classical enthusiast can exercise towards a favourite author, the warmest partiality which a laborious editor can feel for the ancient about whom he is occupied, can suggest no legitimate defence for his transgressions. They are unredeemed by all the beauties which adorn his page, and all the wit that sparkles in his dialogue.

That Aristophanes was a severe corrector of the Athenian vices, that he was peculiarly sensitive to the follies and caprices and cruelties of that "complex Nero" the sovereign people of Athens, and scourged them with an unrelenting hand, we by no means reluctantly admit. But to see him placed by Cumberland, and the Schlegels (whom Mr. Mitchell implicitly follows) in the moral chair, and to be invited to his lectures, as if ethical truth came mended from his tongue,—is an unreasonable exercise of our forbearance. Much may be indulged to the enthusiasm of commentators and translators, who naturally feel a paternal tenderness for the subject of their labours: but when this enthusiasm betrays them into insane admiration; when, like the lovers and madmen of Shakspeare, they have such seething brains

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends,

we must take care not to look through the same distempered medium, but to frame our estimate by a cooler and sedater vision.

If it be said, and more than this is said, that it was to give efficacy to his satire, and poignancy to his reproaches, that he flirted and coquetted with the Athenian mind; that to correct the morals of his countrymen, he condescended to gratify their tastes; that he stroked and caressed them as it were with one hand, that he might more effectually chastize them with the other; that we must not be too fastidious, but take so agreeable a writer for better and worse, the moral poet and the unrestrained libertine, the wisdom of the philosopher and the gaiety of the buffoon; that it was more practicable to attain his end by acquiescing in the prevailing modes of comic writing, than by a vain effort to introduce chaster and purer topics, which might endanger that end; that the same auditors, who hissed Cratinus, one of their favourite poets, from the stage, because in one of his pieces he had stinted them of their usual allowance of ribaldry, would have visited Aristophanes with the same indignity, had he presumed to rebel against the coarse habits of the Athenian theatre; if this be urged in behalf of Aristophanes, let Aristophanes himself be heard in reply. Amongst the eleven comedies of the poet, which time has spared, “The

Plutus" is, we think, one which, though by no means free from verbal grossness, contains a comparatively small proportion of the feculence and indecency of his other plays. It has also much less to gratify that appetite for personal scandal, which was so prevalent in Athens, and which had received from Aristophanes some of its most delicious repasts: yet the piece was eminently successful. Here then is one proof at least, that he might have gratified the Athenian mob without pampering their sensuality. Such also was the popularity of Aristophanes, so complete was his mastery over his auditory, that we do not over-rate his influence, by presuming that he might by degrees have given the public taste a better direction, and brought virtue and delicacy, had it so pleased him, instead of vice and depravity, into fashion at the theatre. Let it be recollected also, that Aristophanes was, in a great measure, the framer of the old comedy. It came to him, says Mr. Mitchell, in a rough and unfinished state, and was re-cast by his hands. It is not then overtasking the astonishing powers of the poet, when we venture to conjecture, that they were not incompetent to a reformation of the Athenian stage. He who could with impunity laugh at the crimes and follies of Athens, tell the people to their faces that they were a set of shallow, self-conceited, presumptuous egotists, and the dupes of every one who pampered their vanity; who had so boundless a sway over the government and the people, as to be applauded for the severest animadversions upon both, and rewarded with the most tumultuous approbation, and the highest honours of the theatre for saying that, which another comic poet (Anaxandrides) expiated by a slow and cruel death, might surely have more effectually legislated for the drama, and more completely reformed the vices of the old comedy, than the decree which was afterwards passed to restrain it. Aristophanes, however, aimed at no such purpose. With the servile alacrity of a mere minister of pleasure, whether he was required to gratify the malevolence of the low by insults on the high, or to serve up to the diseased cravings of Athens a banquet of lewdness and sensuality, he was indefatigable in his calling. Such was the poet whom the new literary fashion of the day has erected into a moral censor, and a philosophic instructor.

An apology for the obscenity of the poet is attempted to be

Elle appartient pour le fond au genre de l'ancienne comédie; cependant, une plus grande moderation dans la plaisanterie personelle, et une teinte generale plus adoucie la rapprochent de la comédie moyenne.

(Schlegel sur Litt. Dram. tom. i. p. 34.)

extracted by his translator* from the Phallic origin of the Greek comedy, and the daily spectacles, (emblematic representations interwoven in that hideous superstition,) which the eyes of men and women abroad and at home daily encountered. Charity, that thinketh no evil, prompts us to look back with pitying eyes upon those benighted minds, which walked in the darkness of the shadow so eloquently sketched by the Apostle, and rather hastily to adopt than austerely to reject the extenuations that are proffered for the corruptions of the heathen world. Without urging a doubt, however, as to the genealogy ascribed to the Greek comedy, we must be allowed to remark that more than two centuries had now elapsed, during which the tragic exhibitions from their first dithyrambic origin having successively passed through the hands of Thespis, Phrynicus, and Eschylus, had been polished into the sedate majesty of Sophocles, and the finished pathos of Euripides; while comedy had made also considerable, if not equal advances from those licentious festivities, when at the celebration of the vintage,† a rude troop, smeared with the dregs of the grape and intoxicated with its juice, poured out their unpremeditated sarcasms, and unpolished buffooneries, to the bitter but elegant satire of Cratinus, and the rich and harmonious diction of Aristophanes. After so complete a transformation, nothing of its Bacchic origin could remain, but the time (the Dionysian festivals) appointed for its representation. Its obscenity, therefore, had little to do with its religious original. The fact is, that a long course of indulgence had made grossness a daily nourishment for the Athenian mind. But let us concede to Mr. Mitchell that the ancient comedy derived its licentiousness from the ceremonies of Bacchus, and what will Aristophanes gain by the admission? He whose empire over the public taste was so unbounded that he gave a new form to the Grecian comedy, might easily have divested it of its consecrated obscenities. Reverence for the religious institutions of his country formed no part of the character of a poet, who ridiculed, on more occasions than one, the very god of the festival, and handled Jupiter himself with the most unceremonious freedom.

Such are the suggestions, which present themselves to our minds, when a place amongst the moral teachers of antiquity is claimed for Aristophanes. How inefficacious, must have been the discipline of a master, upon the light, volatile, and thoughtless Athenians, who meets more than half-way the crimes, which

Mitchell. Prel. Discourse, p. 25.

+ Anacharsis, tom. vi.

he rebukes, and who, instead of hurling his invective from the elevation of virtue, descends into the haunts of the vices, converses with them as acquaintances, and uses their lowest, and most familiar speech! We are not slow in yielding to the prince of comic poets the real and appropriate praise that is due to him, but we have kept ourselves uninfected with the contagion of that false criticism, which converts into a severe moralist and a virtuous preceptor, a poet gifted indeed with all the accomplishments of his age, but who, having dedicated his life to the lighter amusements of his countrymen, seems scarcely to have cherished a wish, or to have indulged an aspiration, beyond the dramatic crown of the festivals. The awful censorship of virtue belonged not to a writer, who, to tickle the ears of his plebeian audience, dealt most unsparingly in the lowest ribaldry, and to sooth their malignity, dragged into his scene, as an object of scoffing and ridicule,the purest and wisest character of the age; who violated the retirements of private life to bring into public contempt, and to mark for public vengeance, those who were either obnoxious to himself or the people; who, where neither vice nor folly could be imputed, made the accident of birth a reproach, and laughed at the most moral and pathetick poet of antiquity, because his mother was a vender of herbs; who destroyed as far as he could the moral distinctions, and enfeebled the motives to virtue, by lashing with equal ridicule a Socrates, and a Cleon, the foulest profligacy and the most spotless integrity. It is not for such a man suddenly to start up in the dignity and dress of virtue. Aphorisms of morality to come forth with effect, must have the support of character and the stamp of consistency.

The history of Athens will supply us with additional antidotes against this immoderate admiration. When the comedy of Aristophanes exercised its severe inquisition over public and private life, where are we to look for its moral fruits? What fashionable folly did it laugh down? Was plebeian pride rebuked by its ridicule, or the tyranny of the many abashed into mildness and forbearance? The audience indeed saw their own deformities pleasantly dressed up for their amusement. They laughed, and scarcely felt the satire. The satire besides was directed against them collectively; no individual was wounded or amended; every one acknowledged the sarcasm to be just, while the dexterity of self-love transferred it to his neighbour : all were amused, none reformed: they returned the next day to the very follies at which they had laughed, with a relish sharpened by the penance; and having indulged a hearty laugh at all that was high and consecrated amongst them-at Jupiter,

or Mercury, or Bacchus,-or gratified the levelling passion so prevalent in democracies in the ridicule of an eminent statesman, the next day they prostrated themselves with the meanest servility at the statues of the gods they had ridiculed, and swelled the retinue of the great man, who but a few hours before had been caricatured and libelled for their amusement. Such was the efficiency with which Aristophanes corrected the morals of his countrymen.

There can be no doubt, indeed, that he occasionally strikes at abuses which are lawful game to the comic or satiric writer. In the comedy of the Knights, the rapines and extortions of Cleon are painted to the life. It must have abated however the edge, as it diminished the merit of the satire, that it did not flow from an unpolluted source. Private resentment gave to it its force and direction, for Cleon had opposed the poet's registration as a citizen of Athens. Wieland, whose erudition confers no slight authority upon his opinions, tells us farther, that the poet was in the pay of the party of Nicias, the political opponent of Cleon. Unquestionably the selection of such a character was fortunate. He was a monster unredeemed by a single virtue, born to be despised, but determined to be great, who by the meanest assiduities to the people had from the lowest station ascended the giddiest heights of popularity. This was the miscreant, whose turbulent eloquence persuaded that infamous decree which inflicted death on the males, and reduced to slavery the women and children of Mitylene, after the unsuccessful revolt of that devoted city, and that too in open violation of a solemn treaty, and stifled the few compunctious feelings that appeared to be stirring in the bosoms of the Athenians.* Such was Cleon, whose varied turpitude may be compendiously summed up in a single phrase. He was a consummate demagogue; a character of such finished profligacy, that it might be suspected to have come down to us with blacker shades than belonged to it, but that the French revolution has rendered the most portentous magnitude of democratic crime familiar to our imaginations. After the gigantic villanies of Danton and Marat, those of Cleon are no longer incredible. But the satire of the piece is so neutralized by its buffoonery, that it seems little calculated for a powerful effect. Its whole humour consists in a contest for popular fayour between Cleon and a sausage-vender, one of the lowest dregs of the people, who contends for, and at last wrests from him, says the French author of Anacharsis,t« l'empire de l'im

* Mitford's Hist. Greece, vol. iii. p. 183.

+ Anachars. tom. vi.