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SYNOPSIS 
 
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 IKCLUDS^Q- 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES 
 
 THSSPIS, PHRYNICHUS, PRATINAS, iESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIP& 
 DES, AND OTHER DRAMATIC POETS, 
 
 TIME OF MENANDER, 
 
 A DRAMATIC CHRONOLOGY 
 
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 Printed by william towiri. 
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 i 
 
SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page. 
 Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry, - - - (Twining,) - - t) 
 On the Essence of the Greek Tragedy, - (Schlegel,) - - 10 
 
 Biographical notice of Thespis, -14 
 
 " " " Phrynichus, - - ■-•• - ~ m *• ■ - - If 
 " " " Pratinas - - - - 17 
 
 » " u JEsCHYLUS, - - « - - - - - - 18 
 
 " tf " Sophocles, - - * »' 21 
 
 " " " Euripides, -----..--- 22 
 
 The Old Comedy, -i-..----28 
 
 " Middle Comedy, - « - - * 31 
 
 " New Comedy, 34 
 
 Dramatic Representations, - - -- - - ----- -35 
 
 M Chronology, 45 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 In the following synoptical Treatise on the Drama of the ancient 
 Greeks, the only part taken by me is that of condensation, arrange- 
 ment, and occasional translation. The "■ Theatre of the Greeks" from 
 which this summary has been compiled, is a manual of erudition 
 almost indispensable to graduating students in the Universities of 
 England. But, for the junior classes, the volume in question is too 
 elaborate. From that ample fund of classical research, I have,%ere- 
 fore, endeavored to furnish a compendium o information very inter- 
 esting in itself, and of easy, practical application in the prosecution 
 of classical study. Nor am I without a hope that this "Synopsis" 
 will prove equally intelligible and attractive to readers unacquainted 
 with the Greek and Latin languages; and that it will, consequently, 
 be favorably received by the patrons of polite literature, without dis- 
 tinction. George Paddison. 
 

ORIGIN OF POETRY. 
 
 Poetry, in general, seems to have derived its origin from two 
 causes, each of them natural. 
 
 To imitate is instinctive in man from infancy. By this he is dis- 
 tinguished from other animals, that he is of all the most imitative, and 
 through this instinct receives his earliest education, This is evident 
 from what we view in regard to the words of imitative art ; for, in 
 them, we contemplate with pleasare, and with the more pleasure the 
 more exactly they are imitated, such ejects as, if real, we could not 
 see without pain — as the figures meanest and most disgusting 
 
 animals. And the reason of this '- 'tarn is a natural pleasure, 
 
 not confined to philosophers, but Co :1 men; with this dif- 
 
 ference only, that the multitude partake of it in a more transient 
 manner. 
 
 But this poetry, following the different characters of its authors, 
 naturally divided itself into two different kinds. They who were of 
 a grave and lofty spirit, chose for their imitation the actions and ad- 
 ventures of elevated characters ; while poets of a lighter turn repre- 
 sented those of the vicious and contemptible. 
 
 And thus these old poets were divided into two classes — those who 
 used the heroic, and those who used the iambic verse. 
 
 And as, in the serious kind, Homer alone may be said to deserve 
 the name of poet, not only on account of his other excellencies, but 
 also of the dramatic spirit of his imitations ; so was he likewise the 
 first who suggested the idea of Comedy, by substituting ridicule for 
 invective, and giving that ridicule a dramatic cast. But when Trage- 
 dy and Comedy had once made their appearance, succeeding poets, 
 according to the turn of their genius, attached themselves to the one 
 or the other of these new species. The lighter sort, instead of Iam- 
 bic, became Comic poets ; the graver, Tragic, instead of Heroic : 
 and that on account of the superior dignity and higher estimation of 
 these latter forms of poetry. 
 
 The Epic poem differs from Tragedy in the length of the plan, and 
 in metre. 
 
 Among the many just claims of Homer to our praise, this is one — 
 that he is the only poet who seems to have understood what part in 
 
8 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 his poem it was proper for him to take himself. The poet, in his own 
 person, should speak as little as possible ; for he is not then the imi- 
 tator. 
 
 Tragic poetry, as it attains more effectually the end of the art it- 
 self, must deserve the preference over Epic poetry. 
 
 fO • TIOk 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 In stating the conception we have of ancient Tragedy to be ideal, 
 we are not to understand that the different characters were all morally 
 perfect. In this case what room could there be for such an opposi- 
 tion or conflict as the plot of a drama requires ? Weaknesses, errors, 
 and even crimes were portrayed in them ; but the manners were al- 
 ways elevated above reality, and every person was invested with a 
 dignity compatible with the share which he possessed in the action. 
 
 The ideality of the representation chiefly consisted in the elevation 
 to a higher sphere. 
 
 The tragical poet wished wholly to separate the image of human- 
 ity, which he exhibited to us, from the ground of nature, to which man 
 is in reality chained down. 
 
 The moral freedom of man can only be displayed in a conflict with 
 the senses. 
 
 The moral part of our nature can only be preserved amidst struggles 
 and difficulties ; and if we were, therefore, to ascribe a distinctive aim 
 to Tragedy, as instructive, it should be this, — that all these sufferings 
 must be experienced, and all these difficulties overcome, to establish 
 the claims of the mind to a divine origin, and teach us to estimate 
 the earthly existence as vain and insignificant. 
 
 I come now to another peculiarity which distinguishes the Tragedy 
 of the ancients from ours ; I mean the Chorus. We must consider it 
 as the personification itself of the sentiments of the poet, as the in- 
 terpreter for the whole human race. 
 
 This is the general poetical character which we must here assign 
 to it, and that character is by no means affected by the circumstance 
 that the Chorus had a local origin in the feasts of Bacchus, and that 
 it always had a peculiar national signification with the Greeks. With 
 their republican way of thinking, publicity was considered essential to 
 every important transaction. As in their compositions they went 
 back to the heroic ages ; they gave a certain republican cast to the 
 families of their heroes, by carrying on the action, either in presence 
 of the elders of the people, or those persons whose characters enti- 
 tled them to respect. 
 2 
 
10 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 This publicity does not, it fs true, correspond with Homer's picture 
 of the manners of the heroic age ; but both in the costume and the 
 mythology, the dramatic poetry generally displayed a spirit of inde- 
 pendence and conscious liberty. 
 
 The Chorus was, therefore, introduced to give the whole that appear- 
 ance of reality which was most consistent with the fable. Whatever 
 it might be in particular pieces, it represented in general, first, the 
 national spirit, and then the general participation of mankind. In a 
 word, the Chorus is the ideal spectator. It mitigates the impression 
 of a heartrending or moving story, while it conveys to the actual 
 spectator a lyrical and musical expression of his own emotions, and 
 elevates him to the region of consideration. 
 
 The modern critics have never known what to make of the Chorus ; 
 and this is the less to be wondered at, as Aristotle affords no satisfac- 
 tory solution of the difficulty. The business of the Chorus is better 
 painted by Horace, who ascribes to it a general expression of moral 
 participation, instruction, and admonition. The critics in question 
 believe that the Chorus owed its continuance from the first origin of 
 Tragedy, merely to accident ; and as it is easy to perceive that in 
 Euripides, the last tragic poet we have, the choral songs have frequent- 
 lylittle or no connexion with the fable, and form a mere episodical 
 ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take 
 one other step in dramatic art, to explode the Chorus altogether. To 
 refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary to observe, 
 that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus in prose, in opposition 
 to the principles of some other poets ; and that, far from following 
 blindly the practice which he found established, like an intelligent 
 artist, he could assign reasons for the system he adopted. 
 
 Modern poets of the very first rank, since the revival of the study 
 of the ancients, have often attempted to introduce the Chorus in their 
 pieces, for the most part without a correct, and always without a vivid 
 idea of its destination : but we have no suitable singing or dancing ; 
 neither have we, as our theatres are constructed, any place for it; 
 and it will hardly ever succeed, therefore, in becoming naturalized 
 with us. 
 
 The Greek Tragedy, in its pure and unaltered state, will always, 
 for our theatres, remain an exotic plant, which we can hardly hope 
 to cultivate with any successs, even in the hothouse of learned art and 
 criticism. The Grecian Mythology, which constitutes the materials 
 of ancient Tragedy, is as foreign to the minds and imaginations of 
 most of the spectators, as its form and mode of representation. But 
 to endeavor to constrain another subject, an historical one, for example, 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC POETRY. 
 
 11 
 
 to assume that form, must always be a most unprofitable and hopeless 
 attempt. 
 
 The Greek Tragedians paint the downfall of kingly houses without 
 any reference to the condition of the people ; they show us the man 
 in the 'king, and, far from veiling their heroes from our sight in their 
 purple mantles, they allow us to look through their vain splendor, into 
 a bosom torn and harrowed up by passions. 
 
 That the regal pomp was not so necessary as the heroic costume is 
 evident, not only from the practice of the ancients, but from the tra- 
 gedies of the moderns having a reference to the throne, produced un- 
 der different circumstances ; namely, the existence of monarchical 
 government. They dare not draw from existing reality ; for nothing 
 is less suitable for a Tragedy than a court and a court life. Where 
 they do not, therefore, paint an idealldngdom, with distant manners, 
 they fall into stiffness and formality, which are much more destructive 
 to freedom and boldness of character, and to deep pathos, than the 
 narrow circle of private life. 
 
 The productiveness of mythology for the Tragic art we are princi- 
 pally to ascribe to the principle which we observe so powerful through- 
 out the whole historical range of Grecian cultivation ; namely, that the 
 power which preponderated for the time assimilated every thing to it- 
 self. As the heroic fables, in all their deviations, were easily develop- 
 ed into the tranquil fulness and light variety of Epic poetry, they were 
 afterwards adapted to the object which the Tragedians proposed to 
 accomplish by earnestness, energy, and compression. And what in 
 this change of destination appeared inapplicable to Tragedy, still af- 
 forded materials for a sort of half sportive though ideal representation, 
 in the subordinate walk of the satirical drama. 
 
 The Homeric Epic is, in poetry, what half-raised workmanship is 
 in sculpture ; and Tragedy the distinctly separated groupe. 
 
 The poem of Homer, sprung* from the soil of the traditionary tale, is 
 not yet purified from it ; as the figures of a bas-relief are borne by a 
 back ground which is foreign to them. These figures appear depress- 
 ed : and in the Epic poem all is painted as past and remote. In the 
 bas-relief they are generally thrown into profile ; and in the Epic cha- 
 racterised in the most artless manner. They are, in the former, not 
 properly grouped, but follow one another; and the Homeric heroes, 
 in like manner, advance singly in succession before us. It has been 
 remarked, that the Iliad is not definitely closed, but that we are left 
 to suppose something both to precede and follow. The bas-relief is 
 equally boundless, and may be continued, ad infinitum, either from be* 
 fore or behind ; on which account the ancients preferred the selection 
 of those objects for it which admitted of an indefinite extension ; as 
 
19 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 the trains at sacrifices, dances, rows of combatants, &c. Hence they 
 also exhibited bas-reliefs on round surfaces ; such as vases, or the 
 frieze of a rotunda, where the two ends are withdrawn from our 
 sight by the curvature; and where, on our advancing, one object ap- 
 pears as another disappears. The reading of the Homeric poetry very 
 much resembles such a circumgyration, as the present object alone 
 arrests our attention, while that which precedes and follows is allowed 
 to disappear. 
 
 But in the distinctly formed groupe, as in Tragedy, Sculpture and 
 Poetry bring before our eyes an independent and definite whole. 
 To separate it from natural reality, the former places it on a base, as 
 on an ideal ground. It also removes as much as possible all foreign 
 and accidental accessories, that the eye may wholly rest on the essen- 
 tial objects — the figures themselves. 
 
 These figures are wrought into the most complete rounding ; yet 
 they refuse the illusion of colors, and announce, by the purity and 
 uniformity of the mass of which they are constructed, a creation not 
 endowed with perishable life, but of a higher and more elevated 
 character. 
 
 Beauty is the object of sculpture, and repose is most advantageous 
 for the display of beauty. 
 
 Repose alone, therefore, is suitable to the figure ; but a number of 
 figures can only be connected together and grouped by one action. 
 The group represents beauty in motion, and the object of it is to 
 combine both in the highest degree. This can only be effected when 
 the artist finds means, in the most violent bodily or mental anguish, to 
 moderate the expression by manly resistance, calm grandeur, or in- 
 herent sweetness, in such a manner that, with the most moving truth, 
 the features of beauty shall yet in nowise be disfigured. The obser- 
 vation of Winkelmann on this subject is inimitable. He says, that 
 beauty with the ancients was the tongue on the balance of expression ; 
 and in this sense, the groupes of Niobe and Laocoon are master 
 pieces ; the one in the sublime and serious, the other in the learned 
 and onamental style. 
 
 The comparison with ancient Tragedy is the more apposite here, as 
 we know that both JEschylus and Sophocles produce a Niobe, and 
 that Sophocles was also the author of a Laocoon. 
 
 In Laocoon, the conflicting sufferings and anguish of the body, 
 and the resistance of the soul, are balanced with the most wonderful 
 equilibrium. The children calling for help, tender objects of our 
 compassion, and not of our admiration, draw us back to the appear- 
 ance of the father, who seems to turn his eyes in vain to the Gods. 
 The convolving serpents exhibit to us the inevitable destiny which 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC POETRY. IS 
 
 Unites together the characters in so dreadful a manner. And yet the 
 beauty of proportion, the delightful flow of the attitude, are not lost 
 in this violent struggle; and a representation, the most frightful to the 
 senses, is yet treated with a degree of moderation, while a mild breath 
 of sweetness is diffused over the whole. 
 
 In the groupe of Niobe there is also the most perfect mixture of ter- 
 ror and pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and the mouth half 
 open in supplication, seem to accuse the invisible wrath of heaven. 
 
 The daughter, clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of her 
 mother, in infantine innocence, can have no other fear than for her- 
 self; the innate impulse of self-preservation was never represented in 
 a manner more tender and affecting. Can there, on the other hand, 
 be exhibited to the senses a more beautiful image of self-devoting 
 heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body forwards, that 
 if possible she may alone receive the destructive bolt ? Pride and re- 
 pugnance are melted down in the most ardent maternal love. The 
 more than earthly dignity of the features are the less disfigured by 
 pain, as, from the quick repetition of the shocks, she appears, as in 
 the fable, to have become insensible and motionless. But before this 
 figure, twice transformed into stone, and yet so inimitably animated-— 
 before this line of demarcation of all human suffering, the most cal- 
 lous beholder is dissolved in tears. 
 
 In all the agitation produced by the sight of these groupes, there is 
 still somewhat in them which invites us to composed contemplation ; 
 and, in the same manner, the Tragedy of the ancients leads us, even 
 in the course of the representation, to the most elevated reflections 
 on our existence, and those mysteries in our destiny which can never 
 wholly be explained. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS 
 
 THESPIS. 
 
 Thespis was a native of Icaria, a village in Attica. The precise 
 date of the birth of Thespis cannot be ascertained, although all an- 
 cient writes agree that he flourished about Olymp. 60, and was 
 contemporary with Solon and Pisistratus. Nothing is known of his 
 father and little of himself. The Arundel Marble, composed, as 
 Bentley has shown, Olymp. 1*29, in the time of Ptolemy Philadel- 
 phus, about 260 years B. C, declares Thespis to be the first who 
 exhibited Tragedy. In this respect, the Roman writers also agree 
 with the Greek, in proof of which it is only necessary to appeal to 
 the well known lines of Horace : 
 
 Ignatum tragicas genus invenisse Camense 
 Dicitur, et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis 
 Qui canerent, agerentque peruncti faecibus ora.* 
 
 As to the nature and genius of the fables of Thespis, the difficulty 
 of this inquiry will be understood by whoever considers that the fables 
 of Thespis are no longer remaining, and that the opinions of the an- 
 cients concerning them are partly irreconcileable with probability, 
 partly somewhat obscure. All modern writers, however, have collect- 
 ed from them so much, that the arguments of those fables were scarce- 
 ly removed from the levity of the Satyric. Admitting this to be partly 
 true, they appear to have been so far mistaken, as to imagine, while 
 engaged in disquisitions as to the origin of Tragedy, that Thespis 
 himself never improved upon his first attempts, which is very unlike- 
 ly ; since during his theatrical career he had ample time to correct, in 
 some degree, the rudeness of form which it derived from its birth. 
 He was without doubt the first who stripped the Chorus of their Satyric 
 garb, and connected them more closely with the actor. 
 
 * See, also, Athenaeus, lib. 1. cap. 10. Plutarch, Life of Solon, cap. 29, who is 
 there express in vindicating to Thespis the honor of this invention. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS — THESPIS. 15 
 
 All things which have come down to. us, concerning Thespis, being 
 well considered, it would seem that Tragedy through him underwent 
 three changes ; two of which relate to the period of Solon, and the 
 third to that of the Pisistratidae. What the first of these changes was, 
 is evident from the nature of the Satyric Choruses. The Chorus hav- 
 ing sung the Dithyramb, and uttered their extemporal effusion, Tespis, 
 when they were fatigued by exertion, came forward himself and re- 
 lieved the singers, by relating and gesticulating some story which un- 
 doubtedly had Bacchus as its subject. Shortly after, which was the 
 second change, he began to act the parts of heroes, either retaining 
 the chorus of Satyrs or introducing them in another garb. 
 
 This second change appears to have taken place about Olymp. 64; 
 from which period, until Olymp. 61, Thespis ceased to exhibit Fables, 
 being restrained from so doing by the law enacted by Solon, as Dio- 
 genes Laertius says, and to which law Pisistratus is reported to have 
 been unfriendly. But as soon as the Pisistratidae had obtained the 
 chief power, Thespis doubtlessly introduced a third change, exhibit- 
 ing Tragedy under a more perfect form, and contending with other 
 poets for the Tragic prize. Among the competitors for this honor, 
 Phrynichus would be one, being then about thirty years of age. The 
 Pulpitum, or that part where the actors stood, would be enlarged and 
 better decorated, and the deeds of heroes represented with the accom- 
 paniments of flutes and dances. The Arundel Marble clearly shows 
 that the Dramatic contest appertained to the age of Thespis, to which 
 testimony may be added a passage from the Vespae, v. 1470. 
 
 It is manifest that, by such contests, Dramatic Poetry would, in a 
 short time, make great advances ; and at this period, perhaps, it was» 
 that Thespis exhibited those pieces, of which now only the names are 
 extant, and from which, most probably, the fragment,* preserved by 
 Clemens Alexandrinus, is extracted. ' As to that argument against it, 
 from the letters not having at that time been increased to the number 
 of twenty-four, it is not sufficiently made out, so as to overthrow this 
 opinion. When Thespis first exhibited, the number of the letters was 
 not complete ; but in his later representations, after a lapse of twenty- 
 five years, he would use these characters, since the number was then 
 perfected ; for at Olymp. 61, Simonides, their inventor, was sixteen 
 years of age. This, however, was not the latest period of Thespis, 
 but only that in which he first, perhaps, entered the dramatic contest ; 
 for in Olymp. 67, according to Suidas, in his testimony of Phrynicus, 
 
 * This fragment in four artificial words comprehends the twenty-four letters of 
 the Greek Alphabet. 
 
16 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 he gained a victory. At this period, all the letters were invented. 
 Hence may be drawn the following conclusions : 
 Thespis — Was the inventor of Tragedy; 
 
 Committed nothing to writing; 
 
 That his pieces were not all Satyric ; 
 
 That his latest period was after Olymp. 61. 
 
 PHRYNICHUS 
 
 Was the scholar of Thespis, older than iEschylus, and contempo- 
 rary with him during a part of his theatrical career. 
 
 It is pretty generally allowed that Phrynichus and iEschylus were 
 the first who forsook the ludicrous style, and became the inventors of 
 serious Tragedy ; yet while iEschylus is universally regarded as the 
 father of Tragedy, the merits of his successful competitor, Phrynichus, 
 do not seem to have been duly appreciated. It is sufficiently proba- 
 ble that his piece entitled* the " Taking of Miletus" must have been 
 something beyond a rude attempt at Tragedy to have produced that 
 effect which it did upon the spectators : for, according to the account 
 of Herodotus, " when Phrynichus exhibited his play, the Taking of 
 " Miletus, the whole theatre fell into tears, and fined the poet a thou- 
 sand drachms; and made an order that nobody ever after should 
 "make a play of that subject." It is also probable that the represen- 
 tation was exhibited on a stage of a very different kind from that used 
 by Thespis, the expression of Herodotus — the theatre — favoring the 
 opinion that some approaches towards a regular stage were made in 
 the time of Phrynichus. 
 
 The Chorus in the Taking of Miletus most likely consisted of cap- 
 tive Milesian Women ; as in the Phcenissae it most probably did of 
 Phoenician women, the wives of those Poehnicians, who, by order of 
 Xerxes, were beheaded after the battle of Salamis. In the Taking of 
 Miletus the Chorus would probably represent the widows of those 
 slain in the affair. The Chorus ceasing, the chief men of the city 
 would advance upon the stage and recount their past and present 
 miseries. This part of the representation Mr. Schneider imagines to 
 have been performed by a single actor personating a variety of char- 
 acters. 
 
 Phrynichus obtained the Tragic prize with his Phoenissae, Olymp. 
 71. Adverting to this circumstance, Mr. Schneider, who labors to 
 procure greater honors for the dramatic authors prior to iEschylus than 
 what many are disposed to admit, takes an opportunity to contend 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS — PHRYNICHUS — PRATINAS. 17 
 
 that he who had iEschylus for a rival, and over whom he was victori- 
 ous, must have possessed dramatic merits of a very distinguished 
 character. After citing the passage from Plutarch's Life of Themis- 
 tocles, in which his victory is commemorated, he observes that JEschy- 
 lus himself was accused of having pilfered from the Tragedies of 
 Phrynichus, adducing a passage from The Frogs of Aristophanes, v. 
 1334, where iEschylus attempts to exculpate himself from the charge 
 of plagiarism. Nor does this charge appear to have been made with- 
 out foundation ; for Glaucus, who wrote on the subject of this Trage- 
 dian, has boldly asserted, as the Author of the Argument to the 
 Persce tells us, that this play was pilfered from those of Phrynichus. 
 In two departments of the scenic art Phrynichus appears to have 
 been eminently successful. To him, also, has been assigned the 
 invention of the tetrameter verse, but erroneously ; for, long before 
 Phrynichus, Archilochus and Solon used this kind of verse, and, as 
 Aristotle appears to relate, all the Tragic writers before iEschylus. 
 
 PRATINAS. 
 
 Eurebius, in his Chronicles, as well as other Authors, assures us 
 that Pratinus flourished about Olymp. 70. Little is known about him, 
 and for that we are indebted to Suidas. Dr. Blomfield, in his Pre- 
 face to the Persce, considers it doubtful whether he ever exhibited 
 Tragedy at all ; and it is elsewhere remarked by the same authority, 
 that Pratinas, confining himself to ludicrous fables, while Phrynichus 
 and iEschylus adopted doleful stories, and being the first that com- 
 mitted his pieces to writing, gave occasion to his being considered as 
 the inventor of the Satyric Drama. Schneider considers the words 
 of Suidas, in styling him the first to write Satyrics, as referable to those 
 Satires which were afterwards composed by the Tragedians, and that 
 Pratinas enjoys the reputation of being the inventor of this species of 
 Drama, from the circumstance of his having improved upon the rude 
 essays of its first origin. There were not wanting some, however, 
 who confounded the Satires of Pralinas with those more ancient far- 
 ces, from which the Phliasians took occasion to assert their claim to 
 the invention of Tragedy. From the testimony of two epigrams upon 
 Sophocles, Anthol. Gr. 1, 2, it is evident in what honor the Satyric 
 Chorus was held by the Phliasians. There is certainly no mention 
 of Pratinas, but they evidently relate to him and his son, both being 
 highly honored by the Phliasians. 
 3 
 
18 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 Nothing scarcely of Pratinas has come down to us, but a fragment 
 preserved by Athenaeus, lib. 11. 
 
 Two other Tragic Poets belong to the age of Pratinas, — Choerilus 
 and Carcinus. The first of these, according to Suidas, composed a 
 hundred and fifty Dramas, all of which have perished. He appears 
 to have been a very indifferent poet, and is never mentioned by an- 
 cient writers but in terms of reproof. 
 
 Of Carcinus the few particulars which are known are mentioned by 
 Dr. Bentley, in his Dissertation on the Age of Tragedy, who there 
 states him to have been an ancient Tragic poet, burlesqued once or 
 twice by Aristophanes for a certain humor of dancing ; that he had 
 three sons, whom he brought up to dance in his choruses, and who, 
 upon that account, are, among many other nicknames, there called 
 dancers. 
 
 iESCHYLUS. 
 
 iEscHYLus, son of Euphorion, was born Olymp. 63, 4, (B. C. 525,) 
 and died, according to the Arundel Marble, Olymp. 80, 1. Bacchus 
 is said, in fable, to have appeared to him, and commanded him to write 
 Tragedies. This design he began to execute in Olymp. 70, being 
 then 25 years of age. The next notice which we have of him is at 
 Olymp. 72, 3, when he was present at Marathon, being then in his 
 35th year. In this action iEschylus greatly distinguished himself, as 
 well as his two brothers Cynaegiras and Amyrnias ; and in a picture 
 representing the battle, iEschylus was drawn encouraging the soldiers, 
 thereby being associated in the same honor that was paid to Miltiades. 
 Cynaegirus was afterwards one of the ten Commanders, who, with a 
 naval armament of 1,000 men, defeated 30,000 Persians. Six years 
 after the memorable day of Marathon, iEschylus gained his first 
 Tragic victory ; and four years after this, viz. Olymp. 75, was fought 
 the battle of Salamis, in which iEschylus nobly defended his surviving 
 brother Amyrnias, who had his hand lopped off by a Persian sabre. 
 Upon this occasion the Athenians decreed him the first honors ; and 
 in the following year he acquired fresh glory in the battle of Plataaa, 
 where the brave General Mardonius was slain. Eight years after this 
 he gained the victory with the Persce. The Supplices was acted be- 
 r ore the Persce, but its precise date is not determined by any chrono- 
 logical testimony. Dr. Blomfield, in his Preface to the Persce, p. 15, 
 has arranged the remaining dramas of our Author in the following 
 order : — Supplices, Persce, Prometheus, Septem contra Thebas, Aga- 
 memnon, Choephori, Eumenides. The last three, with Proteus added 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS — * JESCHYLUS. 19 
 
 '. to them as a Satyric Drama, composed what was called the Orestean 
 tetralogy, the representation of which took place at Olmp. 80, % 
 
 iEschylus survived the representation of this tetralogy little more 
 than two years, since he died at the court of Hiero, king of Sicily, 
 . Olymp. 81, (B. C. 456,) aged 69 years. 
 
 The few last years of his life are involved in considerable obscurity; 
 and various are the reasons which have been assigned for his leaving 
 Athens. Jealousy of the preference given to Sophocles — which is 
 the account given by Plutarch. The victory obtained over him by 
 Simonides is an elegiac contest^but Simonides died Olymp. 77, 4. 
 The offence which he gave to the city, by the representation of the 
 Eumenides, and in consequence of which he was accused of impiety ; 
 upon which occasion his brother Amyrnias pleaded his cause, and 
 iEschylus was acquitted. The common story respecting the Eume- 
 nides is, that the appearance of the fifty Furies on the stage, wearing 
 masks of a hideous paleness, their hands brandishing lighted torches, 
 and their hair braided with serpents, caused such extreme terror 
 among the spectators, that women were seized with the pains of pre- 
 mature labor, and children died from fear ; and that the magistrates, 
 to prevent such fatal occurrences in future, ordained that the Chorus 
 should hereafter be limited to fifteen. The first part of this account 
 Dr. Blomfield, in his Preface to the Persos, throws aside as fabulous ; 
 and observes, that fifty Furies would not cause more terror than fifteen, 
 since the horror arising from the spectacle would not depend so much 
 upon the number of the Chorus, as it would upon their appointments, 
 viz., masks, torches, and twisted snakes ; and that, so far from fifteen 
 Furies being brought upon the stage by iEschylus, it is most likely 
 there were only three ; since it is altogether incredible that the poet 
 should be so rash as to invade the received mythology of a supersti- 
 tious country by augmenting the number of those goddesses from 
 three to fifty, whom the Athenians regarded with an awful veneration. 
 It has already been observed of -iEschylus, by Aristotle, that " he re- 
 trenched the Chorus;" upon which Mr. Twining remarks, that the 
 critic would hardly have expressed himself thus, had he meant a re- 
 trenchment in the number of choral performers ; but the sense is, that 
 he abridged the choral parts, which were immoderately long, and made 
 the Chorus more subservient to the main interest of the fable. In the 
 passage of Aristotle, alluded to above, another improvement is com- 
 memorated of iEschylus — his introduction of two actors upon the 
 stage, which was, in fact, to introduce the Dialogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt, 
 in his notes on the passage, observes that iEschylus certainly intro- 
 duced three actors into some of his plays. But he thinks that he bor- 
 rowed the hint from Sophocles, by whom he was worsted in a Tragi© 
 
20 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 contest at least twelve years before his death.* In the 7th chap, of 
 the Poetics, the invention of painted scenery is ascribed to Sophocles ; 
 but to iEschylus, by the Author of his Life. To adjust exactly the 
 rival claims of iEschylus and Sophocles with respect to the decora- 
 tion of the Tragic Stage, would be a desperate undertaking. Some 
 accounts are so liberal to iEschylus as scarce to leave his successors 
 any room for farther improvements. They give him paintings, ma- 
 chinery, altars, tombs, trumpets, ghosts, and furies : to which others 
 add a very singular species of improvement, the exhibition of drunken 
 men. This last is taken from Athenaeus, who goes a little farther into 
 the origin of the improvement, assigning as the reason of iEschylus 
 exhibiting drunken characters, that he always composed his tragedies 
 when drunk, and introduces Sophocles as reproving him on this ac- 
 count. He is likewise commemorated by the same Author as being 
 the inventor of the Tragic Robe, which the Priests of Ceres after- 
 wards adopted. He also invented many species of dances ; teaching 
 the Chorus the various figures, which they were to exhibit on the stage, 
 and, in a word, taking upon himself the whole economy of Tragedy. 
 iEschylus certainly invented the mask ; also the buskins ; both of 
 which inventions are acknowledged by Horace : 
 
 Posthunc (Thespin) personam, pallaeque repertor honestae 
 iEschylus, et docuit magnumque loqui nitique cothurno. 
 
 In so great honor was the memory of this illustrious Author held 
 at Athens, that a decree of the people permitted any Poet to aspire 
 to the crown, with one of the pieces of iEschylus retouched and cor- 
 rected as he might judge proper. The writer of his Life has preser- 
 ved an epitaph, supposed to be from the hand of the poet himself. 
 It is remarkable for its modesty, recording no other circumstance of 
 his life than that of his gallant conduct at Marathon. 
 
 The style of iEschylus has not escaped the censure of ancient wri- 
 ters. The boldness of his figures, and the novelty of his expressions, 
 are noticed by Dionysius Halicarnassus. This is also alluded to by 
 Aristophanes, in the Frogs, where he is rallied upon his affectation of 
 compound words ; which are compared, in that inimitable Comedy, to 
 
 * The following remark of Mr. Elmsley is transcribed from the Quarterly Re- 
 view, vol. 7, p. 449 : " The actors were not only assigned by lot to the several com- 
 petitors, but the number was limited to three, which each competitor was allowed 
 to employ. Inconsequence of this regulation, when three characters were already 
 on the stage, a fourth could not be introduced without allowing one of the three 
 actors time to retire and change his dress. The poet was at liberty to employ as 
 many mutes as he thought proper.'* 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS SOPHOCLES. 21 
 
 the proud towers that overlook the ramparts of a city. This is the 
 piece in which Euripides and Sophocles are represented as contend- 
 ing in the infernal regions before Bacchus for the throne of Tragedy, 
 which is, in the sequel, awarded to JEschylus. 
 
 The following is the character given of iEschylus by Quintilian — a 
 comparison being instituted between the respective merits of JEschy- 
 lus and Euripides : 
 
 Tragaedias primus in lucem jiEschylus protulit, sublimus et gravis et grandiloquus 
 soepe usque ad vitium, sed rudis in plerisque et incompositus : propter quod correc- 
 tas ejus fabulas in certamen deferre posterioribus poetis Athenienses permisere, sunt- 
 que eodem modo multi coronati. Sed longe clarius illustraverunt hoc opus Sopho- 
 cles atque Euripides : quorum in dispari dicendi via uter sit poeta melior, inter plu- 
 rimos quaeritur. Illud quidem nemo non fateatur necesse est, iis qui se ad agendum 
 comparent, utiliorem longe Euripidem fore. Namque is et in sermone (quod ipsum 
 reprehendunt, quibus gravitas et cothurnus et sonus Sophoclis videtur esse sublimior) 
 magis accedit oratorio generi; et sententiis densus, et in iis quae a sapientibus tradita 
 sunt, pene ipsis par et in dicendo ac respondendo cuilibet eorum, qui fuerunt in foro 
 diserti, comparandus. 
 
 In affectibus vero cum omnibus mirus, turn in iis qui miseratione constant, facile 
 praecipuus. — lib. 10. c. 1. 
 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Sophocles, son of Sophilus, native of Colonus, was born Olymp. 
 71, 2. (B. C. 495.) Diodorus relates that he died about the same 
 time as Socrates, viz., in the third year of Olymp. 93, aged ninety. 
 He was, therefore, thirty years junior to JEschylus, and fifteen years 
 older than Euripides. He was early distinguished for the attractive 
 beauty of his form ; and we learn that after the battle of Salamis, he 
 headed a Chorus of youths, being then in his fifteenth year, and re- 
 ceived the applause of the Athenians for his skill on the lyre. He 
 had been taught music and dancing, according to Athenaeus, by 
 Lamprus, and throughout his career we frequently hear of his excel- 
 lence in these arts. It is related that he performed on the harp during 
 the representation of his Thamyris, and at that of his Nausicaa : his 
 skill with the ball was very great. We have the authority of Suidas 
 for saying, that in early life he first applied himself to Lyric Poetry, 
 but his genius soon led him to the haunts of the Dramatic muse, and 
 his first success fixed him there forever. He was in his twenty-seventh 
 year when he competed with iEschylus for the possession of the stage. 
 After the representation of the pieces, the suffrages of the Judges 
 were divided, and the Theatre becoming clamorous for a decision, 
 Cimon.who was then in the zenith of his fame, was appointed to name 
 
22 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 the victor. Having taken the usual oaths to judge impartially, and 
 performed the customary libations on the Altar of Bacchus, Cimon 
 awarded the first place to Sophocles. In Olymp. 85, 2, we find him 
 employed in the Samian war ; on which occasion he was associated 
 with Pericles, as one of the ten Generals who were elected every 
 year. 
 
 The last and next recorded event of our poet's life was his victory 
 with the Philoctetes, Olymp. 82, 4, and four years previous to his 
 death, according to the Parian Marbles, in the Archonship of Callias, 
 Olymp. 83, 4, after a glorious career, during which, according to Sui- 
 das, he gained twenty-four, to Diodorus Siculus, eighteen Tragic 
 victories. The story of his being accused of madness, in his old age, 
 by an ungrateful son, and of his refuting the charge by reading before 
 his judges certain passages of his (Edipus Coloneus, which he had 
 just finished, is so well known as to require but a brief mention. 
 Cicero de Sen. cap. 7, and Valerius Maximus, lib. 8, will afford the 
 best detail. This celebrated Tragedy, the last production of our 
 Poet, written expressly to gratify the Athenians, and to commemorate 
 the place of his own birth, was first represented by the grandson of 
 Sophocles, Olymp. 84, 4. 
 
 The number of pieces which Sophocles composed is still a contested 
 point among the learned. The account of Suidas states them to have 
 been 123. But Suidas also gives us the computation of Aristophanes 
 the Grammarian, who states them to have been 130, seventeen of 
 which he deems spurious. Boeckius rejects both these accounts, 
 referring a part of this number to his son Jophon, and part to the 
 younger Sophocles. The following are all that are now extant, and 
 undoubtedly assignable to the elder Sophocles : (Edipus Rex, (Edipus 
 Coloneus, Electra, Antigone, Trachinice, Ajax, Philoctetes. 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 
 This poet was born at Salamis, Olymp. 75, (B. C. 480,) under the 
 Archonship of Callias, and upon the same day on which the Athenians 
 gained their victory over the Persian fleet. According to one au- 
 thority, he was the son of Mnestarchus a vintner ; his mother, Cleito, 
 being an herb woman. In early life, he embarked in the profession 
 of an Athletes, the profits of which were received by his father. His 
 inclination soon led him to cultivate Tragedy, and he became a disci- 
 ple of Anaxagoras, Prodicus, and Protagoras. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC .WRITERS — EURIPIDES. 23 
 
 Suidas, however, says, it is not true that his mother sold herbs, but 
 that he was descended of a noble family. In early life, according to 
 the same author, he was a painter — that he first applied himself to 
 Tragedy when he saw his master, Anaxagoras, brought to trial on ac- 
 count of his Philosophic opinions. Although accounted a woman- 
 hater, he nevertheless was twice married; his first wife being Chcerina, 
 daughter of Mnesilochus, who brought him three sons, Mnesilochus, 
 Mnesarchides, and Euripides. Having divorced his first wife, on 
 account of adultery, he appears to have been no less unfortunate in 
 the choice of his second ; whose name, however, Suidas has not 
 mentioned. He also omits to notice his temporary settlement in 
 Magnesia; where he was received as a public guest. After alluding 
 to the well-known story of his being torn to pieces by dogs, at the 
 instance of two poets, who were envious of his fame, Suidas says 
 others relate that he was torn to pieces by women. 
 
 Euripides was the intimate friend of Socrates, who, according to 
 iElian, was seldom a spectator at the theatre, except when a play of 
 our poet was represented. His first piece was produced at Olymp. 
 81, being at that time in his twenty-fifth year. Olymp/ 84, 4, he 
 gained the prize in Tragedy, on which occasion he was the first 
 placed. 
 
 The MS. Life, given by Elmsley, so far agrees with Suidas in say- 
 ing that he was twice married; the name of his first wife being 
 Melito, (Suid. Chcsrina,) that of his second Choerila. When, or for 
 what reason, he left Athens, does not appear. The MS. Life states 
 he moved into Magnesia, and thence into Macedonia, where he gained 
 the favor of Archelaus, in whose dominions he died, Olymp. 93, 3, in 
 the Archonship of Callias, at the age of seventy-five. He was buried 
 in Macedonia, but a Cenotaph was erected to him at Athens, inscribed 
 with a highly eulogistic epigram. 
 
 11 When we consider Euripides by himself," says Schlegel, " with- 
 out any comparison with his predecessors ; when we take a separate 
 view of some of his better pieces, and detached scenes throughout 
 the others, we cannot refuse to him an extraordinary degree of praise. 
 But, on the other hand, when we place him in connexion with the 
 history of art, when we consider his pieces as a whole, and reflect on 
 the object, which he appears in general to have had in view, in all 
 the works which have come down to us, we are compelled to bestow 
 severe censure on him on various accounts. Of few writers may both 
 good and evil be said with so much truth. He was a man of infinite 
 ingenuity, and practised in the greatest variety of mental arts ; but 
 neither the sublime seriousness of mind, nor the severe wisdom which 
 we revere in JEschylus and Sophocles, regulated in him a luxuriant 
 
24 SYNOPSIS OP THE GREEK DRAMA.. 
 
 fulness of the most splendid and amiable qualities. His constant 
 aim is to please, by whatever means, and hence he is so very unequal 
 to himself. We possess some cutting sayings of Sophocles respect- 
 ing Euripides ; though he was so far from being actuated by any 
 think like the jealousy of authorship, that he mourned his death, and, 
 in a piece which was shortly after exhibited, refused to his actors the 
 ornament of the floral crown. The derisory attacks of Aristophanes 
 are well known, though not sufficiently understood and appreciated.* 
 
 In Euripides we no longer find the essence of the ancient Tragedy 
 in its pure and unmixed state. We have already placed this es- 
 sence, in the prevailing idea of Destiny, in the ideality of the com- 
 position, and in the signification of the Chorus. Euripides inherited, 
 it is true, the idea of Destiny from his predecessors, and his belief of 
 it was sharpened by the Tragic practice ; but yet in him Fate is seldom 
 the invisible spirit of the whole composition, the radical Thought of 
 the Tragic world. We have seen that this idea may be exhibited 
 under severer or milder aspects; that the obscure terror of Destiny 
 may, in the connexion of a whole trilogy, be cleared up to the signifi- 
 cation of a wise and beneficent Providence. Euripides, however, has 
 drawn it down from the region of the infinite ; and inevitable neces- 
 sity not unfrequently degenerates in him into the caprice of accident. 
 He can no longer, therefore, give it its proper and peculiar direction, 
 namely, by contrast and opposition to elevate the moral liberty of 
 man. His characters generally suffer because they must, and not be- 
 cause they will. 
 
 The mutual subordination of character and passion to ideal eleva- 
 tion, which we find observed in the same order in Sophocles, Euripi- 
 des has completely reversed. Passion is the principal object with 
 him; his next care is for character; and when these endeavors leave 
 him still any remaining room, he occasionally seeks to connect gran- 
 deur and dignity with the more frequent display of amiable attrac- 
 tions. 
 
 It has been already admitted that the persons in Tragedy ought not 
 to be all equally exempt from error, as there would then be no oppo- 
 sition among them 9 , and consequently no room for a plot. But Euri- 
 pides has, as Aristotle observes, frequently painted his characters in 
 black colors without any necessity, as, for example, his Menelaus in 
 Orestes. He was warranted by the traditions in attributing great 
 
 * In the Nubes, he is ridiculed for debasing the dignity of Tragedy, by clothing 
 his chief characters in rags, and reducing them to beggary. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS EURIPIDES. £5 
 
 crimes to many of the old heroes, but he invented besides many base 
 and paltry traits for them, of his own free invention. 
 
 The Chorus is, for the most part, in him, an unessential ornament; 
 its songs are frequently wholly episodical, without any reference to the 
 action, and more distinguished for brilliancy than for sublimity and 
 true inspiration. We must consider the Chorus, says Aristotle, as 
 one of the actors, and as a part of the whole ; it must enter into 
 the action ; not as in Euripides, but as Sophocles has done. 
 
 In the accompanying music, he adopted all the innovations invent- 
 ed by Timotheus, and selected those melodies which were most in 
 unison with the effeminacy of his poetry.* He proceeded in the same 
 manner with his syllabic measures ; his versification is luxuriant and 
 breaks through every rule. The same diluted and effeminate charac- 
 ter would, on a more profound investigation, be unquestionably found 
 to belong also to the rhythmi of his choral songs. t 
 
 Euripides was a frequenter of the schools of the philosophers; and 
 he displays a particular vanity in introducing philosophical doctrines 
 on all occasions; in my opinion, in a very imperfect manner, as we 
 should not be able to understand these doctrines from him if we were 
 not beforehand acquainted with them.f He conceives it too vulgar 
 a thing to believe in the gods in the simple manner of the people ; 
 and he, therefore, seizes every opportunity of interspersing something 
 of their Allegorical signification, and of giving his spectators to under- 
 stand that the nature of his own belief was problematical. 
 
 We may distinguish in him a two-fold character; the poet whose 
 productions were consecrated to a religious solemnity, which existed 
 under the protection of religion, and which was therefore under a re- 
 ciprocal obligation of returning that protection with honor and rever- 
 ence ; and the sophist, with his philosophical dicta, who endeavors to 
 introduce his sceptical opinions and doubts into the fabulous prodigies 
 connected with the religion from which he derived the subjects of his 
 pieces. He throws out a multitude of moral maxims, many of which 
 
 * Sophocles chiefly employed th« Phrygian Melody, which is best adapted, ac- 
 cording to Plato, to inspire moderation and to express our worship of the Deity.- — 
 De Rep. lib. 3. 
 
 f See the passage in the Ranee, v. 1332, wherein he is recommended to adopt the 
 use of a pair of shells, instead of the lyre, as the most fitting accompaniment for his 
 songs. 
 
 X We find, as Valckenoer observes, the system of Anaxagoras on the origin of 
 Beings, as well as the precepts of that morality which Socrates inculcated. Hence 
 it was that he had so many partisans among the philosophers, who were glad to 
 fe*ve their doctrines brought upon the itage, end applauded by the spectator*. 
 4 
 
£6 synopsis or tmb greek drama. 
 
 he often repeats, and for the most part they are either trite or funda- 
 mentally false. With all this moral ostentation, the aim of his pieces, 
 the general impression which they are calculated to produce, is some- 
 times extremely immoral. An anecdote is told of him, that he intro- 
 duced Bellerophon with a silly eulogium on wealth, in which he pre- 
 ferred it to all domestic happiness, and ended with observing, if Aph- 
 rodite (who bore the appellation of golden) shone like gold, she was 
 deserving of the love of mortals; and that the spectators took umbrage 
 at this, and wished to stone both actor and poet. Euripides then 
 sprang forward, and called out, " Wait till the end, he will be requited 
 accordingly!" In like manner he defended himself against the ob- 
 jection that his Ixion expressed himself in too disgusting and abomi- 
 nable language, by observing that the piece concluded with his being 
 broken on the wheel. But the assistance of poetical justice, in pun- 
 ishing the baseness of his characters, is not always called in. In some 
 of his pieces, the wicked escape altogether untouched. Lies and 
 other infamous practices are openly protected, especially when he can 
 assign for them a supposed noble motive. The following verse in 
 justification of perjury is well known : 
 
 The tongue swore, but the sense swore not. — Hippolyt. 608. 
 
 In the connexion in which this verse is uttered, and on account of 
 which he has been so often ridiculed by Aristophanes, there is indeed 
 a justification ; but the formula is nevertheless bad, on account of the 
 possible abuse of its application. He was the first poet that ever 
 thought of making the unbridled passion of a Medea, and the unna- 
 tural love of a Phcedra, the principal subject of his dramas ; yet with 
 all this importance which he has communicated to his female parts, 
 he is notoriously famed for his hatred of women. 
 
 The style of Euripides is upon the whole too loose, although he has 
 many happy images and ingenious turns: it has neither the dignity 
 nor the energy of the style of iEschylus, nor the chaste sweetness of 
 that of Sophocles. In his expressions he frequently affects the singu- 
 lar and uncommon, though at other times he becomes too familiar, 
 and the tone of discourse assumes a confidential appearance, and de- 
 scends from the elevation of the cothurnus to the level ground. In 
 this respect, he was a precursor of the New Comedy — hence Menan- 
 der expressed a most marked admiration for him, and proclaimed him- 
 self his scholar. The opinion of Aristophanes, his contemporary, 
 forms a striking contrast with this adoration. Aristophanes persecutes 
 him unceasingly, with the utmost bitterness : he seems as if he were 
 appointed to be his constant scourge — yet he never attacks Sophocles ; 
 and even when he takes the part of JEschylus, at which we can hard- 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC WRITERS — EURIPIDES, 27 
 
 ly help smiling, his reverence for him is still visible, and he takes every 
 opportunity of contrasting his gigantic powers with the petty refine- 
 ment of Euripides. 
 
 Notwithstanding these observations, we must never forget that 
 Euripides was still a Grecian, and the contemporary of many of the 
 greatest names of Greece, in politics, philosophy, history, and the 
 plastic arts. He has a particular strength in portraying the errors of 
 a diseased soul — pursuing, even to madness, the passions of which it 
 is the slave. He is admirable where the object calls chiefly for emo- 
 tion, and requires the display of no higher qualities; and he is still 
 more so where pathos and moral beauty are united. It is by no means 
 my intention to deny him the possession of the most astonishing ta- 
 lents; I have only stated that these talents were not united with a 
 mind in which the austerity of moral principles, and the sanctity of 
 religious feelings, were held in the highest honor. 
 
 he 
 
THE OLD COMEDY 
 
 Comedy, at its commencement, namely, in the hands of its Doric 
 founder, Epicharmus, borrowed its materials chiefly from the mythical 
 world. Even in its maturity, it appears not to have renounced this 
 choice altogether, as we may see from many of the titles of the lost 
 pieces of Aristophanes and his contemporaries ; and at a later period, 
 in the interval between the Old and New Comedy, for particular rea- 
 sons, it returned again to mythology with a peculiar degree of predi- 
 lection. But as the contrast between the materials and the form is 
 here in its proper place, and nothing can be more directly opposed to 
 the exhibition of the ludicrous than the most important and serious 
 concerns of men, the peculiar subject of the Old Comedy was natu- 
 rally therefore taken from public life and the state : it is altogether po- 
 litical ; and the private and family life, beyond which the New never 
 soars, was only introduced occasionally and indirectly, with a refer- 
 ence to the public. The Chorus is therefore essential to it, as being 
 in some sort a representation of the public: it must by no means be 
 considered as something accidental, which we may account for in the 
 local origin of Old Comedy ; we may assign as a more substantial 
 reason, that it belongs to the complete parody of the Tragic form. 
 It contributes also to the expression of that festal gladness, of which 
 Comedy was the most unrestrained effusion. For in all the popular 
 and religious festivals of the Greeks, choral songs, accompanied by 
 dancing, were exhibited. The Comic Chorus transforms itself occa- 
 sionally into such an expression of public joy ; as, for instance, when 
 the women who celebrate the Thesmophorias, in the piece that bears 
 that name, in the midst of the most amusing drolleries, begin to chaunt 
 their melodious hymn in honor of the gods of the festival, in the same 
 manner as took place on a real occasion. At these times we observe 
 such a display of sublime Lyric Poetry, that the passages may be 
 transplanted into Tragedy without any change or modification. The 
 most remarkable peculiarity of the Comic Chorus is the Parabasis, an 
 address to the spectators by the Chorus, in the name and under the 
 authority of the poet, which has no concern with the subject of the 
 piece. Sometimes he enlarges on his own merits, and ridicules the 
 pretensions of his rivals; at other times he avails himself of his rights 
 
THE OLD COMEDfi ffl 
 
 as an Athenian citizen, to deliver in every assembly of the people pro- 
 posals of a serious or ludicrous nature for the public good. The Par- 
 abasis may, strictly speaking, be considered as repugnant to the essence 
 of dramatic representation : for in the Drama, the poet should always 
 disappear behind the characters ; and these characters ought to dis- 
 course and act as if they were alone, and without any perceptible re- 
 ference to the spectators. 
 
 We have now but one Comic writer of the old kind ; and we cannot, 
 therefore, in forming an opinion of his merits, derive any assistance 
 from a comparison with other masters. Aristophanes had many pre- 
 decessors ; Magnes, Cratinus, Crates, and others. He was indeed 
 one of the latest Comic authors, as he survived even the Old Come- 
 dy itself. We have no reason, however, to believe that we witness its 
 decline in him ; for in all probability the Old Comedy was still rising 
 in merit, and he himself one of its most perfect poets. It was very 
 different with the Old Comedy, and with Tragedy ; the latter died a 
 natural, the former a violent death. Tragedy ceased to exist, because 
 that species of poetry seemed to be exhausted — because it was aban- 
 doned — and because ho person could again rise to the same elevation. 
 Comedy was deprived by the hand of power of that unrestrained free- 
 dom which was necessary to its existence. Horace, in a few words, 
 informs us of this catastrophe : 
 
 Successit vetus his Comcedia, non sine multa 
 Laude, sed in vitium libertas excidit, et vim 
 Dignam lege regi : lex est accepta : chorusqu© 
 Turpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi. 
 
 The period comprehended within the range of the Old Comedy be- 
 gins with Epicharmus, Olymp. 70, (B. C. 500,) and concludes about 
 Olymp. 100 (B. C. 375) ; the poets Strattis and Theopompus being 
 among the latest writers of the Old Comedy. 
 
 CRATINUS 
 
 Was the author of twenty-one Plays, and gained the victory nine 
 times, according to Suidas. He was born Olymp. 65, 1, and died at 
 an advanced age, about Olymp. 89. He is described as having pos- 
 sessed all the bitterness of Archilochus, together with the energy and 
 fire of iEschylus. The titles and fragments of about twenty of hia 
 plays are to be found in Athenaaus, 
 
30. SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 EUPOLIS 
 
 Was born about Olymp. 83; first began tp exhibit Olymp. 87, 3, 
 being then only 17 years of age. He copied Cratinus, but was reck- 
 oned to have possessed more elevation and amenity. Suidas says he 
 wrote seventeen Plays, and gained the victory seven time? ; but he is 
 doubtless mistaken, since many more than seventeen are mentioned 
 by ancient writers. 
 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 The notice of this poet by Suidas is very short and incorrect ; he 
 makes him a Rhodian or Lindian by birth, his father's name being 
 Philip. His Plays were fifty-four. Titles and fragments of nearly 
 this number, are to be found in Athenaeus. He first exhibited Comedy 
 at Olymp. 88, 2 (B. C. 427.) The Acharnae was exhibited two years 
 afterwards, and during the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. It 
 is therefore the first of his surviving plays ; the Plutus being the last 
 which was exhibited Olymp. 98, (B. C. 388.) 
 
MIDDLE COMEDY. 
 
 Within the period usually assigned to the Middle Comedy, are in- 
 cluded the Dramatic writers from Olymp. 101 to Olymp. 111. 
 
 "Towards the end of the Peloponnesian war," says Schlegel, 
 "when a few individuals, contrary to the Constitution, had assumed 
 the supreme power in Athens, a law was enacted, empowering- every 
 person attacked by Comic poets to bring them to justice ; and a pro- 
 hibition was issued against the introduction of real persons on the 
 stage, or the use of such masks as bore a resemblance to their features, 
 &c. This gave rise to what is called the Middle Comedy. Its dis- 
 tinctive peculiarities are variously stated: at one time, in the absti- 
 nence from personal satire, and the introduction jof real characters ; 
 and at another time in the dismissal of the Chorus. v Tfoe introduc- 
 tion of real persons under their true names, was at no time an indis- 
 pensable requisite. We find characters in many pieces, even of Aris- 
 tophanes, in no respect historical, but altogether fictitious, with sig- 
 nificant names, in the manner of the New Comedy; and personal 
 satire is only occasionally resorted to. The right of personal satire 
 was no doubt essential to the Old Comedy ; and by losing this right 
 the Comic writers were no longer enabled to throw ridicule on public 
 actions and the state. When they confined themselves to private life, 
 the Chorus ceased to have any longer a signification. An accidental 
 circumstance contributed to accelerate its removal. The dress and 
 instruction of the Chorus required a great outlay ; but when Comedy 
 came to forfeit its political privileges, and consequently also its festal 
 dignity, and was degraded to a mere source of amusement, the poet 
 found no longer any rich patrons to defray the expense of the 
 Chorus." 
 
 This account of Schlegel will perhaps be deemed very unsatisfac- 
 tory ; as it certainly is in a critical point of view, since it does not at- 
 tempt to define the precise limits between the Middle and the New 
 Comedy. The following extract, therefore, is annexed from the Pre- 
 face of that excellent work, the Fasti Hellenici : 
 
 "The new Comedy commenced in the reign of Alexander, and 
 this is confirmed by the dates assigned to Philippides and Philemon. 
 
-32 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 And yet we have Alexis of the Middle Comedy writing for the stage 
 thirty years after the first exhibitions of Philippides and Philemon. 
 Alexis then, whose works were the standard and example of the Mid' 
 die Comedy, was for thirty years contemporary with Philippides, Phi- 
 lemon, Menander, and Diphilus, writers of the New Comedy. 
 
 " Neither are the terms middle and new always very carefully ap- 
 plied. Aristotle recognises only two species of Comedy, the old and 
 the new. Nicostratus, the contemporary of Eubulus and Araros, and 
 accounted by some the son of Aristophanes, (which determines his 
 age,) is reckoned by Harpocratio among the writers of the New Comedy. 
 It is to be noted, however, that although the poets of the Middle 
 Comedy are often called of the new, yet the poets of the New Comedy, 
 properly so termed, could never be called poets of the Middle Comedy. 
 We must, therefore, suppose that Alexis, although a great number of 
 his dramas were written long after the New Comedy had arrived at its 
 perfection, nevertheless continued to compose upon the model of the 
 Middle Comedy." 
 
 Hence it may be seen how difficult it is to define any precise limits 
 between these two divisions of Comedy, although ancient critics pretty 
 generally admit a distinction between them. The law respecting the 
 introduction upon the stage of any character by name, first gave rise 
 to the Middle Comedy, and may be regarded as an interval of vacilla- 
 tion between the interdiction of the old and the establishment of a 
 new comic form. 
 
 Kuster's translation of this law is, neminem expresso nomine loidi. 
 In this sense the law is understood, and this seems the opinion gene- 
 rally received by critics of its date and meaning. Such an import, 
 however, of the law, is by no means warranted by the extant remains 
 of the Middle and New Comedy. That law, in the sense of Kuster, 
 either never existed at all, or had fallen into disuse in the time of 
 AnaxandrideSj who ridicules Plato by name perhaps ten or twelve 
 years after the supposed date of this law. (Olymp. 97. B. C. 392.) 
 Alexis, at least, paid no attention to it, (if it existed through the 
 times of the Middle Comedy,) when he satirized by name the same 
 philosopher in four different dramas; nor did Anaxilas regard it, who 
 in three Comedies names Plato. But in the time of the Middle 
 Comedy, at whose rise democratic^ in oligarchial mutata divites im- 
 perare caperunt, the philosophers were ridiculed, and the chief men of 
 the state protected:" — the opinion of Jonsius. The former, there- 
 fore, were attacked by name, but the poets, after the date of that law, 
 abstained from public men. And yet Anaxandrides mentions Poly- 
 enctus by name ; Antiphanes names Demosthenes ; and Timocles, in 
 a Comedy written towards the end of the reign of Alexander, ridi- 
 
MIDDLE COMEDY — ARAROS ANAXANDRIDES. 33 
 
 fcules by name five of the leading demagogues at once, in a passage 
 which breathes the very spirit of the Old Comedy. The reader who 
 opens Athenaeus will see abundant evidence that the poets of the 
 Middle and New Comedy laid themselves under little restraint in this 
 respect. 
 
 This law, then, when limited to its proper sense, is by no means 
 inconsistent with a great degree of Comic liberty, or with those ani- 
 madversions upon eminent names with which we find the Comic 
 Poets actually to abound. Comedy, therefore, although its form was 
 changed, enjoyed the privilege of animadverting still upon public 
 events and public men : and we find Isocrates in tins midst of this 
 period complaining of the license of Comedy. 
 
 Neither is the date of this law so clear to us. The testimony 
 quoted by Petitus ascribes the proposition to one Antimachus. But 
 another scholiast ascribes it to one Syracusius, B. C. 415. But as no 
 such law could have existed so early, we must suppose the proposi- 
 tion of Syracusius, for that time at least, to have failed, and the poets 
 to have chastised him for the attempt, although unsuccessful. If the 
 account of Platonius is to have any weight, the enactment happened 
 during the government of the Thirty : for that is the only period with- 
 in these times, to which those descriptions could be applied-— demo- 
 cratia in oligarchiam mutata, Sec. — which would bring the date within 
 the 94th Olympiad, B. C. 404. 
 
 ARAROS, 
 
 The son of Aristophanes, was a writer of the Middle Comedy, and 
 exhibited at the same period as his father. He seems to have been 
 but an indifferent poet. 
 
 ANAXANDRIDES, 
 
 Of the Middle Comedy, nourished about Olymp. 101. According 
 to Suidas, he laid the foundation for a vicious stage by the introduc- 
 tion of subjects revolting to decency. Athenasus relates of him, that 
 those Comedies which did not gain the victory, he consigned over as 
 waste paper to the perfumers, who had their shops in the forum, dis- 
 daining to withdraw and retouch them, as was usual with the other 
 poets. 
 
 5 
 
34 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 ALEXIS, 
 
 Of the Middle Comedy, flourished about Olymp. 106. Suidas says 
 he was the uncle of Menander, and composed 245 Comedies. The 
 sportive sallies of Alexis obtained for him, with Athenaeus, the title 
 of "the graceful" and upwards of 120 of his Comedies are commem- 
 orated in that storehouse of lost literature. Alexis was still living in 
 the time of Antigonus and Demetrius, Olymp. 118. 
 
 MENANDER, 
 
 A writer of the New Comedy, was born Olymp. 109, 3. He was 
 the nephew of Alexis, who instructed him. His father, Diopithes, 
 was commander of the Athenian forces on the Hellespont. He died 
 Olymp. 122, 1. Menander exhibited his first Comedy Olymp. 114, 
 being at that time in his 21st year. According to Suidas he wrote 108 
 Comedies, which are all, except one, enumerated by Meursius in Bib- 
 liotheca Attica* 
 
THEATRE. 
 
 The Theatre at Athens was at first a temporary building in the 
 Forum, constructed of wooden planks. 
 
 This having given way during the representation of a play of Pra- 
 tinus or of iEschylus, a more substantial one, built of stone, was 
 erected at the south-east corner of the Acropolis. This Theatre was 
 quite open above, and the plays were always represented in open day, 
 and beneath the canopy of heaven. When overtaken by a storm or a 
 shower, the representation of a piece suffered a temporary suspension, 
 the spectators seeking shelter beneath the porticoes of the neighbor- 
 ing edifices. The Theatres of the ancients were, in comparison with 
 the small scale of ours, of a colossal magnitude, partly for the sake of 
 containing the whole of the people, with the concourse of strangers 
 who flocked to the festivals ; and partly to correspond with the majesty 
 of the dramas represented in them, which required to be seen at a 
 respectful distance. 
 
 It appears that the Theatre was filled four times a day, and was ca- 
 pable of containing thirty thousand spectators. According to Pollux, 
 it was termed indifferently Dionysiacum Theatrum, and Lenaicum. 
 The seats of the spectators consisted of steps, which rose backwards 
 round the semicircle of the orchestra. The judges appointed by the 
 Archon to decide upon the merits of the respective authors, usually 
 occupied the first seat. The spectators testified their disapprobation 
 by beating the seats with their heels. Women do not appear to have 
 been excluded from witnessing the dramatic representations, — an 
 opinion confirmed by the well-known story of the Eumenides of 
 iEschylus. 
 
 That portion of the Theatre appropriated to the performances was 
 divided into, 1. Scena, the whole stage ; %.*Logion, in Latin pulpitum, 
 that part where the actors stood ; 3. Orchestra, a semicircular space 
 before the Logion, and a little lower than it, on which was the Thy- 
 mele, or Altar of Bacchus. 4. Hyposcenium or Conistra, the floor of 
 which was on a level with the area of the Theatre, a space decorated 
 with columns and statues. The usual place for the persons who 
 spoke was in the middle of the Logion, behind which middle part the 
 scene went inwards in a quadrangular form, with less depth, how- 
 
36 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 ever, than breadth. The space here comprehended was called Pro- 
 scenium. 
 
 The place beneath the stage, which served perhaps, in some re- 
 spects, the purposes of a modern Green-room, was termed Hyposce- 
 nium, and that above it-Episcenium. The wings of the scenes were 
 Called Paracenia, corresponding perhaps to our Opera term slips. 
 
 The decoration was contrived in such a manner that the principal 
 object in front covered the back ground, and the prospects of distance 
 were given at the two sides; the very reverse of the mode adopted by 
 us. The former was so arranged as to admit of being withdrawn, by 
 opening in the middle, and disappearing at both sides ; the latter were 
 composed of triangles, which turned on an axis fastened underneath, 
 and in this manner a change of scene was effected. 
 
 In the back wall of the scene there was a large main entrance, and 
 two side entrances. It has been maintained, that from them it might 
 be discovered whether an actor played a principal or under part; as 
 in the first case he came in at the main entrance, and in the second 
 at the side doors. But this should be understood with the distinction 
 that it must have been regulated according to the nature of the piece. 
 As the hindmost decoration was generally a palace, in which the prin- 
 cipal characters of rOyal descent resided, they naturally came through 
 the great door, while the servants resided in the wings. There were 
 two other entrances; the one at the end of the Logionjrom whence the 
 inhabitants of the town came; the other underneath in the orchestra, 
 which was the side for those who had to come from a distance. They 
 ascended a staircase of the Logion, opposite to the orchestra, which 
 could be applied to all sorts of purposes, according to circumstances. 
 The entrance, therefore, with respect to the lateral decorations, de- 
 clared the place from whence the players were supposed to come ; 
 and it might naturally happen that the principal characters were in a 
 situation to avail themselves with propriety of the two last mentioned 
 entrances. The situation of these entrances serves to explain many 
 passages in the ancient dramas, where the persons standing in the 
 middle see some one advancing long before he approaches them. 
 Before the principal doorway was an altar, consecrated to Apollo or 
 Bacchus, or perhaps to both. 
 
 The particular scenes and machinery employed on the Greek stage 
 were numerous and complicated. Beneath the seats of the spectators 
 a stair or ladder was somewhere constructed, which was called Cha- 
 ronic, and through which the shadows of the dead, without being per- 
 ceived by the audience, ascended into the orchestra, and then, by the 
 stair before mentioned, made their appearance on the stage. The 
 rolling platform for their sea-gods, and a machine of a semicircular 
 
THEATRE — ACTORS. 37 
 
 form within, and covered above, which being protruded, represented 
 the objects contained in it as in a house ; the beacon ; the sky-plat- 
 form for the gods ; the crane, by which the actors were borne into the 
 air by means of ropes; the artificial thunder and lightning machines ; 
 the machine on which the deities descended ; the catahlemata, or a 
 sort of embroidered pictures, representing the sea, a river, or some 
 other device. 
 
 OF THE ACTORS. 
 
 The actors were termed indifferently hypocrita or agonista. The 
 ancient signification of the verb from which the word hypocrita is de- 
 rived was to answer; hypocrita, therefore, was the person who answered 
 the Chorus ; and as he supported a feigned character, the verb came 
 by degrees to signify acting, personating. They might be termed 
 agonists from the circumstance of their contending for the prize in 
 the tragic contests, as well as the poets. No actresses were admitted 
 on the Greek stage. He who performed the principal part was called 
 protagonista, the second deuteragonista, and the third tritagonista. 
 Pollux says that when a fourth actor did say any thing it was called 
 parachoregema, and observes that this occurs in the Agamemnon of 
 iEschylus.* They seem to have introduced not only living mutes 
 upon the stage, but also figures dressed up to represent men. 
 
 OF THE DRESS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE ACTORS. 
 
 The ancient performers wore masks adapted to their respective 
 characters. This, of course, precluded that expression of counte- 
 nance to which we are accustomed in our Theatres : but we must re- 
 
 *Neither Tyrwhitt nor the Reviewer has noticed the scene in the Andromache of 
 Euripides, (v. 546,) in which Peleus enters and interrupts a conversation between 
 Andromache, Molossus, and Menelaus. Here are evidently four actors on the stage 
 at the same time, although Molossus does not open his lips after the entrance of 
 Peleus ; and it is probable that young children did not fall within the rigor of the 
 law. If the reader will forgive us for making a pun, which is suggested to us by 
 dire experience, we will venture to compare the rules of the Athenian stage with 
 those of the Kensington stage, in which three men, three women, and three chil- 
 dren are counted for only six passengers. The Medea and Alcestis of Euripides are 
 the only other Greek Tragedies in which children speak.— P. Emsletfs Review of 
 Herman's Supplices, v. 350. 
 
38 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 collect that this expression would have been unobserved in the colos- 
 sal Theatres of the ancients. They seem also to have supposed that 
 a certain physiognomy was essential to the representation of a certain 
 character; the design of the mask was, therefore, in exact conformity 
 to the ideal conception of the person to be represented. These masks 
 were a species of casque which covered the whole head, representing, 
 besides the features of the face, the beard, hair, ears, and ornaments 
 appropriate to the character represented. The ancient gloss to one 
 of the Greek words rendered by the Latin term personatio, is that the 
 word in question is the name for a broad leafy plant, called personata 
 by Pliny, who describes it as one cujus folio nullum est latins. In the 
 infancy of the theatrical art, such leaves were probably used for masks ; 
 which, by gradual improvement, gave rise to the more masterly pro- 
 ductions of a later age. These were so contrived as to answer the 
 purpose of a speaking trumpet, and to make the actor's voice sonor- 
 ous and loud. 
 
 As the features of the player acquired a more decided expression 
 from the mask, as his voice was strengthened by a contrivance for that 
 purpose, the cothurni, which consisted of several considerable addi- 
 tions to his soles, as we may see in the ancient statues of Melpomene, 
 raised in like manner his figure considerably above the middle stand- 
 ard. What the Comedians wore was called the sock. The invention 
 of the buskin is attributed by some to JEschylus, by others to Sopho- 
 cles, as Servius relates in his notes on Virgil, Eel. 8, 10. Sola Sopho- 
 cleo tua carmina digna cothurno. 
 
 The long vests worn in Tragedy were called JEtolian ; and the 
 general style of the Tragic dress was copied from that of the Thessa- 
 lians, who, on account of the coldness of their climate, wore longer 
 clothes than the rest of the Greeks. For a particular description of 
 the vests assigned to various characters, see Pollux, lib. 4, c. 18. It 
 will be sufficient to notice in this place that the dresses and attributes 
 of the actors were conformable to the characters they represented. 
 Thus Kings were dignified with diadems, sceptres, and embroidered 
 vests. Heroes were enveloped with skins of lions, tigers, &c, and 
 armed with swords, clubs, or spears. In short, the age, sex, and ac- 
 tual situation of each actor announced itself by the dress and attri- 
 butes assigned him. 
 
 OF THE CHORUS. 
 
 The Chorus, which was originally performed by one person, and 
 which was considered as the main business of the representation, by 
 
THEATRE THE CHORUS. 39 
 
 degrees became subordinate to the acting. But in order to gratify the 
 love of spectacle, which distinguished the Athenians, succeeding 
 poets increased the number of those who danced and sang; but the 
 Chorus was still considered as one actor, and joined in the dialogue 
 by means of its head, called Coryphazus. They performed regular 
 dances, accommodated, it should seem, to the measure of the verse 
 which they sang. They seem to have danced one way while singing 
 the strophe, and another during the antistrophe, and to have stood still, 
 or to have performed the evolution which dancing-masters call &pous- 
 ser, during the epode. But all this is very uncertain. When the 
 Tragic Chorus consisted of fifteen, it stood either in three rows of five 
 each, or in five rows of three each. But in Comedy, where the Cho- 
 rus consisted of twenty-four, they were ranged in rows of four each. 
 The dividing of the Chorus into two parts was called dichoria; each 
 division hemichorion, and their alternate songs antichoria. Its first en- 
 trance upon the stage was called parodus, its temporary retreat from 
 the stage metanastasis, and its return epiparodus — its final exit apho- 
 dus. The person who assigned to each of the Chorus their proper 
 places, was called chorodectes. It appears that the Choryphaei stood 
 in the centres of their respective divisions. It appears that the Cho- 
 rus entered the orchestra from the right side of the Theatre, and 
 danced across it to the left. The less conspicuous situations in the 
 Chorus were called hypocolpia. Lines were drawn on the floor of the 
 orchestra, along which the ranks were to move. 
 
 The species of dances performed by the Tragic and Comic Cho- 
 ruses were called respectively emmeleia and cordax; the kind adapted 
 to Satyrs was termed sicinnis. 
 
 With respect to the music of the Chorus, Dr. Bentley says that the 
 dialect which it used was Doric, being best adapted to the Doric mood 
 in which it sang. The dialect of the Chorus was the remains of its 
 original rusticity ; for it appears from Aristotle that the invention of 
 Tragedy was claimed by the Dorians. And it is not by any means 
 clear that the Chorus always used the Doric mood.. It is more pro- 
 bable that they varied the mood according to the subject. Athenasus, 
 speaking of the JEolic, Doric, and Ionic moods, says that the last, 
 "by reason of its grave, and harsh, and pompous character, is well 
 suited to Tragedy." Plutarch, or the author of the treatise de Mu- 
 sica, says that " the Mixo-lydian mood is pathetic, and fit for Trage- 
 dies ; that the inventress of it was Sappho, from whom the Tragedians 
 learned it, and combined it with the Doric ; and further, that it was 
 akin to the Ionic mood, which observation illustrates the passage of 
 Athenaeus. The reader will bear in mind, that we are all along con- 
 sidering the Chorus of Tragedy. 
 
40 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 The early Tragic poets taught their own Choruses to dance. Athe^ 
 naeus tells us that " the ancient poets, Thespis, Pratinus, Careinus r 
 and Phrynichus, were called orchestici, because they not only used 
 much dancing in the Choruses of their plays, but were themselves 
 common dancing-masters, teaching any body that had a mind to learn. 
 Again, Chamselion says, that iEschylus was the first person who taught 
 his Chorus figure-dances ; not having recourse to professed masters, 
 but inventing himself the figures to be danced by them." Afterwards 
 there were regular didascali, who undertook for a certain sum to teach 
 the Chorus ; and, in some instances, furnished the Chorus for hire. 
 
 The orchestra was semicircular, for which reason it was called in 
 later times sigma, from its resemblance to the form of that letter. The 
 place where the Chorus was taught was called Chorageion. A stage 
 curtain is mentioned both by Greek and Roman writers, and the 
 Latin appellatidn aulceum is even borrowed from the Greeks. It was 
 not perhaps in use on the Attic stage at its commencement. This 
 curtain was not dropped, but drawn upwards ; as appears from Ovid's 
 Metamorph. 1. 3. 
 
 Inde, fide majus, glebce coepere moveri, 
 Primaque de salcis acies apparuit hastce : 
 Tegmina mox capitum picto mutantia cono ' r 
 
 Mox humeri, pectusque 
 
 — Sic ubi tolluntur festis aulcea theatris, 
 
 Surgere signa solent, primumque ostendere vultu^ 
 
 OF THE TRAGIC CONTESTS. 
 
 The dramatic contests always took place at the Dionysia, or festi- 
 vals of Bacchus, which were under the immediate superintendence of 
 the first Archon, and of which three were holden every year. 
 
 1. The less, or the rural Dionysia, celebrated in the month Po- 
 seideon, — the sixth Attic month, answering to the latter part of De- 
 cember and the beginning of January. 
 
 % The Lenoza, or those in Limnoz, so called from Limnce, a part of 
 the city near the Acropolis, in which was an enclosure sacred to Bac- 
 chus, called Lenaium, from lenos, a wine press. In this enclosure 
 plays were acted, the audience being placed upon a wooden scaf- 
 folding. But afterwards a regular theatre was erected. This festival 
 was celebrated in the eighth month, Anthesterion, originally called 
 
THEATRE — TRAGIC CONTESTS, 41 
 
 lencean, answering to part of February and March.* The festival it» 
 self, in later times, went by the name of the Anthesteria, and was holden 
 on three consecutive days, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth of the 
 month. The first day's ceremonies were called the broachings ; those 
 of the second day, the cups, or drinking bout; those of the third, the 
 messes of pottage. 
 
 3. The greater, or civic Dionysia, holden in the ninth month, 
 Elaphebolion, answering to part of March and April, and about the 
 17th day of the month ; and this festival is always to be understood 
 when the words the Dionysia are used by themselves. Dramatic re- 
 presentations were introduced at all these festivals, but prizes were 
 contended for only in the last two, the Comedians most commonly 
 contending at the former, and the Tragedians at the latter. 
 
 The Tragic Contests must always have taken place at the great 
 Dionysia, for at that festival the new plays were represented and new 
 actors appointed by lot, as appears from several decrees quoted 
 iEschines and Demosthenes, and the reason seems to have been this i 
 at that festival, strangers from various parts of Greece, and especially 
 deputies from all the tributary states of Athens, were present in that 
 city ; whereas, at the Lenosa, none but the inhabitants of Attica com- 
 posed the audience. 
 
 It appears, then, that although Tragedies were acted on the Lencsari 
 festival, the contests of new pieces took place at th© civic Dionysia. 
 These were made a national concern ; they «-ere regulated by laws ; 
 and the expense of paying and equipping the Choruses was one of 
 the state burthens, imposed upon the richer members of the commu- 
 nity. This charge was called choragia, and the person who bore it 
 choragus. The different choragia, were assigned to the different tribes 
 in their turns, and the epimeletce of the tribe fixed them before the 
 Dionysia on some wealthy individuals. 
 
 The poets who were desirous of contending for the prize, present*- 
 ed their pieces to the first Archon, whose business it was to see that 
 the choragi gave their Choruses to none but those who deserved it. 
 Casaubon and others tell us, that the phrase to give a Chorus, was 
 used of the choragus ; but it rather belonged to the Archon, before 
 whom the demand for a Chorus was made, and who was accordingly 
 said to give a Chorus when he appointed a choragus to pay the poet's 
 expenses. This regulation was made to secure the representation of 
 the best pieces. The choragus of a Chorus of boys was obliged by 
 law to be above the age of forty years. What age was fixed for the 
 
 * Palmerius and others have confounded the Lenoea with the rural Dionysia, buf 
 Buhnkenius has clearly shown that the Lenoea were the same as the Anthesteria. 
 6 
 
42 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 other choragi is uncertain. Another law enacted that no foreigner 
 should dance in the Choruses, under the penalty of 1000 drachms, 
 to be paid by the choragus ; but this referred only to the greater Dio- 
 nysia — for, at the Lencean exhibitions it was lawful to introduce for- 
 eign dancers. At the latter festival, the metazci also were choragi. 
 
 Sometimes the expenses of the Chorus were voluntarily undertaken 
 by some spirited individual, or by the poet himself. Sometimes the 
 state was the choragus. The plays of iEschylus were acted a second 
 time after his death at the public expense. 
 
 The Archon also, it seems, assigned by lot to the different poets 
 three actors apiece ; but the poet who obtained the prize was allowed 
 to select his own performers for the next year. 
 
 The contending choragi were called antichoragi ; the poetical or 
 musical candidates antididascali ; the actors antitechni. 
 
 The names of successful choragi and poets were proclaimed to the 
 people. 
 
 The choragus consecrated to Bacchus a tripod, inscribed with the 
 names of himself and his poet and the Archon. But perhaps this is 
 true only of the Dithryambic contests. The Tragic victor seems to 
 have consecrated a tablet or marble slab. Some think that the actor's 
 name was never mentioned in these inscriptions. We certainly do 
 not find it in any of the fragments Which remain to us of the Attic 
 Didascaliae ; but since the Hypocrita is mentioned in a marble of un* 
 certain date and place, in. the Oxford edition, p. 63, and in the Orcho- 
 menian inscription, it is probable that in later times the actor's name 
 was added to those of the choragus at>d poet. 
 
 The successful poet was honored with a crown of ivy, as were also 
 the actors of the successful pieces ; and the pott, with the chorentae, 
 sacrificed the epinicia, to which his friends were invited. 
 
 The prizes were awarded by judges appointed by the Archon ; usu- 
 ally five in number, but not always. Their decision, as might have 
 been expected, was not always impartial. The judges of the Cyclian 
 Choruses, as we learn from iEschines, were punishable by fine if they 
 decided contrary to justice. 
 
 The tripods and tablets commemorative of the Dionysiac conquer- 
 ors were placed in the Lencean temple of Bacchus. From these, 
 different authors at various times compiled chronological accounts of 
 the dramatic contests, giving the names of the three first competitors, 
 the titles of their plays, the success of each, and the name of the Ar- 
 Ghon in whose magistracy they were performed. 
 
 There is no mention in the Museum Criticum (from which this ac- 
 count is almost entirely taken) of the price paid for admission to the 
 Theatres. In the early stage of the art nothing seems to have been 
 
THEATRE — TRAGIC CONTESTS. 43 
 
 exacted from the spectators ; but such gratuitous admission giving rise 
 to many vexatious disputes about places, a law passed fixing the price 
 of admission to one drachma each person. This sum was soon, re- 
 duced by Pericles to an obolus — evidently for the purpose of- attach- 
 ing the poorer people more firmly to his interest ; and he likewise 
 procured a law to be enacted by which the magistrates were bound to 
 distribute two oboli to each person- — one to defray the expenses of 
 admission, and the other to procure him refreshment during the repre- 
 sentation. That the spectators were not accustomed to sit fasting, 
 but regaled themselves with cakes and nuts and wine during the per- 
 formance, ^ve learn from Athenasus, 11, p. 464, f. The fund appro- 
 priated for this purpose was termed theorica chremata, and the two 
 oboli given to each person, theor\con. 
 
laru 
 
DRAMATIC CHRONOLOGY OF 
 THE GREEKS. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 535 
 
 ARCHONS. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 m m m ' m 
 
 Thespis first exhibited Tragedy. 
 
 525 
 
 - 
 
 Birth of iEschylus. 
 
 523 
 
 - 
 
 Choerilus first exhibited Tragedy. 
 
 524 
 
 01. 64. Miltiades. 
 
 
 519 
 
 - 
 
 Birth of Cratinus, the Comic Poet. 
 
 511 
 
 * * - 
 
 Phrynichus, the Tragic Poet, vic- 
 torious. 
 
 508 
 
 01. 68. Isagoras. - 
 
 Institution of the chorus of men. 
 
 500 
 
 01. 70. Myrus. - 
 
 Epicharmus perfected Comedy in 
 Sicily. 
 
 495 
 
 Philippus. - 
 
 Birth of Sophocles. 
 
 490 
 
 Phoenippus. - $ 
 
 iEschylus present at Marathon, 
 set. 35. 
 
 487 
 
 - 
 
 Chionides first exhibits. 
 
 485 
 
 Philocrates. 
 
 Epicharmus continues to write 
 Comedy. 
 
 484 
 
 01. 74. Leostratus. 
 
 iEschylus gains the prize in Trag- 
 edy. 
 
 480 
 
 01. 75. Calliades. 
 
 Birth of Euripides. 
 
 476 
 
 01. 76. Phcedon. - 
 
 Phrynichus victor in Tragedy. 
 
 472 
 
 01. 77. Chares. - 
 
 iEschylus victor with the tetralo- 
 
 
 
 gy — Phineus, Persce, Glaucus 
 Potnieus, and Prometheus Sa- 
 tyricus. 
 
 468 
 
 01. 78. Theagenides. - 
 
 First Tragic victory of Sophocles. 
 
 458 
 
 Bion. - 
 
 Orestean tetralogy of iEschylus. 
 
 456 
 
 01. 81. Callias. - 
 
 Death of iEschylus. 
 
 455 
 
 Sosistratus. 
 
 Euripides began to exhibit, set. 26. 
 
 450 
 
 Euthydemus. 
 
 Crates, the Comic Poet, and Bac- 
 
 
 •% 
 
 chylides, flourished. 
 
 447 
 
 Timarchides. 
 
 Achseus and Sophocles exhibit 
 
 
 
 Tragedy. 
 
46 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 B. C. 
 
 441 
 
 ARCHONS. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Timocles. -''-.- 
 
 Euripides gains the prize in Trag- 
 edy. 
 A decree to prohibit Comedy. 
 
 440 
 
 01. 85. Myrichides. 
 
 443 
 
 Euthymenes. 
 
 The prohibition of Comedy is re- 
 pealed in the year of Euthymenes. 
 
 436 
 
 01. 86. Lysimachus. 
 
 Cratinus, the Comic Poet, victor. 
 
 435 
 
 Antolichides. 
 
 Phrynichus, the Comic Poet, first 
 exhibited. 
 
 431 
 
 Euthydemus. 
 
 The Medea of Euripides. 
 
 428 
 
 01. 88. Diotimus. 
 
 Hippolytus^of Euripides. 
 
 427 
 
 Euclides. 
 
 
 426 
 
 Euthydemus. 
 
 Babylonii of Aristophanes. 
 
 425 
 
 Stratocles. 
 
 Acharn. do., in the 6th year of the 
 Peloponnesian war. 
 
 424 
 
 01. 89. Isarchus. - 
 
 Equites do. 
 
 423 
 
 Ameinias. - 
 
 1. Nubes do. 
 
 422 
 
 Alcaeus. - 
 
 Vespas and Nubes 2. do. 
 
 421 
 
 Aristion. - - , 
 
 Eupolides exhibits. 
 
 419 
 
 Archias. -.'-'- 
 
 Pax of Aristophanes, in the 13th 
 year of the Peloponnesian war. 
 
 416 
 
 01. 91. Arimnestus. 
 
 Agathon gains the Tragic prize. 
 
 415 
 
 Chabrias. - 
 
 Xenocles first with Tetralogy, GE- 
 
 dipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, Atha- 
 
 mas Sat. 
 Euripides second with Tetralogy, 
 
 Paris, Palamedes, Trojans, Sisq- 
 
 phus Sat. 
 
 414 
 
 Pisander. - 
 
 Aristoph. Aves. 
 
 412 
 
 01. 92. Callias. - 
 
 Eurip. Andromeda. 
 
 411 
 
 Theopompus. 
 
 Aristoph. Lysistrate & Thesmaph. 
 
 409 
 
 Diocles. - 
 
 Soph. Philoctetes. 
 
 408 
 
 01. 93. Euctemon. 
 
 Eurip. Orestes. 
 
 407 
 
 Antigenes. 
 
 Birth of Antiphanes, the Comic 
 Poet. 
 
 406 
 
 Callias. 
 
 Death of Euripides. 
 
 405 
 
 Alexias. 
 
 Death' of Sophocles. 
 .Aristoph. Rana?. 
 
 401 
 
 Xensenetus. 
 
 Soph. (Edipus Coloneus exhibited. 
 
 396 
 
 01. 96. Phormion. 
 
 Sophocles, the son of Sophocles, 
 began to exhibit. 
 
 392 
 
 01. 97. Philocles. 
 
 Aristoph. Eccles. 
 
 388 
 
 01. 98. Pyrrhion. 
 
 AristopJi. Plutus 2. 
 
 387 
 
 Theodotus. 
 
 Antiphanes began to exhibit. 
 
 376 
 
 01. 101. Charisander. "- 
 
 Anaxandrides, the Comic Poet, 
 flourished. 
 
DRAMATIC CHRONOLOGY OF THE GREEKS. 
 
 47 
 
 B. C. 
 
 375 
 
 ARCHONS. 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Hippodamas. 
 
 Eubulus exhibited Comedy. 
 
 
 
 Araros first exhibited. 
 
 
 
 The exhibitions of Eubulus, Ara- 
 
 
 
 ros, and Anaxandrides, Poets of 
 
 
 
 the Middle Comedy, being refer- 
 
 
 
 red by the grammarians to the 
 
 
 
 101st Olympiad, and those of An- 
 
 
 
 tiphanes being after the 98th, we 
 
 
 
 may hence infer the period at 
 
 
 
 which the Middle Comedy was 
 
 
 
 reckoned to commence. 
 
 356 
 
 01. 106. Elpines. 
 
 Alexis, the Comic Poet, flourished 
 at this time. 
 
 348 
 
 01. 108. Theophilus. - 
 
 Heraclides, the Comic Poet, flour- 
 ished. 
 
 342 
 
 Sosigenes. - 
 
 Birth of Menander. 
 
 335 
 
 Euasnetus. 
 
 Philippides, the Comic Poet, flour- 
 ished. 
 
 330 
 
 Aristophon. 
 
 Philemon began to exhibit Come- 
 dy, during the reign of Alexan- 
 der, a little earlier than Menan- 
 der, and before 113th Olympiad. 
 
 324 
 
 01. 114. Hegesias. 
 
 Timocles, the Comic Poet, con- 
 tinued to exhibit Comedy after 
 this date ; since he ridiculed the 
 leading orators for taking bribes 
 from Harpalus. 
 
 321 
 
 Archippus. 
 
 Menander's Orge. 
 
 Euseb. 01. 114. 4. Menander pri- 
 
 mam fabulam cognomento Or- 
 
 gen docens superat. 
 
 291 
 
 .... 
 
 Death of Menander, ast. 52. 
 
 289 
 
 - 
 
 Posidippus begins to exhibit. Sui- 
 das. 
 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Posidippus Cassandreus, son of 
 Cyniscus, a Comic Poet, exhib- 
 ited in the third year from the 
 death of Menander. 
 
CONSTRUCTION 
 
 OF 
 
 GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 
 
CONSTRUCTION OF GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 
 
 Extract of Elmsley's Review of Porson*s Hecuba. 
 
 Our readers will recollect that the Preface to the Hecuba originally 
 appeared in the year J 797; and that the Supplement, the length of 
 which is four times that of the original preface, was added in the edi- 
 tion of 1802. The principal hero of the piece, although, after the 
 example of the heroes of many Tragedies, he is not produced upon 
 the Stage until the second act, is the learned Godofred Hermann ; 
 whom, for some reason or other, Mr. Porson appears to have consi- 
 dered rather as a personal enemy than as a literary antagonist. Almost 
 every line of Mr. Porson's Supplement contains an allusion to some 
 blunder committed by the above-mentioned learned personage, in one 
 or other of the two following works ; Godofredi Hermanni de Metris. 
 Euripidis Hecuba. Godofredi Hermanni ad earn et ad R. Porsoni 
 Notas Animadversiones. 
 
 Whoever wishes thoroughly to understand the Preface to Mr. Por- 
 son's edition of the Hecuba, ought "to devote his days and nights" 
 to the study of Mr. Hermann's edition of the same Tragedy. Those 
 persons who possess both editions, will do well in binding them in 
 one volume ; adding, if they think proper, the Diatribe extemporalis 
 of the vehement and injudicious Wakefield, and the excellent stric- 
 tures on Mr. Porson's Hecuba and Mr. Wakefield's Diatribe, which 
 appeared in the Monthly Review for 1799, and which are well known 
 to be written by a gentleman to whom Greek literature is more in- 
 debted than to any living scholar. 
 
 The greater part of the original Preface relates to the use of ana- 
 pests in tragic senarii. Should any scholar of the nineteenth century 
 venture to maintain the admissibility of an anapest, not included in a 
 proper name, into any place of a Greek tragic senarius, except the 
 first foot, he would assuredly be ranked with those persons, if any 
 such persons remain, who deny the motion of the earth, or the circu- 
 lation of the blood. Before the appearance of the Preface to the He- 
 cuba, critics were divided into two sects upon this subject; the more 
 rigid of which excluded anapests from all the even places ; whereas 
 the other admitted them promiscuously into any place except the last. 
 
52 CONSTRUCTION OF 
 
 • 
 
 Mr. Porson (p. 6) with his usual strictness in attributing the merit of 
 discoveries and improvements to the right owners, mentions an ob- 
 scure hint of the true doctrine, which is contained in the preface to 
 Morell's Thesaurus Grcecce Poeseos. By how little effect that hint 
 was followed, may be judged from the following words of the learned 
 Hermann (Metr. p. 150:) 
 
 " A trisyllabis pedibus Tragici Grseci maxime abstinuerunt, quan- 
 quam etiam in pari sede, sed admodum raro, anapestus invenitur. 
 Idque et Hephaestio notavit, et nuper Brunckius defendit." 
 
 A Tragic senarius, according to Mr. Porson (p. 20) admits an iam- 
 bus into any place ; a tribrach into any place except the sixth ; a 
 spondee into the first, third, and fifth ; a dactyl into the first and 
 third ; and an anapest into the first alone. So that the first foot of 
 the senarius is capable of five different forms ; the third of four ; the 
 fifth of three ; the second and fourth of two ; and the sixth of on?y 
 one. Two hundred and forty different varieties of the senarius may 
 be produced, without employing any combination of feet unauthorized 
 by Mr. Porson's rule. The Tragic Poets, however, do not often ad- 
 mit more than two trisyllabic feet into the same verse ; and never, if 
 our observation be accurate, more than three. The admission of ana- 
 pests into the second, third, fourth and fifth places, and of dactyls 
 into the fifth place, increases the varieties of the Comic senarius to 
 seven hundred and ten. The number would be eleven hundred and 
 twenty-five, if four hundred and fifteen combinations were not reject- 
 ed, because they exhibit a tribrach or a dactyl immediately before an 
 anapest. 
 
 No regular tragic senarius, of whatsoever feet it is composed, can 
 possibly exhibit two short syllables enclosed between two long ones, 
 or more than three long syllables without the intervention of a short 
 one. A moment's consideration will satisfy the reader, that all such 
 combinations of syllables are absolutely incompatible with the structure 
 of the verse. The inability to employ four or more long syllables to- 
 gether, is productive of so little practical inconvenience, that the 
 Tragedians appear to have acquiesced in it without difficulty. The 
 inadmissibility of two short syllables enclosed between two long ones, 
 is a much more serious grievance. Many persons of great eminence 
 have had the misfortune to bear name's constituted in that unaccom- 
 modating form. Such were Agialeus, iEndromache, Andromeda, An- 
 
 O O ' I.J 
 
 tigone, Antiope, Bellerophontes, Hermione, Hippodamia, Hvpsipyle, 
 Iphigenia, Laodamia, Zaomedon, Penelope, Protesilaus, Tiresias, and 
 a great many more of equal fame. Although all these persons were 
 admirably qualified by their names, as well as by their actions, to 
 shine in epic poetry, unhappily not one of them is capable of being 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 53 
 
 mentioned by name in a Tragic senarius composed in the regular 
 manner. There is also another class of persons not altogether so 
 unfortunate, whose names are excluded only in some of the oblique 
 cases : as Hippolytus, Neoptolemus, CEnomaus, Talthybius, &c. In 
 favour of all such persons, and perhaps of the names of places, which 
 are formed in the same manner, the Tragic poets occasionally trans- 
 gress the ordinary rules of their versification. Proper names, which 
 cannot enter the senarius in the regular way, are admitted into it in 
 two different manners : the first, of which Mr. Porson has not spoken, 
 consists in substituting a chori^mbus in the place of the first dipodia 
 of the verse. This practice has been adopted by JEschylus in two 
 well-known instances : Theb. 944. Ibid. 553. 
 
 The only other instance of this license, with which we are acquaint- 
 ed, is produced from a play of Sophocles by Priscian (p. 1328.) 
 
 The second and more usual way of introducing proper names of 
 this form into the verse, consists in admitting the two short syllables, 
 and the following long syllable of the proper name, as one foot, into 
 the second, third, fourth, or fifth place of the verse. We have not 
 observed more than one instance of this practice in the surviving plays 
 of JEschylus. 
 
 Sophocles and Euripides, however, will furnish examples in great 
 abundance. In the Orestes of Euripides, the name of Hermione 
 occurs in a senarius ten times. In nine of these instances, the ana- 
 pest occupies the fourth place in the verse. This last circumstance is 
 in a great measure the natural consequence of the predilection of the 
 Tragic Poets for the penthemimeral caesura. 
 
 We have some doubts whether the Tragedians ever extended this 
 license to patronymics. 
 
 A few senarii may be found, which contain anapests in some of the 
 four middle places, composed of the first three syllables of a proper 
 name. 
 
 As the Tragic trimeter iambic admits anapests when they are con- 
 tained in proper names, so it is not unreasonable to suppose, that the 
 Tragic tetrameter trochaic admits dactyls in similar circumstances, 
 and for the same reason. The thirty-two Tragedies, however, afford 
 only two examples of this practice, both of which are probably -corrupt. 
 
 With regard to unnecessary dactyls in this metre, it may be ob- 
 served, that they are liable to the same objections as unnecessary ana- 
 pests in iambic verses, together with the additional objection that they 
 are divided between two words. 
 
 According to Mr. Porson (p. 26.) the Poets of the sock agree with 
 their brethren of the buskin, in excluding dactyls from trochaic verses, 
 except in case of proper names. In the eleven comedies of Aristo- 
 
54 CONSTRUCTION OF 
 
 phanes, we have not discovered any genuine instance of a dactyl in a 
 verse of this measure. 
 
 We now return to the Tragic senarius, respecting which we find 
 two very important canons in the Preface to the Hecuba, besides those 
 which relate to the use of anapests. The first of these canons is, that 
 the third and fourth feet must not be included in the same word. Hoc 
 si fieri posset, says Mr. Porson, omnis rhythmus, omnes numeri fundi- 
 tus everterentur. This expression has, in some instances, been con- 
 strued rather too strictly, as if it were necessary that a Tragic senarius, 
 which has neither the penthemimeral nor the hepthimimeral ccesura, 
 should at least have a pause after the third foot. Such verses are in- 
 deed sufficiently common ; but a certain number may also be pro- 
 duced, which have no regular pause at all in the two middle feet. 
 
 Upon the whole, when we consider how frequently the first and 
 second, the second and third, the fourth and fifth, and the fifth and 
 sixth feet of the senarius are included in the same word, we cannot 
 agree with the learned Hermann (Hec. p. 141) in attributing to chance 
 the non-occurrence, or at least the extreme rarity, of verses which 
 exhibit the two middle feet similarly conjoined. 
 
 Mr. Porson's second canon may be conveniently expressed in the 
 following words : " The fifth syllable of the fifth foot of a Tragic 
 tetrameter iambic must be short, if it ends a word of two or more sylla- 
 bles, unless the second syllable of the same foot is a monosyllable which 
 is incapable of beginning a verse. 
 
 Dissyllables in which the vowel of the second syllable is elided, 
 are considered as monosyllables. 
 
 It may not be superfluous to mention, that we have discovered no 
 instance of the violation of Mr. Porson's canon in the fragments of 
 Simoriides, of Amorgus, and the other early iambic Poets, from whom 
 the Tragedians probably derived it. It is also strictly observed in the 
 Alexandra of Lycophron. > 
 
 Mr. Porson has omitted to mention, although it appears that he was 
 aware of the fact, that his canon is as applicable to those verses, the 
 first syllable of the fifth foot of which is a monosyllable which cannot 
 begin a verse, as to those in which it terminates a word of two or 
 more syllables. The instances to the contrary, which are to be found 
 in the thirty-two Tragedies, for the most part admit of very easy and 
 satisfactory emendations. 
 
 It may be laid down as a general rule, that the first syllable of the 
 fifth foot must be short, if it is followed by the slightest pause or break 
 of the sense. 
 
 It appears from what has been said, that the fifth foot of a Tragic 
 senarius cannot be a spondee, except in three cases. The first case, 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 55 
 
 the occurrence of which is by far the most frequent, is when both 
 syllables of the fifth foot are contained in the same word. The 
 second case is when the first syllable of the fifth foot is a monosylla- 
 ble which is not capable of beginning a verse, and which is not dis- 
 joined from the following syllable by any pause in the sense. The 
 third case is when the second syllable of the fifth foot is a monosyl- 
 lable, which, by being incapable of beginning a verse or a sentence, 
 is in some measure united to the preceding syllable. The- CEdipus 
 Tyrannus of Sophocles contains more than four hundred and twenty 
 of the first case, more than fifty of the second, and only one of the 
 third. We consider verses to which both the second and third cases 
 apply, as belonging to the second. With this reservation, we doubt 
 whether the thirty-two Tragedies will afford fifty genuine instances of 
 the third case. 
 
 Should the student be desirous of discovering the reasons which in- 
 duced the Tragic Poets to observe the rules respecting the fifth foot 
 of the senarius, which have been discovered and communicated to the 
 world by Mr. Porson, we profess ourselves unable to give him better 
 information than that which is delivered by the learned Hermann in 
 the following words (Hec. p. 109:) " Caussa autem quare ista voca- 
 bularum divisio displicere debet, hcec est. Quoniam in fine cujusque 
 versus, ubi, exhaustis jam propemodum pulmonibus, lenior pronunci- 
 ations decursus desideratur, asperiora omnia, quo difficilius pronun- 
 tiantur, eo magis etiam aures Icedunt: propterea sedulo evitatur ills 
 vocabulorum conditio, quae ultimum versus ordinem longiore mora a 
 praecedente disjungit, eaque re decursum numerorum impedit ac re- 
 tardat." 
 
 To illustrate this doctrine, we may conveniently revert to the first 
 ver3e of the Ion. It is by no means necessary to have'enacted the part 
 of Mercury in the Ion of Euripides, in order to be sensible of the relief 
 which is afforded to the " exhausted lungs" of a corpulent performer 3 
 by that variation of the verse in question which we have already pro- 
 posed. 
 
 That the Comic Poets were not quite so considerate of the lungs 
 of their actors, appears, as well by their neglect of this canon, as by 
 the words of inordinate length which they sometimes employ ; par- 
 ticularly by one of near eight syllables, which occurs towards the con- 
 clusion of the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes. Hephsestion informs 
 us that the macron, as it was called, of the comic parabasis, 
 ought to be pronounced apneusli, without taking breath. In the 
 Birds of Aristophanes is the macron of thirteen and a half di- 
 meter anapestics (v. 7-23—736,) which contain a hundred and thirty 
 four syllables. Upon the whole, it is not without reason that Mr. 
 
Sgg CONSTRUCTION Gfc 
 
 Hermann (Hec. p. 1,40) exults, in the following terms, over the inap^ 
 titude of his rival to investigate the causes of those facts which he had 
 sufficient sagacity to discover. " Id sponte animadvertisset vir eru- 
 ditissimus, si non satis haberet observare, sed in caussas etiam earum 
 rerum quas observavit, inquirendum putaret." 
 
 We are afraid that we shall exhaust the patience of our readers 
 although perhaps not their lungs, by the length of our observations on 
 the following passage in Mr. Porson's Preface (p. 43:) 
 
 "Nunc iambicorum genus Comicis fere proprium leviter attinga* 
 mus, quod vulgo vocatur tetrametrum catalecticum. Duabus rebus a 
 Comico senario hoc difFert ; primo, quod quartus pes semper iambus 
 aut tribrachys sit oportet ; secundo, quod sextus pes anapaestum etiam 
 admittit. Sed pes catalecticam syllabam praseedens non iambus esse 
 nequit ; nisi in proprio nomine, ubi conceditur anapaestus. Quod de 
 quarto etiam pede intelligi velim." 
 
 We have long suspected that Mr. Porson was mistaken in restrict- 
 ing to the case of proper names the use of anapests in the fourth 
 place of the cataletic tetrameter iambics of the Comic Poets. The 
 appearance of the third edition of the Preface to the Hecuba, with- 
 out any modification of the doctrine proposed in the edition of 1802, 
 has induced us to examine the question with considerable attention, 
 and to present the result of our examinations to our readers. 
 
 We have to observe, in the first place, that all the trisyllabic feet 
 which are admissible into comic iambics, are employed with much 
 greater moderation in the catalectic tetrameters than in the comic tri- 
 meters. The Plutus of Aristophanes, for instance, commences with 
 252 trimeters, which are immediately followed by 37 tetrameters; 
 after which the measure, though still iambic, becomes antistrophic. 
 Nearly three-fifths of the trimeters contain one more trisyllabic feet in 
 «ach verse. The 37 tetrameters, on the contrary, exhibit only one 
 tribrach and one dactyl, and not one anapest. In the earlier Plays of 
 Aristophanes trisyllabic feet are used more unsparingly, both mj.ri- 
 meters and in tetrameters. But the comparative rarity of these feet 
 in tetrameters is nearly as observable in the Knights, the earliest re- 
 maining Play of Aristophanes; which contains a considerable num- 
 ber of tetrameters, as in the Plutus, which was written after the versi- 
 fication of the comic stage had begun to assume an appearance of 
 smoothness and regularity, which the contemporaries of the youth of 
 Aristophanes were not desirous of exhibiting. In the second place, 
 we must remark, that the eleven surviving Comedies of Aristophanes 
 contain more than six hundred tetrameter iambics ; in which number 
 of verses, the edition of Brunck exhibits only seventy anapests, which 
 the most obstinate critic will venture to defend. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 57 
 
 If our seventy anapests were distributed equally among all the 
 places of the verse except the seventh, which may be considered as 
 out of the question, we should find eleven or twelve instances of an 
 anapest in the fourth place. If, upon inspection, we discover only 
 three or four such instances, we believe that every person acquainted 
 with the nature of chances will allow us to attribute the smallness of 
 the number to accident ; unless it can be satisfactorily ascribed to 
 some other cause. To exemplify the irregularities which so frequent- 
 ly disturb the calculations of the critical arithmetician, it will be suffi- 
 cient to mention, that in the Lysistrata, which contains nearly seventy 
 tetrameters, Aristophanes has not used a single anapest in a verse of 
 that measure ; and that in the Thesmophoriazusae, which Play was 
 written nearly at the same time, he has introduced the anapest fifteen 
 times in the forty- three tetrameters which the Play contains. 
 
 Before Mr. Porson's edition of the Hecuba appeared, the learned 
 Hermann had taught the world, in his incomparable work on Metres, 
 (p. 176,) that the fourth foot of a catalectic tetrameter iambic verse 
 might be an iambus, a tribrach, an anapest, or a proceleusmatic. 
 
 The fact is, that in this kind of verse the Comic Poets admit ana- 
 pests more willingly and frequently into the first, third, and fifth places, 
 than into the second, fourth, and sixth. Of the seventy anapests 
 which we have observed in the eleven Plays of Aristophanes, twenty- 
 two, or nearly one-third, occur in the first place. The first place 
 having almost double the number which would accrue to it from an 
 equal distribution, some of the other places must necessarily have 
 fewer anapests than their fair proportion. 
 
 Aristophanes occasionally introduces a very elegant species of verse 
 which we are willing to mention in this place, because it differs from 
 the tetrameter iambic, only in having a cretic or pason in the room of 
 the third dipodia, and because it is frequently corrupted into a tetra- 
 meter iambic by the insertion of a syllable after the first hemistich. 
 In technical language it is an asynartete, composed of a dimeter 
 iambic and an ithyphallic. It is called Euripideum tesscBreskaideka 
 syllaban by Hephaestion (p. 15.) Twenty-five of these verses occur 
 together in the Wasps of Aristophanes, beginning with v. 248. 
 
 The measure of these verses resembles the Latin Saturnian, except 
 that the first hemistich of the Saturnian is catalectic. 
 
 Dabunt malum Metelli | Naevio poetae. 
 
 Respecting the dimeter iambics of the Comic Poet3, Mr. Porson 
 has said nothing ; and we have very little to add to what has been 
 said by Mr. Gaisford, p. 224. With the exception of the catalectic 
 dipodia] they appear to admit anapests in every place, but more fre- 
 
 B 
 
5B CONSTRUCTION OF 
 
 quently into the first and third, than into the second and fourth. 
 Strictly speaking, indeed, there is no difference in this metre between 
 the second and fourth feet, as a system or set of dimeter iambics is 
 nothino- more than one long verse divided for convenience of arrange- 
 ment into portions, each containing four feet. That the quantity of 
 the final syllable of each dimeter is not indifferent, has been remarked 
 by Brunck. 
 
 An expression occurs in Mr. Porson's remarks on the trochaic 
 metre, which appears to have deceived more than one respectable 
 scholar. Mr. Porson observes (p. 46) that the catalectic tetrameter 
 trochaic of the Tragic and Comic Poets may conveniently be con- 
 sidered as consisting of a cretic or pseon prefixed to a common tri- 
 meter iambic. 
 
 Mr. Porson adds : 
 
 "Sed in hoc trochaico senario (liceat ita loqui) duo observanda 
 sunt ; nusquam anapaestum, ne in primo quidem loco, admitti ; deinde 
 necessario semper requiri caisuram penthemimerim." 
 
 The inadmissibility of anapests into the trochaic senarius may be 
 exemplified by prefixing a cretic to the fifth verse of the Plutus of 
 Aristophanes. 
 
 The dactyl in the second place vitiates the metre of this verse, con- 
 sidered as a tetrameter trochaic. Common readers will pardon us for 
 explaining this passage in Mr. Porson's preface, when we show that 
 it seems to have been misunderstood by so excellent a scholar as Mr. 
 Burgess. In Mr. Porson's edition of the Phaenissas, v. 616, he has 
 an anapest in the fourth place. In his note upon this verse, Mr. Bur- 
 gess remarks, Raro et fortasse nunquam in Irochaicis Tragicis ana- 
 pcBstus occurrit. And he proposes to emend it accordingly. It is 
 somewhat remarkable, that an anapest in verse 621 of the same play 
 has escaped Mr. Burgess's observation. 
 
 In Mr. Porson's edition of the Orestes, anapests occur in the five 
 following trochaics, vss. 728, 776, 787, 1528, 1530. The Iphigenia 
 in Aulis will supply near twenty examples, including a few in which 
 the anapest is included in a proper name. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to mention that, in this metre, anapests are 
 admissible only into the even places. It may, however, be not alto- 
 gether superfluous to observe, that the Tragic Poets appear to have 
 used anapests in the even places as willingly and frequently as tri- 
 brachs in any place, except the first and fifth. The thirty-two Trage- 
 dies exhibit about thirty-two instances of a tribrach in the second, 
 third, fourth, sixth, or seventh place, several of which appear to be 
 corrupt. 
 
GREEK DRAMATIC VERSE. 59 
 
 Both in Tragedy and in Comedy, the tetrameter trochaic is usually 
 divided into two hemistichs by a ccesura after the fourth foot. The 
 Tragedians, however, observe this rule much more strictly than the 
 Comedians. Most of the instances to the contrary have been cor- 
 rected in a satisfactory manner. 
 
 Mr. Porson remarks (p. 50,) that in dimeter anapestics a dactyl is 
 very seldom, rarissime, placed immediately before an anapest, so as 
 to cause a concourse of four short syllables. Mr. Gaisford (p. 279) 
 has collected several instances of this concourse, and some additional 
 examples have occurred to us, while more may probably be detected 
 by diligent search ; but those produced are sufficient to prove that 
 Mr. Porson's expression must be construed with some degree of lati- 
 tude. According to Mr. Porson (p. 55) there is no genuine instance 
 of this license in tetrameter anapestics. 
 
 The anapestic dipodia may be composed of a tribrach and an ana- 
 pest, for the purpose of admitting a proper name, which cannot other- 
 wise be introduced into the verse. 
 
 In both kinds of anapestic verse, dactyls are admitted with much 
 greater moderation into the second than into the first place of the 
 dipodia. The eleven Comedies of Aristophanes contain more than 
 twelve hundred tetrameter anapestics, in which number we have re- 
 marked only the nineteen following examples of a dactyl in an even 
 place, which, in this kind of anapestic metre, can only be the second 
 foot of the verse, as Mr. Porson has observed (p. 51.) 
 Eq. 524,* 805, 1327. 
 Nub. 351,* 353, 409.* 
 Vesp. 389, 551, 671, 673,* 708,* 1027. 
 Pac. 732. 
 Lys. 500. 
 Thesm. 790, 794. 
 Ran. 1055. 
 Eccl. 676.* 
 
 In all these verses, except those six which are marked with an as- 
 terisk, the preceding foot is also a dactyl. 
 
 The same observations apply in a certain degree also to dimeter 
 anapestics. 
 
 Trifling alterations require no authority to support them ; but we 
 would not go so far as to change the order of the words for the pur- 
 pose of removing a dactyl out of an even place. 
 
 Of the nineteen tetrameters mentioned in the preceding paragraph, 
 only one is destitute of a cczsura after the first dipodia. Nub. 353. 
 
 Similar instances are exceedingly rare in dimeters. Mr. Gaisford 
 has collected more than fifty instances of the violation of the ccesura 
 
60 CONSTRUCTION OF, &C. 
 
 in dimeter anapestics, in six of which, the foot which ought to be fol- 
 lowed by the ccesura is a dactyl. 
 
 Every person who has a tolerable ear, and is acquainted with the 
 subject, will immediately perceive that the rhythm of the following 
 verses is not quite perfect : 
 
 .aEsch. Prom. 1067. 
 
 Choeph. 1068. 
 
 Soph. (Ed. Col. 1754. 
 
 Eur. Med. 160. 
 lb. 1408. 
 
 Suppl. 980. 
 
 Iph. Aul. 28. 
 The rhythm of the first hemistich of the first, second, fourth, fifth, 
 and seventh of these verses, and o.f the second hemistich of the third 
 and sixth, is rather dactylic than anapestic. The same effect is always 
 produced when the last three syllables of a word, which are incapable 
 of standing in the verse as an anapest, are divided, as in the preceding 
 examples, between a dactyl and the following foot. In Comic ana- 
 pests, such faults may generally be corrected with great ease. 
 
 We shall now take our leave for the present of this great Critic, who 
 in the compass of a few pages, has thrown more light upon the sub- 
 jects of his inquiry, than can be collected from all the numerous 
 volumes of his predecessors. For ourselves, we have only to express 
 a hope, that our strictures may contribute in some degree to the in- 
 formation of such younger students in Greek literature as are disposed 
 to peruse the Preface to the Hecuba with that care and attention 
 which it so eminently deserves, and without which its merits cannot 
 be duly appreciated. 
 
A SKETCH OF THE PRINCIPAL USAGES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MIDDLE VOICE OF THE GREEK VERB 
 
 When its signification is strictly observed. 
 
 Qui bene dividif, bene doeet. 
 
 The first four may be called usages of reflexive ; the fifth the usage' 
 of reciprocal signification. 
 
 1. Where A does the act on himself or on what belongs to himself, 
 t. e. is the object of his own action. 
 
 2. Where A does the act on some other object, M, relatively to 
 himself (in the sense of the dative case put acquisitively) and not for 
 another person, B. 
 
 3. Where A gets an action done for himself, or for those belonging 
 to him, by B. 
 
 Thus, of Chryses it is said (see the original) he came to get his? 
 daughter released by Agamemnon, on the payment ef a ransom, that is ? 
 briefly, to ransom his daughter. 
 
 Whereas of Agamemnon it is said (see the original) he did nofc 
 grant the release, he did not release her. 
 
 4. Where the direct action is done by A on himself; but an accu- 
 sative or other case follows of B, whom that action farther regards. 
 
 See Iliad. 3. 25. 
 
 Although fleet dogs stir themselves in pursuit of him. 
 
 Again, II. 24.— 710. 
 
 Tore their hair in mourning over him. 
 
 And so, too, the following: (see the original.) 
 
 Hector stretched out his arms to receive his son. 
 
 Thus far the reflexive uses : now the reciprocal use. 
 
 5. Where the action is reciprocal betwixt two persons or parties, 
 and A does to B what B does to A ; as in verbs of contract, quarrel, 
 war, reconciliation, and the like : — 
 
 Thus, Demosth. Philip. A, § 6.— (See the original.) 
 
(52 A SKETCH OF, &C. 
 
 Till we shall have put an end to the war in which we are engaged 
 with Philip, by treaty mutually agreed upon. 
 
 In a very different sense, as follows, is the active verb used : (see 
 the original.) 
 
 Thucyd. 8. § 46. 
 
 To be in no hurry to put an end to the war between the two conflicting 
 parties in Greece. 
 
 Remark. — Though on some occasions the active voice is used where 
 the middle would be proper, that is, where the act is denoted without 
 relation to the agent, though there does exist a middle verb so to de- 
 note it, yet where the two voices exist in actual use, the middle de- 
 noting the action relatively to the agent, as in No. % is very seldom, 
 if ever, in pure Attic, used to denote the action when it regards an- 
 other person. 
 

a)aoo(DurffiQa <2>sr i?®^^iBir 9 
 
 INTENDED TO 
 
 AID THE JUDGMENT OF YOUTH 
 
 IN REGARD TO THE 
 
 POETICAL LITERATURE OF AMERICA AND G. BRITAIN 
 
 INCIDENTALLY OF OTHER COUNTRIES ALSO. 
 
 O ! deem not in this world of strife 
 An idle art the poet brings ; 
 
 Let high philosophy control, 
 And sages calm the stream of life ;-- 
 'Tis he refines its fountain springs, 
 The nobler passions of the soul. 
 
 Campbell. 
 
 BY GEORGE PADDISON. 
 
 WINCHESTER '. 
 
 I&JUMTJBD BY WILLIAM TOWERS. 
 1SS8. 
 
NOTICE. 
 
 In extenuation of faultiness in the following pages I have to state, 
 briefly, that different accidents of time and place quite hindered me 
 from making reference to books for passages of illustration. I quote 
 from memory invariably, the sentences from Cicero and ,( The Citi- 
 zen of the World " excepted. In most cases I have not seen the 
 original for some years past : verbal inaccuracies, therefore, may oc- 
 cur ; and for such, where found, I ask indulgence. The sentiments 
 of any author here quoted will, I think, always be found unaltered. — 
 For brevity I make no apology, being of opinion that where so much 
 room is allowed for pompous parade of words, conciseness, if intelli- 
 gible, is a decided recommendation. My design will be fully accom- 
 plished if the "Discourse" be considered in some measure didactic. 
 
 George Paddisqn* 
 
 Burlington, Hampshire Co., Va. > 
 February, 1838. \ 
 
PAS. T X 
 
 PRELIMINARY 
 
 If the pretensions of the following treatise be estimated according 
 to the exalted nature of the subject discussed, they will be found of 
 an humble order indeed, and will certainly fall much below general 
 expectation. Nor, I fear, will the manner in which these very mode- 
 rate pretensions are set forth, adequately compensate for their intrin- 
 sic deficiency. " How, then," exclaims some patron among the pub- 
 lic, "am I to be wholly disappointed?" My friend, I trust not: a 
 few particulars must be stated, which, taken in connection with the 
 "Discourse," may lead to a right understanding of the whole matter., 
 and bespeak your forbearance on those points wherein I appear to fail 
 in answering your reasonable anticipation. 
 
 An Englishman by birth, I emigrated at an age when the literature 
 of my country, if cultivated at all, cannot but have stamped deep and 
 indelible impressions on the heart and mind. No one will deny that 
 the last half century has been an era remarkably rife with the produc- 
 tions of genius, and that genius of the very highest order : hence it 
 followed, that the periods of boyhood and youth in Britain, during the 
 time alluded to, were singularly brightened by coruscations of intel- 
 lect rarely intermitting, sometimes dazzling, but always striking. Ani- 
 mated with a lively interest — I might almost call it personal — in the 
 career and rivalry of wit, students of every grade emulously thronged 
 round the arena of competition ; the spirit of an author was caught 
 up, fresh and vigorous, from the store-house of invention ; and his 
 efforts to succeed sustained with undiminished energy by the con- 
 sciousness of public and scrutinizing observation. From this pro- 
 ceeded a result doubly beneficial : while the living were admired, the 
 dead, in a manner, lived again. With the applause bestowed on the 
 former, there was induced a more earnest mood of attention to the 
 merits of the latter — merits, till then, too often dormant, or merely 
 accredited on the faith and reverence awarded to antiquity. This 
 effect had, indeed, the happiest result, in its way ; for thus were many 
 
g A DISCOURSE ON. POETRY. 
 
 established errors of opinion exploded, and even-handed justice ad- 
 ministered to the claims of writers (I confine my observations to poet- 
 cal writers) belonging to the old and middle, as well as to the new, 
 ages of composition. 
 
 Such a result, to be sure, could never have been attained, had not 
 calmness, urbanity, and liberality of sentiment, uniformly marked the 
 conduct of those inquiries and controversies thence ensuing — charac- 
 teristics of discussion still the more remarkable and honorable, inas- 
 much as the literary name and fame of individuals so engaged, did, in 
 several instances, greatly depend on the issue : witness the Byronian 
 controversy with Bowles on the writings and character of Pope. 
 
 With all this passing in actual review before their eyes, no wonder 
 that the youth of Great Britain feel considerable excitement, and have 
 had their sympathies effectually awakened in behalf of the poetical 
 literature of their language. 
 
 From a particular motive I adopt this phrase — "the poetical litera- 
 ture of their language," in preference to that which more readily sug- 
 gests itself, the poetical literature of their country. In explaining this 
 motive, I may, perhaps, give umbrage where I do but intend monition : 
 the candid, however, will not subject my remarks to misconstruction. 
 Indeed, what I say may not be very generally applicable : I would 
 cheerfully acquiesce in the belief that it is not so, because my resi- 
 dence in the Union has not been long, nor have I enjoyed opportuni- 
 ties of extended observation : nevertheless, whilst here, I have been 
 almost exclusively engaged amongst the young, and can truly affirm 
 that I have found the majority of them little observant of the works of 
 American writers, whose names, talents, and literary standing, are, to 
 British youth, " familiar as household words." 
 
 This ought not to be : I will express myself without reserve. It 
 betrays a deplorable, a reproachful apathy towards a cause, which, in 
 other countries, enlists on its side the warmest, die most generous, 
 and, I will add, the most patriotic feelings of those whose hearts are 
 buoyant in the flush and prime of ripening manhood. . 
 
 Here, in these United States, no pains are spared, as the faculties 
 of the mind expand, to instil the rudiments and broader principles of 
 political freedom. This is right — this is noble : it argues a nation 
 justly proud of its rights, and jealous of their perpetuity. May the 
 fostering spirit of civil and religious liberty never be quenched ! Prac- 
 tical men, I am aware, object to poetry on the ground of its inutility; 
 but wrong-headed politicians and imperfect utilitarians are they, who 
 denounce the cultivation of Taste, and a relish for the elegancies of 
 literature, as incompatible with the scientific operations, the interests 
 and duties of the ordinary avocations of life. 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRiT. / 
 
 If poetry is really " an idle art," then, indeed, are poets the very 
 lords of laziness, and, as such, a nuisance and a pest to the common- 
 wealth. But the history of poetry and of the world, — for the world 
 and poetry are almost coeval, — directly disproves the assumption. 
 An "idle art" indeed! It is unnecessary to multiply examples ; I 
 am, besides, neither inclined nor prepared to try conclusions in detail 
 and at length, just now : two or three instances will serve as cases in 
 point. 
 
 Were the military talents and experience of iEschylus less service- 
 able to his country, when invaded by the Persians, because of his 
 ability to celebrate, in the very loftiest strains of poetry, that victory 
 which his exploits, as a soldier and a general, had so eminently con- 
 tributed to achieve ? 
 
 Were the charms of melody and metre no practical advantage to 
 those captive Athenians, who, chaunting the verses of their country- 
 man, Euripides, as a solace to the thraldom of their bonds, thus con- 
 ciliated the victor's clemency, won over the better feelings of human- 
 ity to their behalf, and gained redemption ? 
 
 Lacedaemonian citizens trembled for their liberties, already more 
 than half extinguished by the dominant power of a neighboring re- 
 public, when suddenly the poet Tyrtasus, all crippled in person and 
 derided as he was, uttered those inspiring notes of elegy, which, " like 
 some sweet clarion's breath," with the music and the melody of num- 
 bers, roused his associates to the rescue, and saved the common- 
 wealth. Was poetry an "idle art" then? 
 
 But to come more closely to our own times, and to persons and 
 characters with whom all are, more or less, conversant. 
 
 Was Milton, on account of his deep devotion to the Nine, less for- 
 cible in argument as the polemical antagonist of Salmasius ? 
 
 Is the peasant of Scotland, in our own times, less industrious, less 
 frugal, — his wife less thrifty, less notable, — because the poems of Burns 
 have a constant place on the mantle in their humble dwelling, and 
 that place th° next to his Bible ? 
 
 Was the lata and lamented George Crabbe less zealous, less effi- 
 cient, as a minuter of the gospel, because he wrote poetical " Tales 
 of the Hall " ? — hies equally captivating and instructive, whether read 
 in the hall or the cottage. 
 
 Does the biography of the poets Hogg, Bloomfield, or Clare, ar- 
 raign them for incapacity, or inefficiency in their respective callings, 
 mechanical or agricultural r 
 
 My friend, no : the reverse of all this is the fact— and a fact it is, 
 undeniable, of easy proof, and well deserving an attentive considera- 
 tion. A poet is useful to the commonwealth. Why, then, it may be 
 
3 A DISCOURSE ON fcOETRY. 
 
 asked, does Plato, in organizing his theoretical Republic, dismiss 
 Homer himself, even wearing a garland and anointed ? It was be- 
 cause poetry then constituted the principal vehicle, the grand conser- 
 vatory, of those absurdities connected with the system of Pagan my- 
 thology. That system Plato, together with the other real philosophers 
 of Greece, whose conceptions of the Deity more nearly approached 
 decorum and truth, despised and ridiculed. While, therefore, the 
 ointment and the garland betoken, the philosophical legislator's admi- 
 ration and regard, the dismission of the poet is exacted, that he should 
 not counteract the salutary tendency of the Platonic discipline in re- 
 gard to religion, nor " destroy the right notion of God with his fa- 
 bles."* 
 
 Such a dread is a confession, at once, of the mighty power ascri- 
 bed to poetry ; whether for good or whether for ill, necessarily depends 
 on the direction which it receives. 
 
 But, returning to the position that a poet is useful to the common- 
 wealth, I shall spare myself farther trouble in the demonstration by 
 referring to Cicero's eloquent pleading for his client, the poet Archias, 
 passim, but in particular to the second division of the confirmatory 
 arguments for the defence, a slight summary of which may, perhaps, 
 prove interesting. 
 
 At the suit of one Gracchus, this Archias, by birth a stranger, stood 
 on his trial, charged with having illegally exercised the rights and 
 privileges of a Roman citizen. He was warmly defended by Cicero, 
 between whom and the accused there appears to have long existed a 
 most friendly correspondence. After confuting the prosecutor's evi- 
 dence touching the several points of law involved in the case, the 
 orator proceeds farther to establish the validity of his client's claim to 
 the immunities of citizenship by various ingenious arguments, the 
 most remarkable of which are the following : — 
 
 That, on the principle of gratitude, private affection was due to a 
 man like Archias, who, by the effusions of his genius, lightened the 
 labor, diversified the monotony, and augmented the resources of the 
 legal profession ; 
 
 That, to poets in general public gratitude Was likewise due, for the 
 
 Quaeres a nobis, Gracche, cur tantopere hoc nomine delectemur? 
 quia suppeditat nobis, ubi et animus ex hoc forensi strepitu reficiatur, 
 et aures co: vicio defessas conquiescant. Antu existimas, aut suppe- 
 tere nobis posse, quod quotidie dicamus in fanta varietate rerum, nisi 
 
 * Vide Joscphus, against Apion, Book 2d, paragraph 37. 
 
Q 
 
 A DISCOURSB ON POETRY. * 
 
 many noble patterns of human excellence struck off and preserved 
 in their writings, to the advantage of all posterity ; 
 
 That such would still be the case, even though, setting aside the 
 consideration of moral improvement, mental recreation were the sole 
 benefit derivable from the study of the poets ; 
 
 That the gift of poetry is, in a manner, the peculiar grace of Hea- 
 ven ; 
 
 That the Muses have ever been welcomed, by the virtuous and the 
 
 animos nostros doctrina excolamus : aut ferre animos tantam posse 
 contentionem, nisi eos doctrina eadem relaxemus? 
 
 Sed pleni omnes sunt libri, plenae'sapientum voces, plena exemplo- 
 rum vetustas : quae jacerent in tenebris omnia, nisi literarum lumen 
 accederet. Quam multas nobis imagines, non solum ad intuendum, 
 verum etiam ad imitandum, fortissimorum virorum expressas, scrip- 
 tores et Graeci et Latini reliquerunt ! 
 
 ####*# T> '^i' # * # 
 
 Quod si non hie tantus fructus ostenderetur, si ex his studiis delec- 
 tatio sola peteretur : tamen ut opinor, hanc animi remissionem hu- 
 manissimam ae liberalissimam judicaretis. Nam caetera neque tempo- 
 rum sunt, neque a3tatum omnium, neque locorum : at hasc studia ado- 
 lescentiam alunt, senectutum oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis 
 perfugium ac solatium prasbent ; delectant domi, non impediunt foris ; 
 pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur. Quod si ipsi haec 
 neque attingere, neque sensu nostro gustare possemus, tamen ea mi- 
 rari deberemus, etiam cum in aliis videremus. 
 * # # # # # #* # 
 
 Hunc ego non diligam ? non admirer? non omni ratione defenden- 
 dum putem ? Atque sic a summis hominibus eruditissimisque accepi- 
 mus, caeterarum rerum studia et doctrina, et praeceptis, et arte con- 
 stare ; poetam natura ipsa valere, et mentis viribus excitari, et quas 
 divino quodam spiritu inflari. Quare suo jure noster ille Ennius sanc- 
 tos appellat poetas, quod quasi deorum aliquo dono atque munere 
 commendati nobis esse videantur. Sit igitur, Judices, sanctum apud 
 vos, humanissimos homines, hoc poetae nomen, quod nulla unquam 
 barbaria violavit. Saxa et solitudines voce respondent, bestiae atque 
 immanes cantu flectuntur, atque consistunt : nos instituti rebus opti- 
 mis non poetarum voce moveamur ? 
 
 Neque enim quisquam est tarn aversus a Musis, qui non manda 
 versibus aeternum suorum laborum facile praaconium patiatur, 
 
10 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 brave, as the sacred heralds of fame ; the inviolable guardians unto 
 whose trust the future renown of their exploits is consigned ; in proof 
 whereof witness the conduct of Themistocles 3 of Lucullus, of Ma- 
 rius, of Sylla, of Scipio Africanus, of Alexander, of Pompey the 
 Great, of Decimus Brutus, of Fulvius ; 
 
 That, in the human heart the desire of distinction is innate ; 
 
 That, to the celebrity of an individual, the credit of the community 
 at large, of which he is a member, is very closely allied ; 
 
 Ac iis laudibus certe non solum ipsi, qui laudantur, sed etiam pop- 
 uli Romani nomen ornatur. In ccelum hujus proavus Cato tollitur : 
 magnus honos populi Rom. rebus adjungitur. 
 
 # # # * # % # # # 
 
 *Q,uam multos scriptores rerum suarum magnus ille Alexander se- 
 cum habuisse dicitur? Atque is tamen cum in Sigco ad Achillis tu- 
 mulum adstitisset, fortunate, inquit, adolescens, qui tuae virtutis Ho- 
 merum prseconem inveneris ! Et vere ; nam nisi Ilias ilia extitisset, 
 idem tumulus, qui corpus ejus contexerat, nomen etiam obruisset. 
 
 Neque enim est hoc dissimulandum, quod obscurari non potest ; 
 sed praj nobis ferendum : trahimur omnes laudis studio, et optimus 
 quisque maxime gloria ducitur. Illi ipsi Philosophi, etiam in illis li- 
 bellis, quos de contemnenda gloria scribunt, notnen suum inscribunt: 
 in eo ipso, in quo praedicationem nobilitatemque despiciunt, praedicari 
 se ac nominari volunt. 
 
 # # * ' # # # * * * 
 
 Quare in qua urbe imperatores prope armati poetarum nomen et 
 
 Musarem delubra coluerunt, in ea non debent togati Judices a Musa- 
 
 rum honore, et a poetarum salute abhorrere. 
 
 Nunc insidet quaedam in optimo quoque virtus, quae noctes et dies 
 animum gloriae stimulis concitat, atque admonet, non cum vitas tem- 
 pore esse dimittendam commemorationem nominis nostri, sed cum 
 omni posteritate adaequandam. An vero tarn parvi animi videamur 
 esse omnes, qui in repub. atque in his vitas periculis laboribusque ver- 
 
 * Gratus Alexandro regi magnofuit ille 
 Chcerilus, insulsis qui versibus et male natis 
 Rettulit acceptos, regale nnmisma, Philippos. 
 
 Horace. 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 11 
 
 And that, therefore, reverting to the principle of gratitude, even 
 had the attempt to establish those legal points of the question now at 
 issue failed, yet were the Roman people unequivocally bound to re- 
 ceive such a poet as Archias with opeu arms, and on the equal foot- 
 ing of a Roman citizen ; for this would only be a proper tribute of 
 respect to a man, who, by his excellent abilities and poetical endow- 
 ment, had done'so much to extol the Roman name. 
 
 In addition, I will second the above by an opinion delivered as from 
 the pen of " The Citizen of the World :" 
 
 "As every country grows more polite, the press becomes more useful ; 
 and writers become more necessary as readers are supposed to increase. 
 In a polished society, that man, though in rags, who has the power of 
 enforcing virtue from the press, is of more real use than forty stupid 
 brachmans, or bonzes, or guebres, though they preached never so of- 
 ten, never so loud, and never so long. That man, although in rags, 
 who is capable of deceiving even indolence into wisdom, and who 
 professes amusement, while he aims at reformation, is more useful in 
 refined society, than twenty cardinals with all their scarlet, and trick- 
 ed out in all the fopperies of scholastic finery." 
 
 samur, ut, cum, usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum at- 
 que otiosum spiritum duxerimus, nobiscum sitnul morilura omnia ar- 
 bitremur ? An cum statuas et imagines, non animorum simulacra, sed 
 corporum, studiose multi surnmi homines reliquerint, consiliorum re- 
 linquere ac virtutum nostrarum effigiem nonne multo malle debemus, 
 summis ingeniis expressam et politam?* 
 
 Quae cum ita sint, petimus a vobis, Judices, si qua non modo hu- 
 mana, verum etiam divina in tantis negotiis commendatio debet esse; 
 ut eum, qui vos, qui vestros imperatores, qui populi Romani res ges- 
 tas semper ornavit, ********* 
 quique est eo numero, qui semper spud omnes sancti sunt habiti at- 
 que dicti, sic in vestram accipiatis fidem, ut humanitate vestra levatus 
 potius, quam acerbitate violatus esse videatur.* 
 
 * With the whole of this remarkably fine and philosophical passage compare Mil- 
 ton's Lycidas, particularly the part which concludes the " Discourse ;" compare 
 also, Hamlet's soliloquy. 
 
 * Mark the secure and lofty tone of this final appeal to the judges for a verdict in 
 favor of the accused. 
 
]3 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 But it may be objected that what is here cited does not directly bear 
 on the subject of Poetry. This is literally true : the application of 
 the sentiments, especially of those conveyed in the English citation, 
 to poetical composition is inferential, I admit; but I esteem it no less 
 authoritative, on that account. The republic of letters, like this po- 
 litical republic of the Union, is of wide compass, embracing within 
 its range many and various departments, the individual interests and 
 amelioration of which can only be successfully promoted by a happy 
 amalgamation of those properties constituting the peculiar elements 
 of each. In realizing such a combination of resources, the poet has 
 always stood in advance, prominent and conspicuous. 
 
 With what institution, human or divine, has not poetry associated 
 itself, and proved a powerful ally ? The field, the forum, and the pul- 
 pit, have, simultaneously or by turns, participated in its untiring co- 
 operation. 
 
 Was it the mere wantonness of convivial humor, the petulant indul- 
 gence in holiday pastime, which, at stated intervals of time, sumraoiw 
 ed the valor and the wisdom of ancient Greece to witness the poeti- 
 cal digladiation of her chosen spirits at Olympia? Oh, no! an im- 
 pulse far different and more resistless swayed the feelings and princi- 
 ples of that august assemblage of heroes, sages, and potentates of the 
 earth. That solemnity was a wondrous concentration of mind — an 
 unparalleled display of whatever is commanding in man — the perfec- 
 tion of moral, rational, and physical energy: and there it was that 
 poetry might, and did, vindicate its native glory, pre-eminent, unsul- 
 lied, una^enchable. For there, when power swelled with the intole- 
 rable taint of corruption, and private virtue failed beneath the contam- 
 ination ; when laws were a mockery, conscience but a scoff; — then 
 and there would the Muse raise a voice pitying or reproachful, but al- 
 ways free, always dauntless. Nor was the call unheard : whether by 
 pity or reproach, men's hearts were tried and shaken ; tyranny shrunk, 
 dismayed ; the patriot blushed; and honor, for awhile, at least, grew 
 regenerate and reclaimed. 
 
 Such was the spell of Poetry among a refined but dissolute people. 
 The ample page of history will unfold many such. Memorable in- 
 stance ! how worthy of all preservation ! Never let it be veiled from 
 the stedfast regard of the rising generation. In a great and growing 
 republic like this, the attention of youth should, in an especial man- 
 ner, be directed to such contemplation. This can only be done by 
 placing before them the finest models of composition : care must be 
 taken that they be the finest, for by such alone have all extraordinary 
 movements of moral impulse been accomplished. The ''heaven of 
 invention" may be overshadowed, and the gloom is dangerous. Alex- 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 13 
 
 ander of Macedon had so long slept with a copy of his favorite Ho-* 
 raer under his pillow, that, when starting on a military expedition, he 
 pre-engaged the abilities of a scribe, who accompanied him, in order, 
 no doubt, to eternize his exploits in deathless song, and thus to take 
 fame by the forelock. The scribe, however, was but a scribe, and no 
 poet. The coinage of his hireling brains bore not the sterling stamp 
 of ethereal origin ; and, had the conqueror's renown rested solely on 
 that fallacious passport, the fame or infamy of Alexander would hard- 
 ly have reached posterity — would hardly, indeed, have survived his 
 own fatal excesses. 
 
 Nevertheless, the fact still adds weight on the side of poetical in- 
 fluence. Into designs of purest and soundest, yet merely human, 
 conception, something base and spurious will, nay must, intrude. — 
 Nor, again, is it allowable to identify the poet with the man. — Horace 
 threw away his shield and fled, at Philippi. Did not the conduct of 
 Demosthenes, in the critical moment of personal danger, evince his 
 stronger "appetite for words than war?" If, notwithstanding, the 
 cause of eloquence have suffered no detraction by the dereliction of 
 the orator, neither should desertion of duty in the poet tend to im- 
 pair one tone from the strings of the Roman lyre. Prior and Addi- 
 son were both good poets — both amiable men; as statesmen, they 
 were either unsuccessful or undistinguished. What, then ? Shall 
 poetry be therefore despised ? It ought not to be, surely. The co- 
 incidence only shows that talents for writing, and talents for mana- 
 ging state-business or state-intrigue, are not inseparable. Is the con- 
 verse of this demonstrable ? Does the absence of all talent for com- 
 position infallibly denote the existence of all other kinds of talent? 
 Let any man's experience give the reply. In these and similar cases 
 the Virgilian aphorism, "non omnia possumus omnes" should be adopt- 
 ed as a motto of fair and honorable compromise. 
 
 But, for the purpose of stimulating a laudable curiosity, a befitting 
 spirit of inquiry on this most interesting topic, it is not necessary to 
 refer the youth of America to the relics of those dispersed and dis- 
 tant bursts of minstrelsy, which wrought their enchantment in 
 the olden times — the times of Greek and Roman glory. Here, in 
 their own language, and at home, are the materials abundant. Let 
 them ponder over the writings of those among their countrymen who 
 are deservedly numbered with the poets of the age : let them also 
 turn an unprejudiced eye on the poetical authorship of Great Britain. 
 This they may do with confiding willingness. Be Britain what she 
 may in other respects, in Letters she is staunchly, sternly republican : 
 in politics or laws she may, perhaps, mislead ; but in literature she 
 demands vour trust. There the Parnassian laurel will often bloom 
 
14 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 with perennial freshness on the brows of a peasant, while it withers 
 in contact with the coronet of a peer ; and well have American son* 
 of genius profited by a knowledge of the fact. 
 
 Moreover, it should be steadily remembered, that in all operations 
 pertaining to the exercise of the mental faculties, no one ought to re- 
 press a rising hope or desire of improving them, from a consciousness 
 of their backward condition, imputable to early dislike, or inveterate 
 neglect. An acquired taste may become more permanent than a na- 
 tural one; and from habit, true relish may insensibly spring. The 
 elder Cato, late in life, studied the Greek language with success; so 
 did the modern Italian dramatist, Alfieri ; and with parallel success 
 may the efforts of any otie be crowned, who brings to the study se- 
 lected those best and most cheering attendants on application, an 
 anxious heart and a ready mind. 
 
 Let, then, I repeat, the youth of this country, in an earnest, unsus- 
 pecting frame of mind, approach the classic streams of British poetry, 
 dreading no alloy to their patriotism. A high authority in the land 
 has recently reminded them how their forefathers nerved themselves 
 to renounce the boast of being the countrymen of Shakspeare and 
 Milton.* Youth of America, rest assured, that if the import was mo- 
 mentous, the sacrifice was not light. 
 
 *Vide peroration of John Quincy Adams's Eulogy on James Madison, 1836. 
 
uia 
 
 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 Part Second. 
 
PART XX 
 
 In an age remarkably distinguished for the encouragement which 
 has seconded every advancement in art, science, and polite literature, 
 it can excite no surprise that the cultivation of poetry should have 
 been prosecuted with ardour in most parts of civilized Europe, and 
 that many a responsive chord should have been struck in these en- 
 lightened regions of the Western hemisphere. Past ages witnessed, 
 with delight, the triumphant career of England in this noble develop- 
 ment of intellect; and, as if nothing should be wanting to crown that 
 triumph with perfection, the present age has gazed on the dawn and 
 the meridian splendor of poetic genius so bright, so beautiful, so tran- 
 scendant in its emanations, as to have shed, — I will not say, a halo, — 
 but a dazzling radiance of glory around the temples of the British 
 Muse. Nor is this the evanescent blaze of a meteor : truth is the 
 basis, experience tjie test, duration the destiny, of England's newly 
 earned poetical reputation. And they, the children of song, the 
 gifted worthies of our time, how widely have they " enlarged the for- 
 mer narrow bounds " ! While, heretofore, the literary genius of 
 France could exultingly point to her tablet, and tnere present, imper- 
 ishably engraven, the name of a Dacier, as an simost isolated instance 
 of the supremacy of female judgment and adroitness in directin^ he 
 criticism of Taste — then could my fair countrywomen do little more 
 than behold and applaud. But now, how changed the scene ! True 
 it is, that the women of France stil 1 maintain, as they have long been 
 accustomed to maintain, a strong-, nay, even a domineering sway over 
 every department in the repuWic of letters. Rousseau, adverting to 
 this fact, on one occasion expressly says, " In France, all literary mat- 
 ters are subject to the control of the women ; they are the curves of 
 which the wise are the asymptotes." His own biographical history, as 
 well as that of Voltaire, Corneiile, Marmontel, Diderot, D'Alembert, 
 among others, fully corroborates the assertion. 
 
 But, shall a despotic ascendancy like this, tolerated by the waver- 
 ing caprice of fashion — exercised, often arbitrarily, wantonly exerci- 
 sed at the sudden impulse of passion, interest, or party spirit, — is it 
 possible, I would ask, that an ascendancy, supported on so treacher- 
 ous a foundation as this, can, for a moment, vie with the homage, the 
 9 
 
18 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 free, spontaneous homage, of admiration, respect, gratitude, elicited 
 by the poetic fervor of a Hemans, a Baillie, a Landon, a Hannah 
 More, or the fair and honorable author of "The Undying One"? — 
 Here it is that my distinguished countrywomen have raised for them- 
 selves an enduring monument of renown ; here have they securely 
 planted a standard of independence on the broad fabric of society ; 
 here have they won incontestible mastery over the invidious compari- 
 sons of national rivalry ; hence have they darted new rays of lustre 
 on the intellectual character of the country they adorn. 
 
 Proceeding to the particulars of my Discourse, I shall begin with a 
 definition of Poetry. 
 
 Somewhat presumptuous, incfeed, may his task appear, who under- 
 takes to define what the author of Rasselas, in the tenth chapter of 
 that work, introduces and delineates in terms so intricate, so vaguely 
 interwoven, as to leave the subject almost hopeless of definition. — 
 But, having first deprecated the imputation of presumption, I beg 
 leave to submit that, in the present instance, the sense of the passage 
 ought not to be taken without certain qualifying restrictions ; nor ought 
 the meaning of the " rough moralist" to be interpreted according to 
 the strict letter of his positions : these must be duly modified by re- 
 gard paid to the personage under whose advocacy they are advanced. 
 This individual represents the enthusiast of poetry; and, as such, 
 launches forth into unbounded encomiums on his favorite theme, un- 
 til nearly bewildered in a labyrinth of rhapsodies. But his excursions 
 receive a prompt check from a listener of discretion : his transports 
 are subdued by the intervention of a judgment more calm, more pro- 
 found, a spirit more serene, than his own. This being granted, — and 
 the question, I think, w\\\ admit of little controversy, — it may be pos- 
 sible, without incurring too severe a charge of presumption, to attempt 
 some definition of Poetry— tc assign some limit to the limitless. 
 
 Poetry is creation : — it is that creative faculty of language, which, 
 by a vivid force of arrangement, while stamping the impress of reality 
 on the airy nothingness of fiction, weaves a garland of ever-blooming 
 freshness around the sacred altar of truth : it is that creative faculty 
 which, by a captivating influence, secret, resistless, and " all its own," 
 hurries away the spirit beyond the obstructions of time and space, to 
 explore the viewless regions of eternity: it is that creative faculty, 
 which, kindling emotions that otherwise would never have glowed 
 within us, now elevates the heart with gladness, now depresses with 
 sympathy, by scenes of ideal joy or lamentation, rife with the warm 
 colorings of imagination. 
 
 And is this all ? Does the extreme prerogative of Poetry centre in 
 this? No : such creative faculty of language undoubtedly lies within 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 19 
 
 teach of the orator as well as the poet — is not unfreqwntly summon- 
 ed to the aid of the former, and exercised with corresponding effect. 
 But let the orator beware how he proceed when heated by the energy 
 of excitement. There is a certain tone of utterance, a certain grace 
 of diction, the peculiar province of the poet, to trespass within the 
 precincts of which would mar the efficacy of the best subject for rhe- 
 torical display ;-~destitute of which accomplishment in style, the most 
 imaginative writer in verse would be eminently defective as a poet. 
 For conspicuous examples of this deficiency, take the versification of 
 Ennius, of Cicero himself, or the dramatic writings commonly assign- 
 ed to Seneca, among the ancients ; among the moderns, take the 
 satires of Doctor Donne, or the railleries of Dean Swift. To the com- 
 positions of these illustrious men, no one will deny merit of a high 
 and indispensable order- — the merit of correct sentiment, apt illustra- 
 tion, cogent argument. But where are the embellishments? where the 
 melody of numbers ?— the point, the delicacy, the fire of expression, 
 dignifying thought and stirring the affections, while enriehing the un- 
 derstanding ? 
 
 For these and similar attributes of poetic excellence we here look 
 in vain : hence the signal failure, the neglect, not to say the total 
 oblivion, to which those productions, in spite of their high origin, 
 have been consigned by the tacit assent of unprejudiced posterity. 
 
 In what, then, consists the distinction of a truly poetical style ?— - 
 What peculiarities constitute a genuine claim to right of admission 
 among the chosen few ? The question naturally suggests reflections 
 on the two leading divisions of composition, the rhetoric and the 
 prosedy of Poetry. 
 
 The rhetoric of Poetry is a comprehensive phrase, including every 
 turn of variety in expression, which serves either to refine, adorn, sim- 
 plify, or animate, the conceptions of the writer. In addressing my- 
 self, therefore, to the discussion of this subject, I shall not attempt to 
 trace it through all the ramifications to which it extends. Such a 
 course would be tiresome — in many respects, unprofitable. For the 
 present purpose it will suffice to examine, and elucidate by examples, 
 four principal points, which may be deemed essentially requisite to 
 the attainment of success in the composition of poetry : they are these 
 -—amplification, retrenchment, metaphor, pathos. 
 
 Amplification, or enlargement, is a figure of infinite use, when pro- 
 perly managed ; but one that has misled many inexperienced authors 
 from the clear track of sense, to ramble in the mists of inanity. Once 
 enticed by the "dangerous facility" of exuberant diction — too prone 
 to the indulgence of his ardor — adrift on the expansive current of his 
 ideas,— the youthful poet runs great risk of attenuating his powers itf 
 
20 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 the vapid details of description. Attend to the instructions of Pop# 
 on this particular : — "It is a great fault to describe every thing : this 
 is the great fault in Thompson's Seasons. The good ancients, — but 
 when I named them I meant Virgil, — never indulge in long descrip- 
 tions, rarely more than ten lines. The only one in Virgil is where 
 .32neas is with Evander, and then it is reply to something which 
 iEneasasks him." 
 
 The error of transgression, then, on the side of descriptive ampli- 
 fication, is a fatal one, and ought to be shunned very cautiously. 
 Nevertheless, with all deference to the grave authority just cited, I 
 shall venture to adduce two passages on the same subject, the one 
 from Virgil, the other from Byron, in which, owing to the judicious 
 application of amplified circumstance, the advantage in description 
 must, I think, easily and decidedly rest with the modern. The sub- 
 ject is shipwreck, a theme, in itself, well calculated to call forth the 
 narrative powers of any writer, if he possess them. I quote from 
 Dryden's translation ; and let no one object, on such account, that it 
 is hardly giving fair play to the original ; for it will be found, by com- 
 parison, that in this instance, at least, the original is rather improved 
 upon,, than deteriorated, by the English version. 
 
 Let the ancient take precedence : 
 
 Orentes' bark, which bore the Lycian crew, 
 Full in the hero's sight (a horrid view), 
 From stem to stern by waves was overborne,— 
 The trembling pilot, from the rudder torn, 
 Was headlong hurl'd — thrice round the ship was tost, 
 Then bulg'd at once, and in the deep was lost ; 
 And here and there about the waves were seen 
 Arms, pictures, precious goods, and floating men. 
 
 Who is not ready to exclaim, how tame, cold, and prosaic? 
 Turning to Byron's description, the eye of imagination there beholds 
 the very terror of tempest let loose upon the elements, fraught with 
 the energies of human despair : 
 
 She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, 
 And going down head foremost, sunk, in short. 
 
 Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell ; 
 
 Then shrunk the timid and stood still the brave ; 
 And some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell, 
 
 As eager to anticipate their grave ; 
 And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell ; 
 
 And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave, 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY, «t 
 
 Like one who grapples with his enemy, 
 And strives to strangle him before he die. 
 
 And first one universal shriek there rush'd, 
 
 Louder than the loud ocean ; — like a crash 
 Of echoing thunder ; and then all was hush'd, 
 
 Save the wild winds and the remorseless dash 
 Of billows ; but at intervals there gush'd, 
 
 Accompanied with a convulsive splash, 
 The solitary shriek and bubbling cry 
 Of some strong swimmer in his agony. 
 
 By way of contrast to the turbulent interest which pervades this 
 fragment of a description, powerful throughout, I will quote another 
 passage from the same author, happily depicting in the opposite ex- 
 treme of tranquillity a scene dedicated to placid and devotional medi- 
 tation. It is a twilight scene, and well illustrates the power of am- 
 plification in sustaining the interest of prolonged description, when^ 
 the materials have been skilfully selected. Milton has some lines on 
 the same subject, which will serve as an apposite introduction : 
 
 Now came still evening on, and twilight grey 
 Had in her sober livery all things clad ; 
 Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, 
 They to their grassy couch, these to their nest, 
 Were slunk : all save the tuneful nightingale ; 
 She all night long her amorous descant sung ; 
 Silence was pleased. 
 
 Byron's description runs thus : 
 
 Ave Maria ! o'er the land and sea 
 
 That heav'nliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee. 
 
 Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour, 
 
 The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft 
 Have felt that moment, in its fullest power, 
 
 Sink o'er the earth so beautiful, so soft ! 
 While swung the deep bell in the distant tower. 
 
 Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft; 
 And not a breath crept through the rosy air, 
 And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with pray'r. 
 
 Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of pray'r ; 
 
 Ave Maria ! 'tis the hour of love ; 
 Ave Maria ! may our spirits dare 
 
 Look up to thine and to thy son's above ! 
 Ave Maria ! oh ! that face so fair ! 
 
 Those downcast eyes beneath th' Almighty dove ! 
 
22 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 iVhat though 'tis but a pictured image strike ? 
 That painting is no idol, 'tis too like. 
 
 Sweet hour of twilight ! in the solitude 
 
 Of the pine forest, and the silent shore, 
 Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, 
 
 Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er, 
 To where the last Cesarean fortress stood, 
 
 Evergreen forest ! which Boccaccio's lore, 
 And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me, 
 How have I loved the twilight hour and thee ! 
 
 The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, 
 
 Who make their summer lives one ceaseless song,- 
 
 Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, 
 And vesper bells, that rose the bowers among: 
 
 The spectre huntsman of Onesti's line, 
 
 His hell-dogs, and their chase, and the fair throng, 
 
 That lsarn'd from his example not to fly 
 
 From a true lover, shadow'd my mind's eye. 
 
 Secondly, in regard to contraction* 
 
 Contraction, or retrenchment, as a figure of speech, is obviously 
 the converse of amplification. The chief difficulty in its adoption 
 arises from a tendency which it induces, to merge into obscurity. 
 But. under the judicious exercise of a master mind, how often does 
 retrenchment serve to condense the energies of thought ; to surprise 
 and startle the reader by sudden transition of incident; in a word, by 
 some rapid and unexpected effort to agitate or allay the tumult of 
 emotion. Such, for instance, is the effect in Coleridge's " Rhyme of 
 the Ancient Marinere." How thrilling the touch of remorse revealed 
 by the confession of the solitary offender, alone on the world of 
 waters ! 
 
 I look'd to Heaven — I tried to pray, 
 
 But or ever a prayer had gush'd, 
 A wicked whisper came, which made 
 
 My heart as dry as dust. 
 
 Again, what a landscape picture of serenity is exhibited in a mere 
 couplet by Woodsworth : 
 
 The swan, on still St. Mary's lake, 
 Floats double, swan and shadow. 
 
 And again, in Shelley's exquisite poem, "The Sensitive Plant," 
 how affectingly drawn is the portraiture of resignation, loveliness, and 
 wordless grief, in the heart of the desolate lady of the garden, who 
 "had no companion of mortal race:" 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 23 
 
 Thus through the garden, from earliest spring, 
 This fairest creature went ministering ; 
 She minister'd all the sweet summer tide, 
 And ere the first leaf look'd brown — she died ! 
 
 One more quotation, and I shall dismiss the subject of retrenchment : 
 
 A king sat on the rocky brow, 
 
 That looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
 And ships by thousands lay below, 
 
 And men in nations, — all were his : 
 He counted them at break of day, 
 And when the sun set — where were they ? 
 
 Where were they ? Brief interrogative ! But how strikingly does 
 it announce the utter prostration of tyranny, the sweeping annihila- 
 tion of power, suddenly thwarting [the schemes of insolent and over- 
 reaching ambition. 
 
 Thirdly, in regard to metaphor. 
 
 Metaphor has been thus familiarly defined by Doctor Stirling: 
 
 A metaphor in place of proper words, 
 Resemblance puts, and dress to speech affords. 
 
 I say familiarly, but not accurately, to the full extent of the defini- 
 tion : because if it is to be understood that metaphor is nothing but 
 a substitute for commonplace expression, just as it may suit the con- 
 venience, applicable or inapplicable to the sense of the writer, the 
 assumption is unwarrantable. In other respects the learned Doctor's 
 position is tenable enough: metaphor certainly is a "resemblance, 1 ' 
 a " dress" afforded to the customary and colloquial fashion of com- 
 municating ideas. Thus, for example, in the opening stanza of 
 Grey's celebrated Ode on the subjection of Scotland by Edward the 
 First : 
 
 Ruin seize thee, ruthless king, 
 
 Confusion on thy banners wait : 
 Though fann'd by conquest's crimson wing, 
 They mock the air in idle state. 
 
 Here we have a description completely metaphorical, the genius of 
 victory hovering with blood-stained wings over a conquering army. 
 What is this, in plain language, but the figurative and poetical de- 
 scription of a victorious soldiery flushed with recent success, and 
 marching onward in the buoyant anticipation of achieving additional 
 conquests? But, on the ground of the Doctor's definition, will any 
 one assert that the poet's expression is improper! If so, away, then, 
 
24 A DISCOURSE Otf POETRY. 
 
 at once with the metaphorical embellishment of poetical composition* 
 But no : there is no room for contention against the standard author- 
 ity of the best writers : metaphor, and metophor alone, can support 
 ; the truth of poetical assimilation: when injudiciously admitted it is 
 emphatically condemned as " harsh" metaphor: its real character 
 appears to be this, — The appropriate transfusion of expression from 
 the direct style of narrative to that of energetic simile introduced for 
 the clearer elucidation of description. 
 
 Fourthly, in regard to pathos. 
 
 Pathos cannot be properly designated a rhetorical figure ; but it is 
 an attribute on which the very spirit and vital essence of poetry so 
 strictly depend, that it cannot be overlooked in any, even the slightest 
 notice of the subject. And why is this ? Because pathos is feeling, 
 and "feeling in a poet is a source of others' feeling." A poem may 
 be replete with every ornament of style which the perfection of art 
 can communicate ; but if the persuasion of eloquence does not per- 
 vade the diction, — that persuasion which is a power far beyond the 
 range of formal rule, — it awakens no conviction in the heart. A 
 statue may be chiselled with every grace of symmetry and sculptural 
 precision : why, then, after a due tribute of admiration paid to the 
 accomplishment of manual skill, does the beholder turn away un- 
 moved and indifferent? The reason is this: — he has witnessed a 
 production, finished indeed, according to the nicest precepts and 
 criticism of art, but unimbued with the expression of nature : the 
 statue is complete ; but, still, mere marble, cold, spiritless, inanimate. 
 And thus it is with poetry: there must not only be the "master's 
 hand," but the " prophet's fire," or you strike the chords in vain. 
 The poet himself must feel, and that intensely, before he can hope 
 to engage the sympathies of others. " It is not enough," says the 
 accurate Roman teacher on this subject, " that poems be beautiful ; 
 let them be tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the au- 
 ditor wheresoever they please. As the human countenance smiles on 
 those that smile, so does it sympathise with those that weep. If 
 you would have me weep, you must first express the passion of grief 
 yourself; then, Telephus, or Peleus, your misfortunes really hurt me ; 
 but if you pronounce the parts assigned you ill, I shall either fall 
 asleep or laugh/' 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 Fart Third. 
 
FART XXX. 
 
 My next consideration is the Prosody of English poetry. 
 
 At the first view, the discussion of this topic may appear dry and 
 uninteresting. . I shall endeavor so to treat it as to avoid being prolix 
 and tedious, on the one hand; too concise and technical, on the 
 other. 
 
 The prosody of English poetry, in its application to the rhythmical 
 construction of verse, admits of easy and familiar definition. With 
 us, accent and quantity, in the prosodical acceptation of the term, are 
 one and the same thing. If our modern bards now and then com- 
 plain about the fetters of rhyme,-~that " sometimes kings are not 
 more imperative than rhymes;" yet have these same bards ample rea- 
 son to rejoice in being untrammelled by the closer and more finely 
 drawn threads of perplexity, spun out from the intricacies of long 
 and short syllables. A good ear, improved by attention to the ac- 
 knowledged standard of correct pronunciation, is the safe and sure 
 guide to harmony of numbers. Hence it happens that the effusion of 
 a rustic muse, like that of Burns, Blomfield, Clare, or the Ettrick 
 Shepherd, flow with a cadence smooth and appropriate as that which 
 graces the style of a More, a Rogers, a Wordworth, or a Campbell, 
 notwithstanding the advantage, on the side of the latter, of their 
 early initiation into the classical mysteries of quantity. 
 
 In confirmation of this opinion, hear the sentiments of " the Citi- 
 zen of the World," who thus writes on this very particular: " Several 
 rules have been drawn up for varying the poetic measure ; and critics 
 have elaborately talked of accents and syllables: but good sense 
 and a fine ear, which rules can never teach, are alone what can, in 
 such a case, determine. The rapturous flowings of joy, or the inter- 
 ruptions of indignation, require accents placed entirely different, and 
 a structure consonant to the emotions they would express. Changing 
 passions, and numbers changing with those passions, make the whole 
 secret of Western as well as Eastern poetry. In a word, 'the great 
 faults of the modern professed English poets are, that they seem to 
 want numbers, which should vary with the passions, and are more 
 employed in describing to the imagination, than striking at the heart." 
 It should be observed, however, that the faults noticed in the last 
 
28 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 period have been abundantly redeemed by the writers of Englisfe 
 poetry since the time of Goldsmith, who levelled this critique at the 
 head of inferior versifiers cotemporary with himself. 
 
 A wide field to expatiate in does, indeed, open itself in regard to 
 the manifold distinctions of metre. But let the subtile investigation 
 of a question so abstruse rest with the grammarians ; present purpo- 
 ses will be answered by summarily adverting to the more prominent 
 points of the question. So far as the remains of the classical poetry 
 of antiquity are concerned, none but those whose course of study 
 may have immediately directed their attention to the subject, can form 
 an adequate idea of the torture inflicted by metrical disquisition on the 
 ingenuity of the most celebrated critics ; the treasures of profound 
 erudition exhausted in the research. By the lucid and convincing ex- 
 position of Professor Porson more than others, the matter has recently 
 been set in its proper light, and the chief difficulties removed. This 
 sensible man, with surprising acumen, speedily detected, and as 
 speedily exploded, the fallacy of many favorite theories, which had 
 been defended, time immemorial, by a host of predecessors in the 
 same entangled walk of criticism. But it remained for Porson to 
 pluck up by the roots those weeds that encumbered the path; and this 
 he did with an unsparing hand. Advancing with deliberation, sifting 
 every specious dogma with the scrutiny of analogical reasoning, he 
 arrived at those conclusions, which enabled him to pronounce such 
 decisions on the legitimate structure of Greek verse, and the Greek 
 language generally, as never have been, nor, in all likelihood, ever 
 will be, reversed. 
 
 To the critical labors of this great man, then, are thanks deser- 
 vedly due from the rising generation of classical students. He 
 has rescued them from a world of difficulty ; has presented them 
 with a clue of escape from a labyrinth of errors ; has prevented the 
 abstraction of their ideas from objects of attention infinitely more 
 profitable ; and has, thus, tendered the facilities accruing from a va- 
 luable acquisition of time in the prosecution of their classical re- 
 searches. 
 
 Returning from the digression, let me proceed to examine the lead- 
 ing principles of English metre. 
 
 There is a definition laid down by Harris well worth quoting in 
 this place. It is this: "Rhythm differs from metre, inasmuch as rhythm 
 is proportion applied to any motion whatever, metre is proportion ap- 
 plied to words spoken : thus, in the drumming of a march, or the 
 dancing of a hornpipe, there is rhythm, but no metre: in Dryden's 
 celebrated ode there is metre as well as rhythm, because the rhythm 
 is accompanied by certain words." 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY* 29 
 
 The two grand divisions of poetical construction are the heroic and 
 the lyric : the rhythmical structure of each depends on the fitting ar- 
 rangement of four different measures or feet, distinguished by syllabic 
 accent, namely, the iambic, trochaic, dactylic, and anapestic. 
 
 The iambic measure is the basis of structure in English heroic 
 verse. This term, heroic, is merely conventional, and by no means 
 descriptive of the various subjects to which the structure is frequently 
 adapted. First applied to the celebration of heroic achievements, in 
 epic poetry, it thence derived the name ; but, owing to the particular 
 recommendation of its pliancy, it was subsequently transferred to sub- 
 jects^widely different in their nature, pastoral, narrative, or didactic ; 
 as in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village;" Campbell's "Gertrude of 
 Wyoming ;" Falconer's "Shipwreck," and Pope's "Essay on Man."* 
 
 1. tThe heroic iambic verse consists of ten syallables, having the 
 accents on every second one : thus, 
 
 And drags at each remove a len'gth'ning chain. 
 
 2. t The trochaic measure also consists of two syllables, having the 
 accent on the first : thus, 
 
 or where Hebrus wanders, 
 rolling in meanders. 
 
 3. The anapestic foot consists of three syllables, the accent falling 
 on the third : thus, 
 
 as a beam on the face of the waters may glow. 
 
 4. The dactylic foot also consists of three syllables, having the ac- 
 cent on the first : thus, 
 
 silent, Moyle, be the roar of thy waters. 
 
 In examining the nature of these four several measures or feet, it 
 is observable that each has its converse : the third and fourth are prin- 
 
 *In the same manner was the elegiac metre, among the Greek and Roman poets, 
 diverted from its original application which confined it to subjects of a mournful na- , 
 ture. It still remains unknown who was the first to use this very pleasing style of 
 verse : 
 
 Flebilis indignos Elegeia solve capillos. — Ovid. 
 
 fSyllaba longa brevi subjecta vocatur iambus.— Hor. O P, 
 
 I Sometimes called choree, 
 
qa A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 cipally introduced where vehemence and rapidity of expression are 
 
 ^ i" have said that the iambic measure is the basis of structure in 
 English heroic verse. This peculiarity, however, does not preclude 
 its admission into lyric composition, although the latter chiefly com- 
 prehends the divisions and subdivisions of the other three metres 
 above specified. Of this we have 'a fine example in Bryden's cele- 
 brated Ode referred to by Harris, one strophe of which I will here 
 
 present : 
 
 At length, with love and wine at once opprest, 
 The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast. 
 
 Now strike the golden lyre again, 
 A louder yet and yet a louder strain : 
 Break his bands of sleep asunder, 
 And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder. 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the horrid sound 
 
 Has rais'd up his head, 
 
 As awaked from the dead, 
 And amazed he stares around. 
 
 Revenge ! revenge ! Timotheus cries, 
 
 See the Furies arise ! 
 
 See the snakes that they rear, 
 
 How they hiss in their hair, 
 And the sparkles that flash from their eyes. 
 
 Behold a ghastly band, 
 
 Each a torch in his hand! 
 These are Grecian ghosts that in battle were slain, 
 
 And, unburied, remain 
 
 Inglorious on the plain : 
 
 Give the vengence due 
 
 To the valient crew. 
 Behold ! how they toss their torches on high, 
 
 And point to the glittering abodes 
 
 And temples of their hostile Gods f 
 The princes applaud with a furious joy, 
 And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy : 
 
 Thais led the way 
 
 To light him to his prey, 
 And like another Helen she fired another Troy. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of metrical doctrine, I cannot refrain 
 from alluding to an eccentric attempt made by an author of celebrity, 
 Doctor Southey, in his political apotheosis and anathema, " The 
 Vision of Judgment," to introduce a novel style of rhythmical con- 
 struction, modelled on the plan of the Greek and Latin hexameter. 
 The construction of this kind of verse is concisely exhibited, in his 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 31 
 
 usual happy vein, by Coleridge, in a couplet entitled " The Homeric 
 Hexameter described and exemplified:" 
 
 Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, 
 Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean. 
 
 To which, by way of corollary, I may add another couplet by the 
 same, entitled, "The Ovidian elegiac verse described and exem- 
 plified :" 
 
 In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; 
 In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. 
 
 To return to Mr. Southey : his attempt was a failure. The genius 
 of the English language is repugnant to the plan. The accentual 
 principal of our versification rejects that spondaic combination of 
 syllables, the gravity of which is necessary to temper and moderate 
 the rapid flow of the dactylic metre. Besides, English readers were 
 taken by surprise : they scarcely knew what to make of the innova- 
 tion. The attempt, therefore, failed, as I have said. Not only that; 
 it held out an inviting handle of derision to the Laureate's unsleeping 
 adversary, Byron; and the noble satirist clutched it, con amove. 
 Toward the conclusion of the famous retort, pointedly styled by the 
 author his Vision of Judgment, the Doctor is thus facetiously ban- 
 tered on the subject of his metrical abortion ; 
 
 Now the bard, glad to get an audience, which 
 
 By no means often was his case below, 
 Began to cough, and hawk, and hem, and pitch 
 
 His voice to that unhappy note of wo, 
 To all unhappy hearers, within reach 
 
 Of poets when the tide of rhyme's in flow; 
 But stuck fast in his first hexameter, 
 Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir. 
 
 But ere the spavin'd dactyls could be spurr'd 
 
 Into recitative, in great dismay 
 Both cherubim and seraphim were heard 
 
 To murmur loudly in their long array ; 
 And Michael rose, ere he could get a word 
 
 Of all his founder'd verses under weigh, 
 And cried, " for heaven's sake stop, my friend,— -'twere best,— 
 " Non di non homines" — you know the rest." 
 
 The tumult grew : a universal cough 
 Convulsed the skies, 
 
32 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 A few words may be here introduced respecting a portion of the 
 mythological poetry of antiquity. Those hymns, which long passed 
 under the name of Homeric, but which it appears from the concurrent 
 testimony of critics, no longer ought to be ascribed to " the old bard 
 of Scio's Rocky Isle ;" those hymns, I say, no matter by whom com- 
 posed, sufficiently indicate the enthusiasm of zeal that animated the 
 votaries of pagan worship. Among the literary wrecks of ages, these 
 hymns stand forth, the beautiful relics of a structure surpassingly 
 noble in its primeval state of completion, — like the stupendous archi- 
 tectural ruins of a Thebes or a Luxor, astonishing us with the gran- 
 deur of their very decay. These hymns exhibit a happy combination 
 of almost every accessary to poetical effect ; — propriety of adaptation, 
 nerve of diction, splendour of imagery, all contribute to impart those 
 characteristics of excellence, which distinguish them as master-pieces 
 in their way. English readers have lately been gratified with an oppor- 
 tunity of judging for themselves on the boasted merits of these famous 
 compositions, by the translations, which, since the year 1830, have, 
 from time to time, been given from the pen of the Rev. Mr. Eagles; — 
 translations presenting a correct model of style in themselves, being, 
 as they are, perfect specimens of what translations ought to be,— a 
 faithful transcript of the sense and the spirit ; no copy, servile to the 
 mere letter of the original. 
 
 Here, then, are compositions in poetry confessedly graced with 
 every attraction of style, every qualification capable of exciting in- 
 terest. Will it be contradictory to assert, that the uttermost interest 
 they can excite is only superficial ? Certainly not, if regard be paid 
 to existing views and considerations of the subject to which they are 
 dedicated. The delusion of the times when they were written, — a 
 delusion which such productions must, in any age or country, strongly 
 tend to foster, — has, happily, passed away, — has vanished "like the 
 baseless fabric of a dream." These compositions, therefore, splendid 
 as they are, no longer meet with reciprocity of sentiment; they no 
 longer wear the spell of reverential address. How different is it with 
 the sacred effusions of our writers subsequent to the later dates of 
 Christianity, who touched on those "heavenly themes" to which 
 " subiimer strains" belong. They composed in the spirit of truth and 
 perfect holiness ; therefore will their labors bear the test of all time. 
 One instance out of several, that might be adduced, will suffice. 
 How insignificant are the adventitious adornments of mythological 
 machinery, aided by a facination of expression inconceiveable, when 
 brought into comparison with the simplicity and majesty conveyed in 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 33 
 
 every line of Milton's glorious " Hymn on the Nativity,"* of which 
 I shall quote the first and two concluding stanzas: 
 
 The oracles are dumb, 
 
 No voice, or hideous hum, 
 Runs through the arch'd roof in words deceiving : 
 
 Apollo from his shrine, 
 
 Can no more divine, 
 With hollow shriek the step of Delphos cleaving : 
 
 No mighty trance, or breathed spell, 
 Inspires the pale-eye 'd priest from the prophetic cell. 
 
 Nor is Osiris seen 
 
 In Memphian grove or green, 
 Trampling the unshorn grass with lowings loud : 
 
 He cannot be at rest, 
 
 Within his sacred chest : 
 Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud: 
 
 In vain, with timbrell'd anthems dark, 
 The sable stoled priests surround the mystic ark. 
 
 Nor all the Gods beside 
 
 Longer durst abide ; 
 Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine : 
 
 They can no more withstand 
 
 The dreaded Infant's hand : 
 The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusty eyne : 
 
 Our babe, to prove his God-head true, 
 Can with a single glance dispel the damned crew.f 
 
 In drawing these brief and imperfect remarks to a conclusion, I 
 have to observe, that, whether placed in competition with the produc- 
 tions of the best authors of antiquity, or of those of the highest name, 
 in modern times, on the continent of Europe, the literature of the 
 English language can now confidently claim an equality, at the least, 
 in every branch of poetic excellence. The boldest flights of heroic 
 rapture ; the wildest sweeping, the deepest wailing of the iEolian 
 lyre ; the tuneful strains of pastoral simplicity, — have successively 
 delighted and surprised an attentive throng of admirers; — have been, 
 successively, rewarded with the most flattering tributes, — the tributes 
 of just and general appreciation. 
 
 Nor can it be doubted that an improved taste for poetical reading 
 exerts an important influence over the social and individual happi- 
 
 * This, I believe, was a very early production of Milton's. 
 fThis quotation is, I fear, a little incorrect. Vide notice, page 1 
 
34 A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 
 
 nesS) — the moral and intellectual character of a community. Wit- 
 ness the observations of a liberal ethical writer, Jeremy Bentham : 
 " When our own mind is unable to furnish ideas of pleasure, with 
 which to drive out the impressions of pain, these ideas may frequently 
 be found in the writings of others ; and when the expressions of the 
 writer are particularly suitable to the circumstances of the reader, the 
 effect will be still more potent. Poetry often lends itself to this be- 
 nevolent purpose ; and where truth and judgment ; reason and reflec- 
 tion ; harmony and sense combine, happy, indeed, is the influence." 
 
 Witness, again, the band of brotherhood with which the cultivation 
 of poetical taste and genius, binds the generous sympathies of men, 
 in other respects existing strangers to each other and unknown. This 
 was feelingly expressed by the accomplished Washington Irving, 
 when, a few years ago, the elegant poems of William Cullen Bryant 
 were first published in London. Mr. Irving, in his dedicatory letter 
 to Samuel Rogers, author of the " Pleasures of Memory," writes thus : 
 "During an intimacy of some years' standing, I have uniformly re- 
 marked a liberal interest on your part in the rising character and for- 
 tunes of my country, and a kind disposition to promote the success 
 of American talent, whether engaged in literature or the arts. I am 
 induced, therefore, as a tribute of gratitude, as well as a general testi- 
 monial of respect and friendship, to lay before you the present volume, 
 in which, for the first time, are collected together the fugitive pro- 
 ductions of one of our living poets, whose writings are deservedly 
 popular throughout the United States." 
 
 Pleasing testimony of cordiality in the sentiments of high-minded 
 men ! To which, by way of comment, it will not be irrelevant to add 
 the suffrage of another writer on the same subject, as an ample proof 
 that the spirit of congeniality is by no means exclusively limited to 
 poetical intercourse, on either side of the Atlantic. " I confess," 
 says this writer, " I augur most favorably of the taste of a country, 
 throughout which poetry so refined in sentiment, and so pure in ex- 
 ecution and ornament, as that contained in Mr. Bryant's volume, en- 
 joys popularity. A warm admiration of the works of nature, strong 
 religious feeling towards the great Author of these works, a singular 
 happiness of description, and of clothing his descriptions with moral 
 associations, that make them speak to the heart ; an independent 
 spirit, and the buoyant aspirations incident to a youthful and a rising 
 country, are among the charming characteristics of this American 
 poet." 
 
 Brief, indeed, has been the earthly career of many, the most dis- 
 tinguished competitors for poetical fame. Of many a one, as of him, 
 in whose honor a kindred spirit first prompted the line, may it be 
 
A DISCOURSE ON POETRY. 35 
 
 truly said "that science 'self destroy'd her favorite son." But the 
 labors of the illustrious departed still survive ; the works proclaim the 
 worth of the authors, enshrining their memory in the hearts of pos- 
 terity, — marking as hallowed ground the track they trod. Nay, is 
 there not a certain cheering relief, a joyous rebound of hope and 
 ecstacy springing from the very contemplation itself of the early des- 
 tiny, that unexpectedly summons the youthful poet to seek, or, rather, 
 to regain, his "native home above ?" 
 
 Whom the Gods love die young, was said of yore, 
 
 And many deaths do they escape by this ; 
 The death of friends, and that which slays even more, 
 
 The, death of friendship, love, youth, — all that is, 
 Except mere breath ; and since the silent shore 
 
 Awaits, at last, even those whom longest miss 
 The old Archer's shafts, perhaps the early grave, 
 Which~men_weep over, may be meant to save. 
 
 On every such bereavement I would, finally, pronounce the inspi- 
 riting strain of consolation breathed forth by the " prince of poets," 
 Milton, in that most plaintive of pastorals, Lycidas : 
 
 Alas ! what boots it, with incessant care, 
 
 To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade, 
 
 And strictly meditate the thankless muse ? 
 
 Were it not better done, as others use, 
 
 To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, / - 
 
 fl,/ Or with the tangles of Necer J's hair ? 
 
 / Fame is the spur, which the'clear spirit doth rai«e 
 / (That last infirmity of noble mind,) 
 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days ; 
 
 But the bright guerdon when we hope to find, 
 
 And think to burst out into sudden blaze, 
 
 Comes;the blind Fury, with th' abhorred shears, 
 
 And slits the thin-spun life. '« But not the praise," 
 
 Phoebus replied, and touch'd my trembling ears, 
 
 Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 
 Nor in the glittering foil 
 
 Set off to the world ; nor in broad j:umor lies ; 
 
 But lives, and spreads aloft, to those pure eyes, 
 
 And perfect witness of all-judging Jove : 
 
 As he pronounces lastly on each deed, 
 
 Of so much fame in Heaven expect thy?«ld. 
 
*♦ 
 
\ 
 
 REMARK'S 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND STUDY OF CB^aiA-lIX MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 Vi vineta egomet coedam mea. — Hor. 
 

REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY OF CERTAIN 
 MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 The varieties of the human race may be distributed according to 
 their physical conformation, or their languages, or both of these may 
 be combined to form one uniform arrangement, in which the primary 
 divisions may be taken from the conformation, and the secondary from 
 the distinction of languages. The physical conformation includes 
 shape and complexion, and under these general heads embraces the 
 form of the skull, the facial angle or inclination of the forehead, the 
 general form of the face, the features, the color and texture of the 
 hair and skin, the color and shape of the eyes, &c. 
 
 Languages are distinguished by their roots, or radicals, the simple 
 names of the most universal objects, and by their grammatical struc- 
 ture, or the rules according to which words are inflected and combin- 
 ed, so as to form a sentence. 
 
 The primary divisions drawn from the physical conformation will 
 not be brought under full consideration here, but only those seconda- 
 ry ones dependent on the affinities of language. For more ample 
 information on the former part of this subject, the reader is referred 
 to the " Mithridates" of Adelung and Vater; or the "Appendix" by 
 James Percival, M. D., to " A Geographical View of the World," by 
 the Rev. J. Goldsmith, second edition, New York. D. M. Jewett, 
 1829. 
 
 The Caucassian Race is characterized by a skull nearly spherical 
 or regularly rounded, and an oval shape of the entire head. Facial 
 angle, in the adult, 85°. Face oval and straight, forehead high and 
 prominent. Nose narrow at the base, elevated and rather aquiline ; 
 mouth small and well formed, lips thin ; chin full and rounded: whole 
 figure rounded and symmetrical. 
 
 This race alone furnishes ideal models for the statuary. Complexion 
 fair when not exposed to the sun and weather. This is true of the 
 higher ranks of the Arabs and Hindoos, who live secluded in their 
 palaces and harems. Cuticle transparent, cheeks tinged with blushes. 
 Hair fine, and of all shades from black to yellow and red, more or less 
 disposed to curl, but never frizzled. Eyes corresponding to the gen- 
 
40 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN ANI> STUDT 
 
 eral complexion, varying from deep black, through every shade of 
 grey, to light blue. 
 
 There are two varieties of complexion in this race, the brown and 
 the light. The complexion of the brown variety is pure white; but, 
 by exposure, it tans, or becomes brown; eyes generally dark; hair 
 black, or dark brown, sometimes dark red. The complexion of the 
 light variety is very fair and ruddy,- with a thinner cuticle ; by expo- 
 sure it freckles or becomes reddish; hair light brown, yellow, or light 
 red, and sometimes flaxen. Eyes blue or light grey. The person is 
 larger and more inclined to corpulence, and the eyes smaller than in 
 the brown variety. It is principally confined to the Gothic family, 
 which it characterizes. All the other families of this race belong to 
 the brown variety. The Hindoos and the ancient Egyptians, with 
 their descendants, the Copts, belong to this race, but are considered 1 
 by Blumenbach intermediate between it and the Malay or Negro. 
 
 The exact limits of the Caucassian and Negro races in Africa, are 
 not ascertained. They run along that part of Africa which has been 
 least explored, the country between the Nile and the Niger. As far 
 as the country has been explored, the two races have been found in- 
 termingled on the frontier, which probably crosses the continent from 
 Senegal, by Tombuctoo and Darfur, to Abyssinia, along the southern 
 boundary of the Great Desert. 
 
 From the preceding sketch of the Caucassian race, it will be found 
 to occupy all Europe, and nearly half of Asia and Africa, besides its 
 extensive colonies. It includes the most civilized nations, and indeed 
 all that have made any great progress, or have shown any high inven- 
 tive power. It is not only the most enterprising and intelligent, but the 
 most elegant of all the races, excelling them in complexion, features, 
 and form. The civilization of the other races, after gaining a certain 
 point, has continued stationary. They have formed extensive govern- 
 ments, and sustained a crowded population, and have, indeed, erected 
 the greatest of all known cities, but their habits, their arts, and their 
 science, as far as they have had any, have been marked by a want of 
 taste and action. Wherever they have come in contact with Caucas- 
 sians the latter have prevailed, except in the short triumphs of the 
 Mongols, under Genghis and Timur. 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 41 
 
 AFFINITIES OF LANGUAGE 
 
 THE PELASGIC. 
 
 This is styled by Adelung the Thraco-Pelasgic Greek and Latin 
 stock. All the languages from which this long name is derived are 
 extinct as spoken languages, and only exist, to any extent, in the 
 modern Greek, and the Roman languages of southern Europe. This 
 family originally occupied the countries around the Euxine, Asia 
 Minor, Turkey in Europe, and then Italy. They are supposed to 
 have come from central Asia, by the north side of the Black sea. In 
 the earliest periods they were divided into two great branches. 1. 
 The Thraco-IIlyrian occupied all the north of European Turkey, from 
 the Peneus and the Archipelago to the Carpathian mountains, and 
 the Dneiper, and from the Black sea to the head of the Adriatic. 
 This was their original seat, from which they settled the western half 
 of Asia Minor, driving before them the original inhabitants of the 
 Semitic family, 
 
 The original seat of the Pelasgic was in Thessaly and Epirus, from 
 which they settled all the south of Greece, and the islands, and sent 
 colonies to Italy and Asia Minor: probably of the same origin with 
 the Thracians: the last traces of their language were found in 
 Arcadia. 
 
 From this branch the ancient Greek was derived. The earliest 
 Greeks were called Hellenes, a Pelasgic tribe from the mountains of 
 Thessaly, who settled in the plains of Thessaly and Boeotia, and 
 formed a strong government, which gradually extended its influence 
 over Greece, and formed a national union. The oldest form of the 
 Greek was Eolic ; which had a near affinity to the Pelasgic, and con- 
 tinued the dialect of the mountaineers in northern Greece and Arca- 
 dia. It was the language of several colonies in Italy, where it con- 
 tributed to form the Latin, and of others in Asia Minor, where it was 
 cultivated in Lesbos and the adjoining coast, and formed the Eolic of 
 Sappho. 
 
 From this early form proceeded other dialects, viz., the Doric, from 
 Doris, carried by the Herdclidan into the Peloponnesus, of which it 
 J2 
 
42 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 became the prevailing language, and was thence extended by its co- 
 lonies to Sicily, the South of Italy, &c. 
 
 The Ionic, originally from Achaia, then established in Attica, from 
 which it was carried into Asia Minor, and there formed the prevailing 
 dialect of the more cultivated districts. It there attained a high de- 
 gree of perfection, became very soft and musical, and the language of 
 poetry and refinement. 
 
 The Ajttic, formed out of the remains of the old Ionic, modified by 
 the Eolic ; hence it became more concise and nervous, and, as Athens 
 gained the ascendancy, it became the ruling language of Greece. 
 
 After the time of Alexander the language became more general, 
 the dialects gradually disappeared, and the Hellenic Greek, or the 
 universal language of communication wherever the influence of Gre- 
 cian power or learning was known, was finally established. It was 
 then the prevailing language of all the countries governed by the 
 princes of the family of Alexander, and had afterwards a wide influ- 
 ence under the Roman empire'. It finally became the established 
 language of the Eastern empire at Constantinople, and the sacred 
 language of the Greek Church. The gradual influence of time, the 
 irruptions of the Northern barbarians and Saracens, into the Eastern 
 empire, and its final conquest by the Turks, entirely rooted out the 
 old language, and it now remains only in books, and in the prayers of 
 the Greek Church. The modern Greek, or Romaic, is formed from 
 the vulgar dialect ; not from the ancient written language. It was 
 first corrupted by the Romans, and since by the successive invasions 
 of the Goths, Tartars, Turks, &c. In some districts, particularly in 
 the interior of Asia Minor, the Greeks have entirely lost their lan- 
 guage, and speak the Turkish. They, however, use the ancient Greek 
 in their churches, and write their Turkish in Greek characters. The 
 modern Greek is now spoken throughout Greece Proper, the Morea, 
 and the Egean islands: it is also spoken on the coasts of Asia Minor 
 as far as Constantinople ; in Cyprus, and the Ionian islands. The 
 Greeks have long been a maritime and commercial people, and they 
 may be found in considerable numbers in most of the ports of the 
 Mediterranean. There are several provincial dialects, of which the 
 purest are said to be those of Mount Athos and the Cyclades. The 
 language is less inflected than the ancient Greek, and makes a greater 
 use of auxiliaries. It has only very recently been cultivated, and can- 
 not boast of any standards in literature.* 
 
 * For specimens of Romaic composition, prose and verse, together with a list of 
 Homaic authors and their works, consult the "Notes " to the fourth canto of Childe 
 Harold. 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 43 
 
 The ancient inhabitants of Italy were of five distinct nations. 
 
 1. The Ulyrians, a Thracian tribe, who entered from the North 
 East, and advanced to the extremity of Sicily. The Siculi were one 
 of their divisions. 
 
 2. The Iberi, from Spain ; they entered by Liguria, and advanced 
 along the Mediterranean coast into Sicily. The Sicani were one'of 
 their divisions. 
 
 3. The Celts or Gauls, who entered Italy from the Tyrol; the an- 
 cestors of the Umbri and Insubri. 
 
 4. The Pelasgi, called also Aborigines. These formed most of the 
 small states in central Italy, the Sabines, Latins, Samnites, &c. They 
 probably came from Thessaly, through Illyria, some have thought by 
 sea. 
 
 5. The Etruscans. Proper name, Rasena; a Celtic tribe from 
 Rhcetia ; overran the greater part of Northern Italy. Their empire 
 had its seat in Tuscany, near the source of the Arno : they were 
 powerful and civilized, but less so than is generally supposed. fMany 
 remains of their language are to be found in inscriptions : they pre- 
 sent a compound of Celtic and Pelasgic. Their language was spo- 
 ken on the Po in the reign of Claudius. 
 
 Several early Greek colonies of the Eolian dialect settled in Latium, 
 and by their union with the old Pelasgian and Umbrian dialects, the 
 Latin was formed. It is therefore radically Greek and Celtic, of 
 which the Greek predominates. There were many provincial dialects 
 in the neighbourhood of Rome, but as the Roman power increased 
 the Latin gained the ascendancy. Like all other languages it slowly 
 advanced to its perfection, which it finally attained in the age of Au- 
 gustus. It afterwards gradually declined under the Emperors, and 
 finally became extinct, as a vernacular language, by the invasions of 
 the Northern barbarians. It still continued the language of learning, 
 religion, and government, though greatly corrupted ; and on the revi- 
 val of learning it became the language of general communication 
 throughout Europe. It is still the sacred language of the Catholic 
 Church, and is the only one used in their religious services. 
 
 The Romans carried their language, as well as their laws, through 
 all the conquered nations, particularly in the West of Europe. It 
 gradually blended itself with the original languages of the conquered, 
 giving them a decidedly Latin character, and thus forming what was 
 called the Roman rustica, and afterwards the Roman or Romance lan- 
 guages. These were afterwards modified by the conquests of the 
 Northern barbarians, and from them the four great languages of 
 Southern Europe, with their dialects, have been formed. They all 
 differ from the Latin by fewer inflexions, and the use of articles and 
 auxiliaries. 
 
44 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 ITALIAN. 
 
 The written and cultivated Italian is the Florentine or Tuscan. It 
 is the language of literature and general communication though all 
 Italy, the South Swiss cantons, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Malta. 
 Its earliest standards were Dante and Petrarca, in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. It has since been carefully cultivated, and boasts 
 a long series of able writers, such as Boccaccio, Tasso, Ariosto, Mac- 
 chiavelli, Davila, Giannone, Metastasio, Alfieri, &c. The purest pro- 
 nunciation of Italian is in Rome, (hence the saying, " lingua To s- 
 cana in bocca Romana;) that of Florence is too guttural. There are 
 numerous dialects in Italy. Those in the North are more mixed with 
 Gothic, harder, shorter, and with fewer vowel endings. Those of the 
 South are softer, fuller, and more abundant in vowels, particularly in 
 their terminations. The principal are the Piedmontese, Ligurian, 
 Milanese, Berganese — very contracted, — Lombard, Bolognese, Pa- 
 duan, Friulese. These all belong to the Northern contracted division. 
 The Venetian, soft and pleasant ; Tuscan, very guttural ; Roman, the 
 polite Roman, the most musical in Italy ; Neapolitan, abounding in 
 vowels; the Sicilian, abounding in Arabic and Provencal words ; the 
 Sardinian and Corsican. The Lingua Franca, a general dialect of 
 communication in the ports of the Mediterranean, has its basis in the 
 Italian, but is corrupted by a mixture of Greek, Arabic, Turkish, &c. 
 
 SPANISH. 
 
 This language, originally Roman, was very considerably modified 
 by the Visi-Goths, and afterwards by the Arabic of the Moors. The 
 Castilian dialect furnished the basis of the present cultivated Spanish, 
 which is now the general language of Spain, and all the Spanish co- 
 lonies in America, the West Indies, and the Philippines. Next to 
 the English, it is the most widely diffused of all the European lan- 
 guages. The Castilian was written with the greatest purity in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries. Since the accession of the house 
 of Bourbon, it has been modified by the French. 
 
 The principal Spanish writers are Lope de Vega, Calderon, Cer- 
 vantes, Ercilla, Quevedo, Mariana, Herrera, &c. 
 
 There are several dialects in Spain, which may be classed under 
 two divisions : 
 
 1. The North-Eastern, which have a close affinity to the Provengal, 
 and are not Arabicized. The Catalonian, Arragonian, Valencian, and 
 Mallorcan. 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 45 
 
 2. The Southern and Western, more Arabicized, and less modified 
 by the French ; the Castilian, the basis of the Spanish ; the Gallician^ 
 the basis of the Portuguese, a much ruder and more contracted dia- 
 lect; the Andalusian and Grenadian, highly Arabicized, and the most 
 corrupt in Spain. 
 
 PORTUGUESE. 
 
 This language took its origin from the Gallician dialect, and, by 
 the establishment of the Portuguese monarchy, it has been raised to 
 its present rank as a written and cultivated language. It has many 
 Arabic words, and abounds in Latin words more than the Spanish. It 
 is very contracted, often leaving out consonants and even entire syl- 
 lables. It is the general language of Portugal and the Portuguese 
 colonies in Brazil, Africa, and the East Indies. A very corrupt Por- 
 tuguese is quite common on the coasts of South Hindostan and 
 Ceylon. 
 
 The Portuguese has been cultivated as long as the Spanish, but is 
 not so well known abroad. Its standard writer is Camoens ; others, 
 as Joam Barros, Manoel, &c, are less known. 
 
 FRENCH. 
 
 The Roman language of France was modified by the Franks and 
 Goths into two principal dialects, the Southern or Langue d'oc, and 
 the Northern or Langue d'oi. The Southern was the earliest culti- 
 vated at the great feudal courts of Provence, Toulouse, and Barce- 
 lona, thus giving rise to the Provengal or Limousin language, of which 
 there are numerous poetical remains. The poets of this dialect were 
 called Trobadors. It has not been a cultivated language since the 
 fourteenth century. The Northern, or Langue d'oi, was early culti- 
 vated at the French and Norman courts, and like the former was prin- 
 cipally devoted to poetry. Its poets were called Trouveres. Richard 
 I. of England was one of their number. The crusades against the 
 Albigenses, and the wars between the French and English in Guienne, 
 carried it South, and the overthrow of the courts of Provence and 
 Toulouse, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave it the ascen- 
 dancy in that quarter. The Provencal then declined, and has finally 
 sunk into a provincial patois. 
 
 After the consolidation of the French government by Louis XL it 
 became the prevailing language of the Kingdom, and soon one of the 
 most cultivated languages of Europe, particularly under the auspices 
 of Francis I. It gained its highest perfection in the reign of Louis 
 
4 5 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 XIV. It has since had many eminent writers, but is thought to have- 
 rather declined in purity. Its leading writers are Montaigne, Cor- 
 neille, Racine, Moliere, Bossuet, Fenelon, Boileau, La Fontaine, 
 Montesquieu, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, D'Alembert, and others. 
 It is the general language of communication throughout France, the 
 Western districts of Switzerland, and the French colonies in Canada, 
 Louisiana, the West Indies, Guiana, and the isles of France and 
 Bourbon. 
 
 During the last two centuries the French language has been a gen- 
 eral medium of intercourse throughout the continent of Europe, par- 
 ticularly in the Northern courts, and in diplomatic papers. 
 
 There are many provincial dialects in France, viz.: the Provengal, 
 closely resembling the North- Western dialects of Italy ; along the 
 Rhone, and extending to the Alps. The Langue d'oc, extending 
 from Auvergne to the Pyrenees, resembles the Romansh, The Gas- 
 con, including the Limousin, strongly aspirated. The old Poitevin, 
 cultivated as a poetical dialect, in the twelfth century. These are all 
 derived from the Langtie d'oc. 
 
 The Western dialects are the modern Poitevin, the Vendean, the 
 Augevin, and the Orleannois, the most cultivated, from the former re- 
 sidence of the court at Orleans. 
 
 The Northern dialects are the common Parisian, a corrupt dialect ; 
 the Norman, — the old Norman found in the early English law-books ; 
 the Picard, very rude ; the Walloon, on the frontiers f the Nether- 
 lands, very corrupt, mixed with Flemish ; the Lotharingian, Vosgien, 
 &c. in the North-East, approach the Dutch ; the Burgundian ; the 
 Swiss-French or Vaudois, very lisping, resembles the Romansh, spo- 
 ken in Porentru, Neufchatel, part of Freyburg, Vaud, Geneva, part of 
 Savoy, and the lower Valois. 
 
 Having thus briefly reviewed the rise and progress of the four lead- 
 ing languages of the Continent of Europe, it will not be irrelevant to 
 the plan of these "remarks" if we here make some attempt to trace 
 the course of the 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 The root of the English is Low Dutch. After England had been 
 successively occupied by the Gauls, the Belgae, and the Romans, it 
 was invaded by the Angles and Saxons, two tribes of Low Dutch from 
 the Elbe, who conquered it. The Union of the Heptarchy united 
 them, and formed the basis of the English, in its first period — the 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 The Danes next invaded and conquered the island, and gave a new 
 modification to the language, constituting its second period, — the 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 47 
 
 Danish-Saxon : many remains of this period are extant, few of the 
 former. 
 
 The Norman conquest, and the establishment of the Norman 
 French, as the language of law and government, gave a new modifi- 
 cation, the Norman-Saxon. 
 
 The long wars with France increased the stock of French words, 
 and when the vernacular language was made the language of law by 
 Edward I., it had widely departed from the old Saxon. It now took 
 that form which is called old-English, — the language of WicklirTe and 
 Chaucer. 
 
 The influence of the French still continued, and the Reformation 
 and the revival of letters brought in a large stock of Latin. The lan- 
 guage now became fully formed in the period of Elizabeth, and has 
 since been advancing, through an uninterrupted series, to its present 
 state. No language has been more highly cultivated than the Eng- 
 lish, and none can boast a greater list of writers in every branch of 
 literature, such as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, 
 Pope, Thompson, Cowper, Wordsworth, Byron, Bacon, Hooker, 
 Taylor, Clarendon, Addison, Swift, Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Hume, 
 Scott, Robertson, Gibbon, Fielding, and others, too well known to re- 
 quire recapitulation. 
 
 The language, in its present form, is about equally made up of 
 Gothic and Latin derivatives ; hence it has the aspect of a double 
 language. It is the simplest of all European languages, direct in its 
 structure, almost without inflexions, and supplying their place by 
 auxiliaries : in its pronunciation it is smoother and closer than the 
 German, and has more of the softness of the Roman languages of 
 Southern Europe. 
 
 The cultivated English is written and spoken with uniformity among 
 all the educated classes of the British islands, the British colonies, 
 and the United States. It is the established language of the British 
 government and the United States, and is thus more widely diffused 
 than any other language, except the Spanish. It is spoken, through- 
 out the United States with scarcely any difference of dialect. In the 
 British islands the provincial dialects are numerous, from the want of 
 a general diffusion of education. The principal are the Devonshire, 
 Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumbrian, Lowland Scotch, &c. It is 
 spoken in all those districts not occupied by the Celtic languages. 
 
 The assertion that the study of Greek and Latin is necessary to the 
 attainment of a correct knowledge of English has been so often re- 
 peated, that it is now very generally taken for granted and believed. 
 Does not such an assertion and such a belief amount to something 
 little short of an unwarrantable reflection on the framers, revisers, on 
 
48 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 all, in short, under whatsoever denomination they may come, wha 
 have had any share in bringing the English language to its present 
 polish and accuracy ? Let the points of analogy, which the case de- 
 mands, be once established, and it will be something to the purpose. 
 But this cannot be done, because very few, if any, points of analogy, 
 are really to be found. Indeed, so faint is the resemblance to be 
 traced between the construction of the English language and that of 
 ancient Greece and Rome, that any argument on either relation must 
 be drawn, not from what is, but from what is not; while daily experi- 
 ence confirms the fact that the more a grammarian tries to harmonize 
 the discrepancies betwixt any two languages, the more perplexed, and, 
 consequently, the less intelligible he becomes. The primary laws, 
 and what is called the philosophy of language, ever remain essentially 
 the same ; but, from the time of the grand division at Babel to the 
 present, the modifications and diversities in construction, over ihe sur- 
 face of the globe, have been endless. It is true that since custom 
 among the English established the study of Greek and Latin as an in- 
 dispensable part of certain professional qualifications, many terms of 
 art have flowed in from that prolific source. This, however, only cor- 
 roborates an expression, as happy as it is true, lately made by a learn- 
 ed gentleman* of this section, that " in their connection with the Eng- 
 lish, the Greek and Latin languages were rather a kind of super- 
 structure than a foundation." 
 
 If, notwithstanding, the derivation and composition of words is, in 
 itself, a consideration sufficiently weighty to demand the actual study 
 of foreign languages in order to improve and facilitate an acquain- 
 tance with our own, why not rather insist on the advantage derivable 
 from the Saxon character, the French, or the German, as the parent 
 stem ? — Both among the people and at the Court of England, the 
 Saxon and the French, in the times of early history, appear to have 
 held disputed sway. For a long period, before and after the invasion 
 of England by duke William, commonly called the Conqueror, the 
 French was in great use there. The historian, Beda, affirms that in 
 the year 640 it was the custom of England to send their daughters 
 into the monasteries of France, to- be brought up there; and that 
 Ethelbert, Ethelwolf, Ethelred, and other Saxon kings, married into 
 the royal blood of France. Glabor notes that before the time of duke 
 William, the Normans and English did so Jink together, that they were 
 a terror to foreign nations. Ingulphus saith, the Saxon hand was used 
 until the time of king Alfred, long before the time of duke William ; 
 
 • The Rev. Moses Raymond, of Hampshire county, Virginia. 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 & 
 
 and that he, being brought up by French teachers, used the French 
 hand; and he notes many charters of Eldred and Edgar written in the 
 French hand, and some Saxon mixed with it, as in the book of 
 Doomsday ; that Edward the Confessor, by reason of his totig being 
 in France, was turned into the French fashion, and all England with 
 him : but that William the First commanded the laws to be written in 
 the English tongue, because most men understood it, and that there 
 be many of his patents in the Saxon tongue." 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis notes, that the English tongue was in great 
 use in Bourdeaux, and in other parts of France, where Englishmen 
 were resident and conversant : the like was when the Frenchmen 
 were so conversant in England. 
 
 Matthew Westminster writes, that he was in hazard of losing his 
 living because he understood not the French tongue ; and that in 
 king Henry II. and king Stephen's time, who had large dominions in 
 France, their native country, the number of French, and of matches 
 with them, was so great, that one could hardly know who was French 
 and who was English. Gervasius Tilburensis observes the same ; and 
 Brackland writes, that in Richard I. time, preaching in England was 
 in (he French tongue ; probably pleading might be so likewise ; and 
 in king John's time French was accounted as the mother-tongue. 
 From the great use of the French tongue in England it was that the 
 reporters of law cases and judgments did write their reports in 
 French, which was the pure French in that time, though mixed with 
 some words of art. These terms of art were [taken, many of them, 
 from the Saxon tongue, as may be seen by those yet used. 
 
 Of these and other historical facts connected with the subject an 
 elaborate digest may be found in a paliamentary speech on " A pro- 
 posal to have the Old Laws translated from the French into English" 
 delivered in the British House of Commons, A. D. 1650, by an emi- 
 nent barrister, Mr. Whitlocke, who adds : 
 
 " I shall not deny but some monks, in elder times, and some clerks 
 and officers, might have a cunning for their private honour and profit, 
 to keep up a mystery, to have as much as they could of our laws to 
 be in a kind of mystery to the vulgar, to be the less understood by 
 them ; yet the counsellors in law and judges could have no advantage 
 in it." 
 
 And farther: 
 
 "As to the debate and matter of the act now before you, I have 
 delivered no opinion against it ; nor do I think it reasonable that the 
 generality of the people of England should, by an implicit faith, de- 
 pend upon the knowledge of others in that which concerns them most 
 of all. It was the Romish policv to keep them in ignorance of mat- 
 13 ■ 
 
$0 RBMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 ters pertaining to their soul's health ; let them not be in ignorance of 
 matters pertaining to their bodies, estates, and all their worldly com- 
 fort. It is not unreasonable that the law should be in that language, 
 which may best be understood by those, whose lives and fortunes are 
 subject to it, and are to be governed by it. Moses read all the laws 
 openly before the people in their mother-tongue. God directed him 
 to write it, and to expound it to the people in their own native lan- 
 guage, that what concerned their lives, liberties, and estates, might be 
 made known to them in the most perspicuous way. The laws of the 
 Eastern nations were in their proper tongue ; the laws at Constanti- 
 nople were in Greek ; at Rome, in Latin ; in France, Spain, Ger- 
 many, Sweden, Denmark, and other nations, their laws were publish- 
 ed in their native idiom. For our own country, there is no man that 
 can read the Saxon character, but may find the laws of your ancestors 
 yet extant, in the English tongue. Duke William himself command- 
 ed the laws to be proclaimed in English, that none might pretend 
 ignorance of them. It was the judgment of the parliament, 36 Ed- 
 ward III., that pleadings should be in English ; and in the reigns of 
 those kings when our statutes were enrolled in French and English, 
 yet then the sheriffs in their several counties were to proclaim them 
 in English." 
 
 Thus, I think, it is placed beyond the reach of doubt or contradic- 
 tion which of the two languages, French and Latin, as compared with 
 the English now in use, deserves the most attention in regard to pro- 
 bable analogy of idiomatical construction, and even the derivation of 
 words. It is no where shown, no where contended, that the tempo- 
 rary possession of the British materially affected the vernacular idiom 
 in England. In town and country Saxon and French were the popu- 
 lar tongues ; while Latin was entirely a scholastic concern ; its pecu- 
 liar sphere, — the cloister; its principal requisition, — that of Monkish 
 mystery and the enrolment of the laws, and, it may be added, the 
 emolument of the lawyers. But the books of the law themselves 
 were subsequently translated into English, particularly about Edward 
 the Third's time. 
 
 Reverting to the assertion that Greek and Latin are necessary to 
 accomplish the study of English, may it not be almost inferred that 
 the very sound of such a phrase betrays a want of patriotism in those 
 who use it ? Have there not figured in the world statesmen, lawyers, 
 divines, physicians, poets, orators, men of eminence in every walk of 
 life, whose book-learning was limited to the works of their compatriots 
 and to those of foreigners translated into their native tongue ? Un- 
 der parallel circumstances, that which in one ago and nation is anti- 
 patriotic becomes equally so in another. The Roman Lyrist, in on© 
 
01 CERTATN MODERN LANGUAGES. 51 
 
 of his most finished Odes, ingenuously relates of himself that M once 
 upon a time," while musing in deep reverie, on the plan of enriching 
 the Latin vocabulary and decorating the poetical diction of his coun- 
 try by the introduction of foreign idioms, the Muse or guardian Geniui 
 of the land appeared, and, with an air of rebuke, ordered the bard 
 to banish the unworthy design, and content himself with exploring 
 and bringing to the light of day, the unlocked treasures of his native 
 language, instead of tainting the purity of its source by extraneous 
 admissions. ■ 
 
 It will not, surely, be'denied, that for all purposes of Art or Elo- 
 quence the English language is a well of supply equally unfailing. 
 Moreover, let it be remembered that former things have now passed 
 away ; — a different spirit is now moving on the face of the earth. The 
 study of Greek and Latin, as a matter of necessity, is now no longer 
 indispensable. We live in a day when the reputation of taste and 
 good sense is not confined to an acquaintance with the Greek and 
 Latin authors, and it is not thought necessary to a man's understand- 
 ing an eloquent discourse, or even to his making one, that he should 
 ever have read a definition either of logic or rhetoric. 
 
 Little need be added to the above observations. This review of the 
 subject, however imperfect, will probably suffice to place the lan- 
 guages of ancient Greece and Rome and the modern English in their 
 true relative position. But fashion deigns to play a part in the affair, 
 and hence it is led to assume a more serious aspect. Be the theatre 
 of its operation where it may, Fashion, confessedly too strong for the 
 law, will ever enact the usurper. Not the sons alone, but the daugh- 
 ters of the land, are, " now-a-days," to be marshalled in the ranks of 
 the "learned Thebans " of our College Halls. Certainly, if any pa- 
 rent does not think, with Milton, that " one tongue is enough for a 
 woman," let such parent have his daughter instructed in two, or 
 twenty. In the way of language, I dare say, there is no difficulty 
 which a female cannot readily conquer. Cleopatra, of old, is an in- 
 stance in point: in modern times, Madame Dacier, in France, and 
 Mrs. Carter, in England, were among the best Greek and Latin scho- 
 lars of the times they flourished in : their names are the boast of 
 classical criticism. But is it society at large, or the sedentary student 
 in his closet, that has most profited by the literary labours of these 
 talented women? It must always be borne in mind, that, for practical 
 application, the Latin language is restricted to the very limited circle 
 of the literati or school-men. To them, living in different parts of the 
 world, and imperfectly, or, perhaps, not at all acquainted with each 
 other's tongue, the ability to write in Latin forms a convenient medium 
 of communication and controversy. 
 
52 REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN AND STUDY 
 
 To return to Madame Dacier and Mrs. Carter. — The case of these 
 formidable female Drawcansirs was peculiar. With them classical 
 study was a business, and a serious business, too, absorbing all other 
 considerations. They had the courage to dive deeply into the criti- 
 cism of classical erudition ; and thus they became critics in their turn. 
 In consequence of this they had a literary character at stake, the 
 jealous support of which, at any sacrifice, did in a manner force on 
 them the necessity of extending their researches to the utmost. How 
 far such a course may coincide with feminine taste and feminine avo- 
 cations, generally, I leave for others to determine. For myself,. I 
 should rather suppose that some modern and living language, — some 
 one equally flexible, whether for conveying the vigorous sallies of vyit 
 and exuberant fancy, or the social recreation of conversational inter- 
 course, would be preferable. Such, for example, is the language of 
 France, Spain, or Italy. To the taste and opportunities of a young, 
 intelligent female, such a study may be accounted quite congenial. 
 Can it be questioned which is best calculated to win the fair student's 
 choice — the freshness of a poetical wreath woven from the " ever- 
 blooming garden" of Ariosto, Tasso, Petrarca ; or the age-worn 
 h$ s of Anacreontic, Catullian, or Propertian flowers, which, undying 
 though they are, Time's despoiling touch has dimmed, if unable to 
 destroy ? 
 
 To be sure, we know there is no accounting for taste. English 
 historians have drawn a picture of personal and mental excellence in 
 the character of the Lady Jane Grey, who, at an age almost puerile, 
 M derived more pleasure in her closet from the study of Plato, in the 
 original Greek, than her gay companions from the sports of the chase." 
 The sad fate of this unfortunate Lady is touching, and might well 
 move the sympathy of the sternest heart. There is, however, — it 
 must be acknowledged, — something extremely frigid in the narrative 
 that, when led forth to execution, pausing awhile over the body of her 
 beheaded husband, she calmly and deliberately composes and writes 
 in her tablets a moral sentiment in three different languages, Greek, 
 Latin, and English. Will it be deemed harsh to declare an opinion, 
 that, in a display of learning like this, there is something too much of 
 pedantry, or singularity, at the least ? 
 
 I shall here close these "remarks" with a few lines bearing on the 
 subject of the French language, taken from Franklin's letter, address- 
 ed to Noah Webster, jun., on the " Modern Innovations in the Eng- 
 lish language and in Printing." 
 
 " The Latin language," says Doctor Franklin, " long the vehicle 
 used in distributing knowledge among the different nations of Europe, 
 •is daily more and more neglected ; and one of the modern tongues, 
 
OF CERTAIN MODERN LANGUAGES. 53 
 
 jsamely, French, seems, in point of universality, to have supplied its 
 place. It is spoken in all the courts of Europe ; and most of the 
 literati, those even who do not speak it, have acquired a knowledge 
 of it, to enable them easily t© read the books that are witten in it. 
 This gives a considerable advantage to that nation. It enables its au- 
 thors to inculcate and spread through other nations, such sentiments 
 and opinions, on important points, as are most conducive to its in- 
 terests, or which may contribute to its reputation, by promoting the 
 common interests of mankind." 
 
 And farther : 
 
 "At present there is no capital town in Europe without a French 
 bookseller's shop corresponding with Paris. Our English bids fair to 
 obtain the second pkce. The great body of excellent printed ser- 
 mons in our language, and the freedom of our writing on political 
 subjects, have induced a great number of divines, of different sects 
 and nations, as well as gentlemen concerned in public affairs, to study 
 it so far at least as to read it. And if we were to endeavour the fa- 
 cilitating its progress, the study of our tongue might become much 
 more general." 
 
tlF 
 
 *<h i ,.£, 
 
 w { 
 
u .1 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 '" The attention of the poetical populace of the present day to ob- 
 tain an ostracism against Pope is as easily accounted for as the Athe- 
 nian's shell against Aristides : they are tired of hearing him always 
 called " the just." They are also righting for life ; for if he maintains 
 his station, they will reach their own falling. They have raised a 
 mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest Architecture; 
 and, more barbarous than the barbarians from whose practice I have 
 borrowed the figure, they are not contented with their own grotesque 
 edifice unless they destroy the prior and purely beautiful fabric which 
 preceded, and which shames them and theirs for ever and ever. I 
 shall be told, that amongst those I have been (or, it may be, still am) 
 conspicuous — true, and I am ashamed of it. I have been amongst 
 the builders of the Babel, attended by a confusion of tongues, but 
 never amorjgst the envious destroyers of the classic temple of our 
 predecessor. I have loved and honored the fame and name of that 
 illustrious and unrivalled man, far more than my own paltry renown, 
 and the trashy jingle of the "schools" and upstarts, who pretend to 
 rival and even surpass him. Sooner than a single leaf should be torn 
 from his laurel, it were better that all which these men, and that I, as 
 one of their set, have ever written, should 
 
 " ' Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row, 
 • Befringe the rails of Bedlam of Soho.' 
 
 " There are those who will believe this, and those who will not. 
 You, Sir, know how far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, not 
 only in this short work intended for publication, and in private letters 
 which can never 'be published, has or has not been the same. I look 
 upon this as the declining age of English poetry ; no regard for others, 
 no selfish feeling, can prevent me from seeing this, and expressing 
 the truth. There can be no worse sign for the depreciation of the 
 times than the depreciation of Pope. It would be better to re- 
 ceive for proof Mr. Cobbet's rough but strong attack upon Shaks- 
 peare and Milton, than to allow this smooth and "candid" under- 
 mining reputation of the most " perfect" of our poets, and the purest 
 14 
 
5g APPENDIX. 
 
 of our moralists. Of his power in the passions, in description, in the 
 mock-heroic, I leave others to descant. I take him on his strong 
 ground, as an ethical poet : in the former none excel ; in the mock 
 heroic and the ethical none equal him ; and, in my mind, the latter is 
 the highest of all poetry, because it does that in verse which the 
 greatest of men have wished to accomplish in prose.* If the essence 
 of poetry must be a lie, throw it to the dogs, or banish it from your 
 republic, as Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry 
 with truth and wisdom, is the only true "poet " in its real sense ; " the 
 maker, 5 ' the," creator "—why must this mean the "liar," the " feign- 
 er," the "tale-teller?" — A man may make and create better things 
 than these." — Byron's Letter on Bowles's Strictures on Pope. 
 
 B. 
 
 Gratus Alexandre regi Magno fuit ille 
 
 Choerilus, incultis qui versibus et male natis 
 
 Rettulit acceptos, regale numisma, Philippos. 
 
 Sed, veluti tractata notam labemque remittunt 
 
 Atramenta, fere scriptores carmine fasdo 
 
 Splendida facta linunt. Idem rex ille, poema 
 
 Qui tarn ridiculum tarn care prodigus emit, 
 
 Edicto vetuit ne quis se, preeter Apellen, 
 
 Pingeret, aut alius Lysippo duceret sera 
 
 Fortis Alexandri vultum simulantia. Quod si 
 
 Judicium subtile videndis artibus illud 
 
 Ad libros et ad ha3C Musarum dona vocares, 
 
 Bosotum in crasso jurares acre natum. — Hor. Ep. lib. 2. L 
 
 Milton's biographers relate that his daughters could read, but not 
 translate, several languages, both living and dead, — a practice they 
 were obliged to exercise as some relief to the poet's blindness. Mil- 
 ton being once asked why his daughters were not instructed in the 
 sense as well as the sound of those various languages, is said to have 
 replied that "one tongue was enough for a woman." 
 
 * Poetry is sublime when it awakens in the mind any great and good affection, as 
 piety or patriotism. This is one of the noblest effects of the Art. The Psalms are 
 remarkable, beyond all other writings, for their power of inspiring devout emo- 
 tions.— Beattie on the Excellence of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
APPENDIX. DU 
 
 D. 
 
 In making free with the name, opinions, and expressions of Doctor 
 Franklin in the preceding pages, I would have it distinctly understood, 
 that it is by no means done with the view of insinuating that he held 
 the study of tGreek and Latin in no esteem. His correspondence on 
 the subject of the Philadelphia Academy proves the contrary. To 
 this study Franklin, no doubt, assigned its just value : no one should 
 be required to do more : but he might still be averse to its obtaining a 
 preponderating influence, especially as he had full and frequent op- 
 portunities of observing the pernicious results of such a system in the 
 Public Schools of England, — a conjecture much strengthened by the 
 fact of his drawing out a precautionary plan for organizing the studies 
 of the English classes, which plan was to be submitted to the Trus- 
 tees of the then newly projected Institution at Philadelphia. 
 

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