart,

When all his pomp of greatness was upon him;

But never spurn'd I at his lifeless corse.

It is more than time to turn to the volume, which has called forth these remarks. We have reason to think that the writer of the preface is mistaken in saying that excepting the duplicate. versions of the Clouds and Plutus, by White and Theobald, no other translations of Aristophanes have been attempted in England, besides those before us. A translation of the Plutus was published by Thomas Randolph, the author of the Muse's Looking Glass, in 1651, under the quaint title of Hey for Honesty! Down with Knavery! This was succeeded by another quarto translation in 1659, with the signature of H. H. B. A folio translation of the Clouds, by Stanley, may be found, we believe, in the History of Philosophy, Lond. 1708. Our wishes, we frankly confess, incline us to hope, that the writer is also somewhat incorrect in saying, that Aristophanes begins to form a prominent part in the lecture books of our Universities.' We doubt whether it be so at Oxford; we are quite sure that it is not so at Cambridge. The fact is, that Aristophanes, though a great wag, is, at times, also a very wicked one; and it is not every one who plunges into mire, that has the good fortune, like the essayist' in the Dunciad, to 'bear no tokens of the sable streams,' on emerging from it. The present volume contains poetic versions of the Clouds and the Frogs, by Mr. Cumberland and Mr. Dunster; and prose translations of the Plutus, by Fielding and Young, conjointly; and of the Birds, by a member of one of the universities.' They are of such different degrees of merit, that the compound reminds us of the tyrant in Virgil, who bound together the living and the dead. Mr. Cumberland's is infinitely superior to the rest; it has naturalized Aristophanes among us, as far as it goes, and we question whether any other language can boast a translation, at once so easy and so spirited. Mr. Cumberland never made a

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