it was felt, obeyed, but its workings were | ludicrous, more tragic or more comic? Or not seen. Ordinary men, the people, the take again the still greater master who audience at the theatres, could not trace disdained or was too wise to acknowledge its secret influences or its motive powers. these artificial definitions of the tragic and The Athenian had now no sphere of action the comic: Shylock raving about his beyond his private affairs or those of his ducats and his daughter. So, too, in all friends, no business but his own, his hus- the domestic relations, there is a sad and bandry, his commerce, his pleasures; he a laughable side. In the weak or the had no dominion but over his slaves, no harsh father we smile at the weakness; we authority but over his own family. It almost weep when that weakness is abused was this new Athenian life, therefore, to by the profligate son, or more profligate which comedy was reduced or to which it slave; we feel indignation, if not wrath, withdrew, in the conscious assurance that against the morose parent; we laugh when within this new circle it might exercise its he is tricked by Davus or Gnatho. The creative power, if with more limited, hardly females, so often the objects of violence, less telling, effect. Its influence, if less move our commiseration; when restored to immediate, might be not less deep; if less Athenian citizenship, and happily married, a political, it might be a more profoundly they have our tender sympathies. No moral, power; it might be, if more vague sooner, indeed, had love become the leadand general, if less bound up with passing ing interest in the comedy than it ceased events and the characters of the day, more to be exclusively comic. The incidents enduring because more vague and general, might be the most diverting; the whole and more intelligible to future ages. It intrigue might be a succession of the most was still Athenian, but it was more than ludicrous mishaps, mistakes, plots, rogueries; Athenian; it was drawn and drew most of yet the passion must be aroused, and repreits immutable truth from universal human sented with warmth and sincerity. Înto nature, from passions common to all man- whatever comical adventures he may fall, kind, from follies and vices of all ages. It the lover himself must be in earnest. So appeared to reflect only the surface, but, if, as it was said, no play of Menander in fact, reflected the very depths of our was without love,' his comedy could not but experience. As a comedy of manners, it mingle up the serious with the gay; the pas was, as it ever must be, if true to its own sionate with the ridiculous. We may indeed times, in a certain degree limited, temporary, say that satire is the most melancholy of all transitory; as a comedy of character, wide, writings; and Menander's comedy was not lasting, perpetual. All that was Athenian satire against individual man, but against might perish, all that was human would human nature. We fear that against one live. This is among the secrets of the sex the misogynist was even more sadly eternal power exercised by the best classi- unsparing and merciless. If Ovid's verses cal writers; they wrote from what is, in may lead us to suppose Menander's range its essence, unchangeable in human nature; of characters extremely narrow, and the truths which they did attain are im-restricted to a class to us by no means the perishable truths; the passions which they most attractive-the roguish slave, the set in play, the feelings to which they harsh father, the wicked procuress, the appealed, are the inextinguishable passions bland courtesan-we must remember who and feelings of man's heart; their wisdom is wrote those lines, and on what subject he world-wide wisdom, as enduring as the world. was writing. No doubt Athenian life was Hence, too, its more serious cast, as the limited: there were close boundaries to full representation of human life. As with Athenian society, where the intercourse Euripides, tragedy, descending more nearly between the sexes of the higher and freeto common life, approached the doubtful born orders was under great restraint; borders of comedy, so comedy could not, if where the females, though by no means true to the human heart, winnow out the kept in Oriental seclusion (had that been ridiculous alone, and confine itself to the so the Ecclesiazusa of Aristophanes had broad, farcical, or even the gay and mirth- been a poor and unmeaning jest), yet were ful. Even our meanest passions, in their more highly esteemed the less frequently excess, cease to be ludicrous; they become they passed the threshold of their house. terrible. Who has seen the Avare of Not that they were more quiet helpmates Molière, as we have seen it of old, or our for the repression of the gadabout disposiFielding's Miser, as it was personated by tion-the comedies give us enough of Emery, and knows whether he was shud- imperious, domineering, jealous wives, dering or laughing more intensely- especially if they have brought large whether avarice was more hateful or more dowries. Among the better classes there were at Athens no salons, no reception- | lived when the world had long acquiesced rooms, no public places for amusement or in the despotism of the Roman empire, and conversation-to say nothing of balls or Greek was more than Latin the common plays. Even their religious ceremonies tongue of literature-can hardly see any were in general confined to themselves. difference but in their language: on this What is called with us fashionable life held alone he dwells as in itself their comparaits revels only with the Hetaire, the tive excellence, this seems to be the paraAspasias of the older, the Laides and mount claim to admiration. But to him Thaides of later time. Still even the the wild and audacious word-creations, the titles of his plays may show, to some comical compound epithets of Aristophanes, extent, the copiousness and versatility of are rude and barbarous. To the more racy Menander. There were all pursuits: the and vigorous Atticism, to the natural and fishermen (the 'As), the husbandman bird-like melody of the older poet, he is (the Fewpyès), the pilots (the Fußepta), the utterly insensible. M. Guizot has justly shipmaster (the Navxnpos). There were observed, that Atticism is not to be consistrangers of different countries: the Boo- dered as one uniform unchanging language, tian (the Boutia), the Ephesian (the but, though with a certain dialectic cha'Epéotos), the Perinthian (the pivota), the racter of its own, differing widely at differMessenian (the Medoara), the Thessalian (the ent ages, and as employed by different Déonana), the Carian (the Kapin), the authors, according to the genius of each. Knidion (the Kvidia), the Carthaginian (the Eschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, XenoKapzdovcos). Many indicate the peculiar phon, Demosthenes, Plato, have each their Καρχηδονιος). passion or weakness of the leading person- distinct Attic, even as Aristophanes and age: the boastful soldier, the Thraso, or Menander. The perfection of Menander the Miles Gloriosus (the Opaovnéwv), the is, that it is the Attic of common life in its grumbler or the morose (the Avoxoxos), the most consummate purity; it has that inFlatterer (the Kóra), the woman-hater (the stinctive harmony between the thoughts Mccoyons), the self-tormentor (the 'Eavrov and the words, so that the alteration, the Tuwpooμεvos), the angry man (as perhaps we substitution, almost the change in place of may translate the Opyn). There is one a single word, would mar its translucent class of peculiar interest, which we should clearness; it is idiomatic, but not vulgar; especially rejoice to retrieve-those which distinct from ordinary speech, but only from touched the popular religion or superstition. its instinctive, unstudied precision. Its test The Superstitious (the Acordau), which is that it is always untranslatable; the so irresistibly leads us to St. Paul at Athens; thoughts may be rendered and expressed the Thessalian, which seems to have dealt with as much vernacular purity in another with the belief in witchcraft; the Festival language, but as no two languages are (the 'Eopra), probably founded on one of perfectly consonant in form and structure, those common incidents, the violation of literal transference must lead to obscurity, some innocent damsel by the petulant to harsh inversion, or utter inadequacy of youth during the licence of those religious expression. After this attempt at definirites which, besides their own ceremonies, tion, it may seem contradictory to say that women, even virgins, were permitted to it is undefinable; yet its excellence is that attend. In one play, the Arxadia, of which it seems intuitively achieved, is intuitively there is a graceful fragment, Menander felt. Almost all languages-Italian in Pemay seem to have trespassed on the trarch, French in Racine, English in Addiboundaries of tragedy: in this either Sap- son and the best parts of Pope-have this pho, or some one instinct with the passion or after the example of Sappho, threw himself from the fatal rock crowned with the Temple of Phaon. The style and language of Menander was acknowledged, except by one or two obscure and jealous grammarians, to be the purest Attic. That language was the wonder, and the remote and confessedly unapproachable object of emulation, to the later Greeks. Nothing can show the opposition of the old and new comedy, of Aristophanes and Menander, more completely than the Treatise of Plutarch; the good, amiable, garrulous Boeotian, the man of letters-who perfection. Its masters are not usually the most forcible, original, or creative writers. Men of daring and creative thought must dare in their vocabulary, in the collocation of their words, in the structure of their sentences. Such a master of this peculiar style is Menander. In reading his fragments we seem to be listening to the best conversation of the best society in Athens ; it has all the ease and grace, nothing of the negligence of colloquialism. But how are we to justify to the unlearned reader this high estimate of Menander, which to ourselves rests not on the common voice of ancient tradition, but on our infelt sense of its justice? The excel- | Choose only in what form; then thou art free." lence consists in the exquisite harmony of the plot, the characters, and the language. But plots of dramas, when turned into plain prose, even with the poem or the play before us, are of all things the most lifeless and unsatisfactory. These have been made out in some cases by Meinecke, by the authors of our essays, with very happy conjectural ingenuity; yet after all they are for the most part conjectural, and at last sadly meagre; a mere enumeration of incidents, as it were, without flesh and blood, with no life stirring within them. Nor must it be denied that to Menander not merely has Time been singularly harsh and destructive; but even, perhaps, more cruel and unfair where it has seemed to be more merciful and conservative. Cumberland's observations are unfortunately too true : 'The various authors who have contributed to the collection of Menander's remains seem to have extracted from him, as if by general agreement, little else but the most unfavourable delineations of the human character ;' so far from finding those facetious and sprightly sallies to be expected from a comic writer, those voluptuous descriptions which Pliny alluded to, or the love-scenes which Ovid tells us, we meet a melancholy display of the miseries, the enormities, the repinings of mankind. What can be more gloomy and misanthropic than the following strain of discontent extracted by Eustathius :— Εἴ τις προσελθών μοι θεῶν λέγοι, “ Κράτων ἐπὰν ἀποθάνης, αὖθις ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔσει· ἔσει δ' ὅ τι ἂν βούλῃ, κύων, πρόβατον, τράγος, ἄνθρωπος, ἵππος· δὶς βιῶναι γὰρ σε δεῖ εἱμαρμένον τοῦτ' ἐστὶν, ὅ τι βούλει δ' ἑλοῦ.” ἅπαντα μᾶλλον, εὐθὺς εἰπεῖν ἂν δοκῶ, ποίει με πλὴν ἄνθρωπον· ἀδίκως εὐτυχεῖ κακῶς τε πράττει τοῦτο τὸ ζῷον μόνον. ὁ κράτιστος ἵππος ἐπιμελεστέραν ἔχει ἑτέρου θεραπείαν· ἀγαθὸς ἂν γένῃ κύων ἐντιμότερος εἶ τοῦ κακοῦ κυνὸς πολὺ ἀλεκτρυὼν γενναῖος ἐν ἑτέρα τροφῇ ἔστιν, ὁ δ ̓ ἀγεννὴς καὶ δέδιε τὸν κρείττονα. ἄνθρωπος ἂν ᾖ χρηστὸς, εὐγενὴς, σφόδρα, γενναῖος, οὐδὲν ὄφελος ἐν τῷ νῦν γένει πράττει δ' ὁ κόλαξ ἄριστα πάντων, δεύτερα ὁ συκοφάντης, ὁ κακοήθης τρίτα λέγει. ὄνον γενέσθαι κρεῖττον ἢ τοὺς χείρονας ὁρᾶν ἑαυτοῦ ζῶντας ἐπιφανέστερον. Theophoroumeni-Meinecke, p. 910. 'Suppose some God should say, "Die when thou wilt, Mortal, expect another life on earth ; And for that life make choice of all creation. What wilt thou be, dog, sheep, goat, man, or horse? For live again thou must: it is thy fate. VOL. XCVIII. So help me, Crato, I would freely answer, Still more dismal are the following: τοῦτον εὐτυχέστατον λέγω ὅστις θεωρήσας ἀλυπῶς, Παρμένων, τὰ σεμνὰ ταῦτ', ἀπῆλθεν, ὅθεν ἦλθεν, ταχὺ, τὸν ἥλιον τὸν κοινὸν, ἄστρ', ὕδωρ, νέφη, πῦρ· ταῦτα κὰν ἑκατὸν ἔτη βιῶς ἀεὶ ὄψει παρόντα, κἂν ἐνιαυτοὺς σφόδρ' ὀλίγους, σεμνότερα τούτων ἕτερα δ' οὐκ ὄψει ποτε. Πανήγυριν νόμισον τιν' εἶναι τὸν χρόνον ὅν φημι, τοῦτον, ἢ ἐπιδημίαν, ἐν ᾧ ὄχλος, ἀγορά, κλέπται, κυβεῖαι, διατριβαί· ἂν πρῶτον ἀπίης καταλύσεις, βελτίονα ἐφόδι ̓ ἔχων ἀπῆλθες, ἐχθρὸς οὐδενί· ὁ προσδιατρίβων δ' ἐκοπίασεν ἀπολέσας, κακῶς τε γηρῶν ἐνδεής του γίγνεται, ῥεμβόμενος ἐχθροὺς ηἆρ' ἐπεβουλεύθη ποθέν, οὐκ εὐθανάτως ἀπῆλθεν ἐλθὼν εἰς χρόνον. Of these lines Cumberland has given a most inadequate version. He has eluded the difficulties, and dropped many of the remarkable beauties-the comparison of this life to the games, the fairs of antiquity, or to a sojourn in a foreign land (as Scripture represents life as a pilgrimage), where in these marts crowd together thieves, gamblers, idlers. If we depart speedily, we may depart better provided, without an enemy. He who lingers, but lingers to toil and waste his days-to grow old, wretched, and in misery; the more he is whirled about, the more his enemies, and the less chance of an euthanasia. Still 'The lot of all most fortunate is his, Who having stayed just long enough on earth Drops without pain into an early grave. From such the speediest riddance is the best. The Suppositious-Υποβολιμαίος. The gentle reproof of the son to a churl- Athenæus or Stobæus, or the other ecloish father, from the Dyscolus, is in a gists, seem to have resolved to do better higher manner— Περὶ χρημάτων λαλεῖς, ἀβεβαίου πράγματος. εἰ μὲν γὰρ οἶσθα ταῦτα παραμενοῦντά σοι ἅπαντα τὸν χρόνον, φύλαττε, μηδενὶ ἄλλω μεταδιδούς, αὐτὸς ὢν δὲ κύριος. εἰ μὴ δὲ σαυτοῦ, της τύχης δὲ πάντ' ἔχεις, τί ἂν φθονοίης, ὦ πάτερ, τούτων τινί ; αὐτὴ γὰρ ἄλλῳ τυχὸν ἀναξίῳ τιν παρελομένη σου πάντα προσθήσει πάλιν. διόπερ ἐγὼ σέ φημι δεῖν, ὅσον χρόνον εἶ κύριος, χρῆσθαί σε γενναίως, πάτερ, αὐτόν, ἐπικουρεῖν πᾶσιν, εὐπόρους ποιεῖν οὓς ἂν δύνῃ πλείστους διὰ σαυτοῦ· τοῦτο γάρ ἀθάνατόν ἐστι, κάν ποτε πταίσας τύχης, ἐκεῖθεν ἔσται ταὐτὸ τοῦτο σοι πάλιν πολλῷ δὲ κρεῖττόν ἐστιν ἐμφανὴς φίλος ἢ πλοῦτος ἀφανὴς, ὃν σὺ κατορύξας ἔχεις. 'Weak is the vanity that boasts of riches, For they are fleeting things. Were they not such, Could they be yours to all succeeding time, But if whate'er you have is held of fortune, And cast into some worthless favourite's lap? Snatch thou the swift occasion while still yours: Put this unstable boon to noble uses; justice to almost every poet `than to Menander. We have some capital broad comic passages from the middle comedy ; even Philemon has fared better than his rival. The Christian Fathers, as Clement of Alexandria, might have been more fair to his fame, but unfortunately, in their charitable zeal to find premature Christianity in the heathen writers, they have attributed to the Epicurean poet verses so much too Christian, or at least drawn from the Jewish dramatic writers of Alexandria, that no faith can be placed in their citations. In truth, the mind, the style, and even the melody of Menander is to be traced most clearly in his minuter fragments; even in the aphorisms or single lines, of which kind more than one collection has been happily preserved. The greatest number of these, of course, as collected for their moral meaning, are trite and commonplace in sentiment; some of them are loosely ascribed to some particular author; some are of doubtful parentage, tragic or comic, from Euripides or from Menander. Yet most of them are unWe are almost doubtedly Menandrian. surprised to find the sentiment which has consoled even Christian mothers in their bitterest affliction, the loss of their firstborn : Meinecke, 425. Foster the wants of men, impart your wealth, ὃν γὰρ Θεοὶ φίλοῦσιν, ἀποθνήσκει νέος. This, which is not cited by Cumberland, is in a different vein, but is perhaps more genial in its satire :— "These are our gods, so Epicharmus says, And all ye pray for instantly is yours: * Ο μὲν Επίχαρμος τοὺς θεοὺς εἶναι λέγει Fab. Incert. Χ. 'He dies the earliest whom the gods love best.' It is singular, indeed, to contrast the kind of alternation of poetical adages, trembling as it were on the verge of the tender wisdom of the Gospel, with those instinct with the worldly sagacity and malicious wit of Rochefoucault:— ἀθάνατον ἔχθραν μὴ φύλαττε, θνητὸς ὤν. Save man from ruin, he's your foe for ever. The wicked man is wretched even when blest. All hew their faggots from the fallen oak. ἅπαντας αὑτῶν κρείσσονας ἀνάγκη ποιεῖ. might be almost rendered Sweet are the uses of adversity. ἐὰν δ' ἔχωμεν χρήμαθ' ἔξομεν φίλους. If we are wealthy, we shall ne'er want friends. ἀνὴρ ἄριστος οὐκ ἂν εἴη δυσγενής. No noble man can be ignobly born. ἅπαντές ἐσμεν εἰς τὸ νουθετεῖν σοφοί, αὐτοὶ δ ̓ ἁμαρτάνοντες οὐ γιγνώσκομεν. All can advise, but few see their own faults. Γύμναζε παῖδας· ἄνδρας οὐ γὰρ γυμνάσεις. Η λέγε τι σιγής κρεῖττον, ἢ σιγὴν ἔχε. Yet after all, though to the sculptor, or to those who have profoundly studied and acquired an exquisite taste for art, the torso, the broken limb, the slightest fragment, will reveal the skill of the Phidias or Praxiteles-that inimitable secret magic of Grecian statuary; yet to the ordinary observer, the cast, lifeless as it is, and wanting all the sharpness, fulness, delicacy of execution, will express more fully and distinctly the power and genius of the sculptor; so the plays of Terence-casts in Roman clay-from Menander, will be more intelligible, and convey more distinct knowledge, than all the breathing passages in the pages of Meinecke. We do not forget the chapter in Aulus Gellius, in which, having read, with his accomplished friends, some of the Latin comedies, translated from the Greek, he concludes that nothing can Our translation is here baffled; this is surpass their elegance and beauty. (Lepidè feeble quidem et venustè scripta videantur, prorsus ut melius posse fieri nihil censeas.) But Break silence with wise words, or else keep when they turned to the Greek originals, silence. Ιδίας νόμιζε τῶν φίλων τὰς συμφορὰς. Think all the sorrows of your friends your own. Λίαν φιλῶν σεαυτὸν, οὐχ ἕξεις φίλον. Who loves himself too much is loved by none. ὅμοια πόρνη δάκρυα, καὶ ῥήτωρ ἔχει. ὁ νοῦς γὰρ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐν ἑκάστῳ θεός. In every man there dwells a god, his reason. τὸν εὐτυχοῦντα καὶ φρονεῖν νομίζομεν. and compared them passage by passage, the Latin appeared mean and coarse, and were altogether obscured by the wit and brilliancy of the unrivalled Greek: jacere et sordere incipiunt quæ Latina sunt; ita Græcorum quas aemulari nequiverunt facetiis atque luminibus obsolescunt. Of the other imitators of Menander, as Cæcilius, Afranius, who is said by Horace to have worn the toga of Menander not without grace, we have but very scanty remains. Plautus, though in one or two plays he followed Menander, and perhaps in some of his graver characters he borrowed from the new comedy, yet, as has been said, was on the whole rather the follower of the We think the fortunate man must needs be wise. broader Sicilian Epicharmus; but of the τὸ κέρδος ἡγοῦ κέρδος, ἂν δίκαιον ᾖ. Think gain is gain, if gotten honestly. τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν οὐκ αἰσχρὸν, ἀλλ ̓ αἰσχρῶς θανεῖν. It is not base to die, but to die basely. φιλεῖ θ' ἑαυτοῦ πλεῖον οὐδεὶς οὐδένα. No any one better than himself. βροτοῖς ἅπασιν ἡ συνείδησις θεός. διὰ δὲ σιωπῆς πικρότερον κατηγορεί. We cannot refrain from adding that the first half, at least, of the distich so often sought in vain in Hudibras is Menander's: ἀνὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται. He that fights and runs away May live to fight another day. six plays of Terence, at least four are avowedly translated directly, or compiled from more than one of the comedies of Menander. But if, according to Aulus Gellius, the Andria,' the Eunuch,' the 'Adelphi,' the Heautontimorumenos,' were but faint copies of the originals-if, in comparison, comic force, vis comica, whatsoever be the full meaning of that pregnant phrase, was wanting to Terence; if such were the works of the African slave, who, although he was encouraged by the enlightened praise of some of the nobles in Rome, yet wrote for an ungenial audience, for a stage on which the drama was never altogether naturalised-who had to contend on that stage against the popular rope-dancer,* * See the two prologues to the HecyraUt neque spectari, neque cognosci potuerit: Ita populus studio stupidus in funambulow |