which for its authority in this case is about as good an evidence, as any story out of the Incredibilia of Palaphatus Heraclitus. Elian however does not hardily advance this as a fact, but hooks it in by way of question Where is the absurdity, he asks, of supposing that the poet, who was known to be needy, had taken a bribe?'-This is a mere insinuation, by which he tries the credulity of his readers: if they will believe it, so much the better for his purpose; if not, he has nothing else to offer; he has done his best to blacken the character of Aristophanes in this case, as he did in that of his intemperance: he has accused him of writing plays when he was drunk, and now he accuses him of taking a bribe for writing them: the man who believes the one, may take the other into the bargain; for his own part, the improbability stares him so fully in the face, that he immediately subjoins to his insinuation above quoted- That for the truth of this, it was best known to Aristophanes himself.'This can never pass with any candid reader. for the success of the attack, that he confesses was beyond all example; the comedy was applauded to the skies; never did any poet receive such honours from the public, as Aristophanes for this play of The Clouds.

As

As to the charge of the bribe, I need not observe, that if it was not an easy thing for any advocate of the poet to prove the negative in Hadrian's days, when Ælian threw it out, it cannot be less difficult now to do it, when more than two millenniums have interposed between the fact and our examination of it: and yet we know that Aristophanes, in a short time after the representation of his Clouds, brought this very Melitus, who is supposed to have suborned him by a bribe, before the audience, and

exposed his vicious character with the most unsparing severity. If this is not proving a negative, it is as near it as circumstance and presumption can go.

But there is another part of Ælian's charge which can be more clearly disproved than the above, and this is the assertion he advances, that this attack upon Socrates from the stage was contrived by Anytus and Melitus as a prelude to their criminal accusation of him this Elian expressly asserts, adding that the faction were afraid of his popularity, and therefore set Aristophanes upon him to feel the pulse of the people, before they ventured to bring their public charge against him. Here he flatly confutes himself; for had this been the proving attack, what experiment could answer more completely, when even by his own account all Athens was in raptures with the poet, and the comedy went off with more general applause than any was ever known to receive? nay, more than this, Socrates himself, according to Elian's own account, was present in the theatre, and stood up in view of the people all the while; yet in spite of his presence, in defiance of this bold appeal, the theatre rung with plaudits, and the philosopher only stood up to be a more conspicuous mark of raillery and contempt. Why then did not the faction seize the opportunity and second the blow? Could any thing answer more fully to their wishes? or rather, could any event turn out more beyond their expectation? From Elian's account we are left to conclude that this was the case, and that this attack was literally a prelude to their charge; but this inference is alike disingenuous with all the rest, for we know from indubitable dates, that The Clouds was acted at least eighteen years before the death of Socrates: it was in

the first year of Olymp. LXXXIX. when Isarchus was archon, that Aristophanes acted his first comedy of The Clouds, which was driven off the stage by Alcibiades and his party : in the year immediately following, when Aminias was archon, he brought out the second of that name, which is the comedy in question, now in our hands: these are authentic records; take the earliest date for the death of Socrates, and it will not fall till the first year of Olymp. xcv. when Laches was archon; the interval is as I state it; a pretty reasonable time for such a plot to be ripening: and who now will give credit to Elian and his Various History?

Having taken some pains to prove what Aristophanes's motives were not, it now remains to shew what they were; but this will be the subject of another Paper.

NUMBER CXL.

THE Clouds is a satirical and personal comedy, the moral of which is to shew how the sophistry of the schools may be employed as an instrument of fraud and evasion in matters of right and property; this is its principal object: but it touches also upon other points by the way, and humorously exposes certain new and chimerical notions about the relation of children to their parents, and of the influence of The Clouds, as superior to the superintending power of Jupiter.

Of its moral therefore, separately considered (com

prehending the chief duties and relations of men, whether to the gods, to their parents, or to society at large) there can be no doubt; its excellence and importance speak for themselves.

The comedy being written before the practice was restrained of bringing living characters on the stage, a school is here introduced, and the greatest philosopher of the time is represented in person on the stage: this philosopher is Socrates himself, and the school is the school of Socrates.

Socrates is made to advance the hypothesis of The Clouds before mentioned; but it should be constantly kept in remembrance, that he lays down no doctrines, as principles of fraud or injustice: it is not the teacher who recommends, but his disciples who pervert his instructions to the evil purpose of defrauding and eluding their creditors: the like remark holds good in the case of the natural duty of children to their parents: the son in the play it is true strikes and beats his father on the stage, and he quotes the maxims of Socrates in justification; but he does not quote them as positive rules and injunctions for an act so atrocious; he only shews that sophistry may be turned to defend that, or any other thing equally violent and outrageous.

There are two lights in which Socrates is to be viewed; first, in his public character as a teacher; secondly, in his private one as a man. It is chiefly in the former of these that Aristophanes has attacked him; and (as I before observed) it is to expose the evil uses rather than the evil nature of his doctrines, that he brings his school upon the stage ;' for when the disciple is questioned about the studies which his master is employed in, he makes report of some frivolous and minute researches, which are introduced only for the purpose of raising a harmless

laugh, and so far there can be no offence in this

scene.

After all it must be allowed, that these seminaries of sophistry, which the state of Athens thought it necessary to put down by public edict, could not have been improper subjects for dramatic ridicule; for if the schools were found so detrimental to the morals of youth, that the archons and their council, after due deliberation, resolved upon a general expulsion of all masters and teachers thereunto belonging, and effectually did expel them, surely the poet may be acquitted, when he satirizes those obnoxious parties, whom the laws of his country in a short time after cut off from the community.

There can be little doubt but this was a public measure founded in wisdom, if it were for no other reason, than that the Lacedæmonians never suffered a master of philosophy to open school within their realm and jurisdiction, holding them in abhorrence, and proscribing their academies as seminaries of evil manners, and tending to the corruption of youth: it is well known what peculiar care and attention were bestowed upon the education of the Spartan youth, and how much more moral this people was, who admitted no philosophers to settle amongst them, than their Athenian neighbours, in whose dissolute capital they swarmed. In fact, the enormity became too great to be redressed; the whole community was infected with the enthusiasm of these sectaries; and the liberties of Athens, which depended on the public virtue of her citizens, fell a sacrifice to the corruptions of false philosophy: the wiser Lacedæmonians saw the fatal error of their rivals, and availed themselves of its consequences; they rose upon the ruins of Athens, and it was the triumph of wisdom over wit: these philosophers