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ing how small a place it occupies in the comprehensiveness of their prospect, smile at the little ambition and the circumscribed perceptions with which the drivellers and mountebanks upon it are contending for the poetical palm and the critical chair.

HORE DRAMATICÆ.-No. 1.

[Published in Fraser's Magazine, 1852, vol. xlv. No. cclxvii.]

G

OETHE, we think-for we cannot cite chapter and verse-says somewhere something to this effect-that the realities of life present little that is either satisfactory or hopeful; and that the only refuge for a mind, which aspires to better views of society, is in the idealities of the theatre.

Without going to the full extent of this opinion, we may say, that the drama has been the favourite study of this portion of our plurality, and has furnished to us, on many and many occasions, a refuge of light and tranquillity from the storms and darkness of every-day life.

It is needless to look further than to the Athenian theatre and Shakspeare, to establish the position that the drama has combined the highest poetry with the highest wisdom; neither is it necessary to show that the great masters of the art have a long train of worthy followers, partially familiar to all who look to dramatic literature for amusement alone, and more extensively as to those who make it a subject of study.

Still there are many excellent dramas comparatively little known; much valuable matter bearing on the drama, remaining to be developed; and many dramatic questions, which continue to be subjects of controversy, and offer topics of interesting discussion.

It is our purpose to present our views of some of these subjects, in the form of analyses or criticisms; not following any order of chronology or classification, but only that in which our readings or reminiscences may suggest them.

QUEROLUS; OR, THE BURIED TREASURE.

A ROMAN COMEDY OF THE THIRD CENTURY.

THIS comedy, which, from internal evidence, is assignable to the age of Diocletian and Maximian, is the only Roman comedy which, in addition to the remains of Plautus and Terence, has escaped the ravages of time. It is not only on this account a great literary curiosity, but it is in itself a very amusing and original drama. It is little known in this country.

The first editors of this comedy had access to several manuscript copies of it. The last editor had access to two: the Codex Vossianus, now in the library at Leyden, in the margin of which Vossius had written the various readings of another, the Codex Pithoeus; and the Codex Parisinus, now in the library at Paris, a manuscript apparently of the eleventh century.

The first printed edition was edited by P. Danielis, in 1564. The second edition was edited by Rittershusius, and printed by Commelinus, in 1595. The third edition was published by Pareus, at the end of his edition of Plautus, in 1619. The fourth and last edition is that of Klinkhämer, published at Amsterdam in 1829. Of these editions, the first, third, and fourth are in the British Museum; the second and fourth are in our possession.

We have thus had the opportunity of consulting all the editions of the work. The first edition was inaccessible to Klinkhämer. The second edition contains all that is important in the first, with much that is not in any other; including a long poem by Vitalis Blesensis, a writer of the middle ages, in which the story is narrated in elegiac verse: the author professing, that he now does for a second comedy of Plautus what he had previously done for his Amphitryon. The author of the comedy is, however, as we shall subsequently notice, innocent of its ascription to Plautus.

In the three first editions, the text was printed as prose. Klinkhämer recognized the traces of metre, and arranged the whole into verse, printing the prose text on the left-hand pages, and the metrical arrangement on the right. The task

is executed with much skill, and little arbitrary change. In this portion of his work, as indeed in the whole of it, he derived great advantage from having been the pupil of D. J. Van Lennep, at whose instigation he undertook the edition. The result is, a most agreeable reading, of which we regretted to come to the close.

This play is called Querolus, sire Aulularia-" Querolus, or the Comedy of the Aula, or Olla," a large covered pot or vessel of any kind, which is in this case the depository of a treasure. The dramatis personæ are―

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Plautus's comedy of Aulularia (the basis of Molière's L'Avare) takes its name from a similar subject; but there is nothing in common between the comedies, excepting the buried treasure, the title, and the circumstance of the prologue being spoken by the household deity, the Lar Familiaris.

In Plautus's prologue, the Lar tells the audience, that the heads of the family had been a succession of misers, one of whom had buried a treasure, the secret of which he had not the heart, even when dying, to reveal to his son; that the son had lived and died poor and parsimonious, and had shown no honour to him, the Lar; in consequence of which he had done nothing towards aiding him to discover the buried treasure; that the grandson, the present pater familias, was no better than his predecessors; but that he had a daughter who was very pious towards her household deity; on which account he had led the father to the discovery of the treasure, in order that the daughter might have a dowry.

The comedy of Querolus has no female character, and the hero does not appear to have a family. The Lar tells the audience, that Euclio, the father of Querolus, going abroad on business, had buried a treasure before the domestic altar;

*The learned and accomplished editor of Terentianus Maurus. He completed the edition which Santenius had begun.

+ The MSS. and editions have all "Pantomalus," a barbarous composite, suitable, no doubt, to the age, but not to so correct and elegant a writer as the author of this comedy. "Pantolabus" is classical (see Hor. Sat. i. 8, 11); and Take-all suits the character in question better than All-bad.

that, dying abroad, he had entrusted the secret to Mandrogerus, and had given him a letter to Querolus, enjoining his son to divide the treasure with his friend Mandrogerus, as a reward for faithfully delivering the message; that Mandrogerus had made a scheme for getting surreptitious possession of the whole; that he, the Lar, would frustrate this scheme, and take care that the treasure should go to its right owner, whom he describes as not bad, but ungrateful.

The first scene consists of a dialogue between Querolus and the Lar. Querolus enters, complaining of Fortune, when the Lar presents himself before him.

Quer. Oh, Fortune !-oh, blind Fortune! impious Fate!
Lar. Hail, Querolus !

Quer.

Lar.

Quer.

What wouldst thou with me, friend?
I owe thee nothing, nor have stolen goods
Of thine in my possession.

Be not angry.
Stay; I must talk with thee.

I have no leisure.

Lar. Stay, for thou must. 'Tis I, whom thou hast called

In terms of accusation.

Quer.

Fortune and Fate.

Lar.

Quer.

I accused

I am thy household god,
Whom thou call'st Fate and Fortune.

It is strange.
I know not what to think; but this appears
One of the Genii or the Mysteries.

His robe is white, and radiance is around him.
Lar. Though thy complaint is baseless, Querolus,
I am moved by it, and have come to render,
What never Lar to mortal did before,
The reason of thy state. Now, tell thy grievances.
Quer. The day would not be long enough.

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Well, briefly :

One only question

Resolve me wherefore do the unjust thrive,
And the just suffer?

The Lar proceeds to interrogate Querolus, as to his right to include himself in the latter class; and having led him to confess himself guilty of robbing orchards as a boy, of perjuring himself as a lover, of intriguing with his neighbour's wife as a man, and of sundry other peccadilloes, which society tolerates and justice condemns, he concludes that he has no right to look on himself as an egregious specimen of injured virtue.

Querolus, nevertheless, insists that much worse men are much better off. He has suffered by a false friend; his father has left him nothing but his poor house and land; he has a slave, Pantolabus, who does nothing but eat and drink enormously; his last crops were destroyed by a storm; he has a bad neighbour. To all which the Lar answers: Many fathers have not even left either house or land: others have had many false friends, many drunken slaves, many bad neighbours: he is well enough with only one of each. Querolus specifies somebody who abounds in worldly comforts. But, says the Lar, he has an incurable malady. How is your own health? Querolus is quite well. The Lar asks, Would you change conditions? Is not health the first of blessings? Querolus admits that he is the best off of the two; but still insists that, though positively it is well with him, it is ill, comparatively with others. The Lar then gives him his choice of conditions. Querolus first desires military glory; then civil honours. The difficulties and troubles of both being shown, he rejects both, and desires a private life of affluence, in which his riches may give him sufficient authority to domineer over his neighbours. The Lar tells him, that if he wishes to live where public law has no authority, he had better go to the Loire, where every man is judge in his own cause, and the stronger writes his decrees with a cudgel on the bones and skin of the weaker.

This passage, Klinkhämer is of opinion, relates to the Bagauda, who, about the end of the reign of Diocletian, established in that portion of Gaul one of the earliest combinations of Socialism and Lynch law: not without dreadful provocation from the cruelties and extortions of the Roman rulers and were with difficulty reduced to submission, after a war of some years, by the Emperor Maximian. The history of this Bagaudic war may be read in Gibbon, Chap. XIII. Querolus, not without a sarcastic reflection on the innocence and happiness of sylvan life, renounces the offered share in this forest republic: goes through a series of wishes for different states of life, each of which, with the conditions attached to it, he successively rejects: then comes to persons, whose position he would like to occupy.

Quer. Give me at least the money-chests of Titius.
Lar. Yes, with his gout.

Quer.

No gout.

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