Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

only as the first poet, but as the most conspicuous personage at Athens. I do not find him marked with any other immorality, than that of intemperance with regard to wine, the fashionable excess of the time, and in some degree a kind of prerogative of his profession, a licentia poetica: Athenæas the Deipnosophist says he was drunk when he composed, but this is a charge that will not pass upon any man who is sober; and if we rejected it from Sophocles in the case of Aschylus, we shall not receive it but with contempt from such an accuser as Athenæus. He was not happy in his dos mestic connections, for he naturally declares that he was ashamed of his wife. Τὴν γυναικα δι doxúva and as for his two sons, Philippus and Ararotes, they did him as little credit, and he considered them accordingly. He was blest with a good constitution, and lived to turn above seventy years, though the date of his death is not precisely laid down.

Though he was resolute in opposing himself to the torrent of vice and corruption, which overspread the manners of his country, yet he was far more temperate in his personal invective than his contemporaries. He was too sensitive in his nature to undertake the performance of his own parts in person, which was general with all the comic poets of his time; and he stood their raillery for not venturing to tread the stage as they did. Amipsias and Aristonymus, both rival authors, charged him with availing himself of the talents of other people from consciousness of his own insufficiency: their raillery could not draw him out, till his favourite actor Callistratus declined undertaking the part of Cleon in his personal comedy of The Knights,' dreading the resentment of that powerful demagogue,

who was as unforgiving as he was imperious: In this dilemma Aristophanes conquered his repugnance, and determined upon presenting himself on the stage for the first time in his life he dressed himself in the character of this formidable tribune ; and having coloured his face with vermilion up to the hue of the brutal person he was to resemble, he entered on the part in such a style of energy, and with such natural expression, that the effect was irresistible; and the proud factious Cleon was stript of his popularity, and sentenced in a fine of five talents by the knight's decree, as damages for the charge he had preferred against the author touching his right of citizenship, which was awarded and secured to him by the same instrument.

Such was Aristophanes in person, manners and character as a poet I might refer the learned reader to his works, which speak so ably for themselves: they are not only valuable as his remains, but when we consider them as the only remains, which give us any complete specimens of the Greek comedy, they become inestimable through the misfortunes of all the rest. We receive them as treasures thrown up from a wreck, or more properly as one passenger escaped out of a fleet, whose narrative we listen to with the more eagerness and curiosity, because it is from this alone we can gain intelligence of the nature of the expedition, the quality of the armament, and the characters and talents of the commanders, who have perished and gone down into the abyss together.

The comedies of Aristophanes are universally esteemed to be the standard of Attic writing in its greatest purity; if any man would wish to know the language as it was spoken by Pericles, he must seek it in the scenes of Aristophanes, where he is

[blocks in formation]

not using a foreign or affected diction, for the purpose of accommodating it to some particular or extravagant character. The antient authors, both Greek and Roman, who had all the productions of the Athenian stage before them, speak of him with such rapture and admiration, as to give him a decided preference before all other comic poets, with an exception as I believe of Plutarch only, who brings him into comparison with Menander, and after discussing their different pretensions decides peremptorily for Menander: this criticism of Plutarch's I shall reserve for future consideration; and when I said that he is single in his preference of Menander, perhaps I ought to recal the expression, as that poet has his admirers, but none that I know of, who have deliberately given judgment in his favour upon a critical comparison with Aristophanes, except Plutarch abovementioned.

The drama of Aristophanes is of a mixed species; sometimes personal, at other times inclining to parody, according to the character of the middle comedy he varies and accommodates his style to his subject and the speakers on the scene; on some occasions it is elevated, grave, sublime and polished to a wonderful degree of brilliancy and beauty; on others it sinks and descends into humble dialogue, provincial rusticity, coarse naked obscenity, and even puns and quibbles: the versatility of his genius is admirable; for he gives us every rank and description of men in his scenes, and in every one is strictly characteristic. In some passages, and frequently in his chorusses, he starts out of the ordinary province of comedy into the loftiest flights of poetry, and in these I doubt if Æschylus or Pindar have surpassed him in sentiment and good sense he is not inferior to Euripides, and in the

:

:

acuteness of his criticisms equalled by none in the general purport of his moral he seldom, if ever, fails; but he works occasionally with unclean tools, and, like Juvenal in the lower ages, chastises vice by an open exposure of its turpitude, offending the ear, whilst he aims to mend the heart. This habit of plain speaking was the fashion of the times he wrote in, and the audience demanded and would have it; that he may be studied by the purest readers we should conclude, when we are told he was the pillow companion of a Christian saint, as the well known anecdotes of Chrysostom will testify. If we cannot entirely defend the indelicacy of his muse, we cannot deny but that a great share of the blame rests with the spectators: a dramatic poet cannot model his audience, but in a certain degree must of necessity conform to their taste and humour it can be proved that Aristophanes himself laments the hard task imposed upon him of gratifying the public at the expence of decency; but with the example of the poet Crasinus before his eyes, who was driven from the stage because he scrupled to amuse the public ear with tawdry jests, it is not to be wondered at, if an author, emulous of applause, should fall in with the wishes of the theatre, unbecoming as they were: let me add, in further palliation of this fault, that he never puts obscenity but in the mouths of obscene characters, and so supplies it as to give his hearers a disgust for such unseemly habits. Morality I confess deserves a purer vehicle, yet I contend that his purpose was honest, and I dare believe went farther towards reforming the loose Athenians, than all the indecisive positions of the philosophers, who being enlisted into sects and factions scarce agreed in any one point of common morality.

This part of his defence would have been very easily handled a century or two ago; Ben Johnson, for instance, could have helped his argument out with his own example, if occasion had required; but the task falls very heavy upon an advocate in this age, which is of purer ears than to listen to obscenity; and though my particular difficulties have thereby been increased, I shall never repine under the weight of any burthen, which the merit of my contemporaries lays upon me..

His wit is of various kinds; much is of a general and permanent stamp; much is local, personal and untransferable to posterity: no author still retains so many brilliant passages, yet none has suffered such injury by the depredations of time: of his powers in ridicule and humour, whether of character or dialogue, there might be no end to instances: if Plautus gives us the model of Epicharmus, he does not equal him; and if Terence translates Menander, his original does not approach him in these particulars: I doubt if the sum total of wit and humour in all their stage-lacqueys would together balance the single character of Cario in the Plutus. His satire, whether levelled against the vices and follies of the people at large, against the corruption of the demagogues, the turpitude and chicanery of the philosophers, or the arrogant self-sufficiency of the tragic poets, cuts with an edge that penetrates the character, and leaves no shelter for either ignorance or criminality.

Aristophanes was author of above sixty comedies, though they are erroneously stated under that amount. The Plutus now in our hands (which is the second he wrote of that title) has been twice published in our language by two different translators; one of these I have seen, which was jointly

« ZurückWeiter »