NUMBER CXLI.

I SHALL now proceed to mention some other principal writers of the old comedy, of whose works, though once the favourites of the Athenian stage, few memorials survive, and these so small and imperfect, and withal so separated from each other (consisting only of short quotations in the scholiasts and grammarians) that it is a task to collect them, which nothing would compensate but the hope of being in some degree the instrument of saving from absolute extinction the names of authors once so illustrious.

Amipsias was a contemporary of Aristophanes, and no mean rival; we have the titles of ten comedies of this author. In some of these his satire was personal, but all of them seem by their titles to have been levelled against the reigning vices of his time, such as The Gamesters, The Glutton, The Beard (in which he inveighed against the hypocrisy and affectation of the priests and philosophers), The Adulterers, The Sappho (wherein the morals of the fair sex were exposed), The Purse, a second attack upon the gamesters, and The Philosopher's Cloak, in which it is understood he glanced pretty severely at Socrates.

Plato was a comic poet, high in time and character; a collection of no less than forty titles of his comedies has been made by the learned Meursius, but very few fragments of these are remaining. Clemens asserts that Aristophanes and Plato were mu

tually charged of borrowing from each other, which in one sense makes greatly to the reputation of our poet. He is quoted by Plutarch in his Alcibiades, and very honourably mentioned by the famous Galen, by Athenæus, Clemens, Julius Pollux and Suidas. There is a fragment containing four lines and a half, upon a statue of Mercury cut by Dædalus, which has an epigrammatic neatness and point in it, that induced me to render it in rhime: he addresses the statue, mistaking it for a living figure:

"Hoa there! who art thou? Answer me-Art dumb?"
-Warm from the hand of Dædalus I come;
My name Mercurius, and, as you may prove,
A statue; but his statues speak and move.'

Plato wrote a comedy personally against the General Cleophon, and called it by his name; there are others of the same description in his catalogue, and some of the middle sort: there are a few lines upon the tomb of Themistocles, which have a turn of elegant and pathetic simplicity in them, that deserves a better translation than I can give.

On the Tomb of Themistocles.

By the sea's margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand:
By this directed to thy native shore

The merchant shall convey his freighted store;
And when our fleets are suminon'd to the fight,
Athens shall conquer with thy tomb in sight.

The following fragment of a dialogue, between a father and a sophist, under whose tuition he had placed his son, probably belonged either to the comedy called The Beard, or The Philosopher's Cloak it is pretty much in the spirit of our old English drama.

FATHER.

Thou hast destroy'd the morals of my son,
And turn'd his mind, not so dispos'd, to vice,
Unholy pedagogue! With morning drams,
A filthy custom which he caught from thee,
Clean from his former practice, now he saps
His youthful vigour. Is it thus you school him?
SOPHIST.

And if I did, what harms him? Why complain you?
He does but follow what the wise prescribe,
The great voluptuous law of Epicurus,
Pleasure, the best of all good things on earth;
And how but thus can pleasure be obtain'd?

FATHER.

Virtue will give it him.

SOPHIST.

And what but virtue

Is our philosophy? When have you met
One of our sect flush'd and disguis'd with wine?
Or one, but one of those you tax so roundly,
On whom to fix a fault?

FATHER.

Not one, but all,

All who march forth with supercilious brow
High-arch'd with pride, beating the city-rounds,
Like constables in quest of rogues and outlaws,
To find that prodigy in human nature,

A wise and perfect man! What is your science
But kitchen-science? wisely to descant
Upon the choice bits of a savoury carp,
And prove by logic that his summum bonum
Lies in his head; there you can lecture well,
And, whilst your grey beards wag, the gaping guest
Sits wondering with a foolish face of praise.

PLATO, COM.

Crates, by birth an Athenian, was first an actor, and afterwards a writer of the old comedy; he performed the principal characters in Cratinus's plays,

and was the great rival of Aristophanes's favourite actors Callistratus and Philonides; we have the titles of more than twenty comedies, and but four small fragments of this author: I have searched for his remains more diligently, from the circumstance of his having been so celebrated an actor; a profession which centers in itself more gifts of nature, education, art and study, than any other. His comedies are said to have been of a very gay and facetious cast; and the author of the Prolegomena to Aristophanes informs us, that he was the first who introduced a drunken character on the Athenian stage; to this anecdote I give credit, because no one could better know how entirely such an attempt depends upon the discretion and address of the actor, who has such a part in his keeping: it is plain the experiment succeeded, because even the tragedians exhibited such characters in succeeding times. Modern experience shews us, how subject such representations are to be outraged; the performer generally forgetting, or not knowing, that his own sobriety should keep the drunkenness he counterfeits within its proper bounds. Aristotle ascribes to Crates another innovation with respect to the iambic metre of the old comedy, which he made more free and apposite to familiar dialogue; this also corresponds with the natural and facetious character of his drama. I cannot say the four small fragments which I have collected bear that stamp; on the contrary, they are of a grave and sententious cast: one of them is an observation on the effects of poverty, which Horace has either literally translated, or struck upon the very same thoughts in the following passage:

Non habet infelix paupertas durius in se
Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.

I find a short stricture upon the gluttony of the Thessalians; a remark upon the indecorum of inviting women to wedding suppers, and making riotous entertainments at a ceremony, which modesty would recommend to pass in private, and within the respective family where it occurs.

The last fragment is a short but touching picture of old age, and the vanity of human wishes: I think the turn of thought and expression extremely beautiful.

ON OLD AGE.

These shrivell'd sinews and this bending frame,
The workmanship of Time's strong hand proclaim;
Skill'd to reverse whate'er the gods create,

And make that crooked which they fashion straight.
Hard choice for man, to die-or else to be
That tottering, wretched, wrinkled thing you see:
Age then we all prefer; for age we pray,
And travel on to life's last ling'ring day;
Then sinking slowly down from worse to worse,
Find heav'n's extorted boon our greatest curse.

CRATES

PHRYNICHUS was a contemporary of Eupolis, and a writer of the old comedy; a dramatic poet of the first class in reputation as well as in time. He was an Athenian by birth, and must not be confounded with the tragic poet of that name. I find the titles of ten comedies of his writing; these are The Ephialtes; The Beard, (the same title with that of Plato); Saturn; The Revellers; The Satyrs; The Tragedians; The Recluse; The Muses; The Priest, and The Weeding-Women. We have no other guides but these titles to guess at the comedies themselves; we see however by some of them what subjects his satire pointed out to the