spectators, in which the philosophers had their share as usual; and by certain fragments it sppears, that Alcibiades was also treated with some personal severity.

Pherecrates is the next author I shall notice, a poet famous in his time, and whose character as well as genius descends to us with the warmest testimonies of high authority. His style was of that sort, which has been proverbially dignified as Most Attic: he acquired such reputation by his poems as well as plays, that the metre he used was called by pre-eminence the Pherecratian Metre.' He was no less excellent in his private character than in his poetical one; he was attached to Alexander of Macedon, and accompanied that great conqueror in his expeditions; he lived in intimacy with Plato at Athens, and in some of his comedies was engaged in warm competition with Crates, the actor and author, of whom I have already spoken. Suidas says he wrote seventeen comedies, and the titles of these are still extant: one of them, viz. The Peasants, is mentioned by Plato in his Protagoras: Clemens quotes a passage from his Deserters of great elegance, in which the gods are introduced making their heavy complaints of the frauds put upon them by mankind in their sacrifices and oblations this poet also has a personal stroke at the immoral character of Alcibiades.

Having quoted a passage from Crates on the subject of old age, I shall now select one from this author on the same; and if the reader is curious to observe how the celebrated rivals expressed themselves on a similar sentiment, he has an opportunity of making the comparison.

ON OLD AGE.

Age is the heaviest burthen man can bear, Compound of disappointment, pain and care

For when the mind's experience comes at length,
It comes to mourn the body's loss of strength:
Resign'd to ignorance all our better days,
Knowledge just ripens when the man decays;
One ray of light the closing eye receives,
And wisdom only takes what folly leaves.

PHERECRATES.

Pherecrates intitled one of his comedies The Tyranny; it does not appear what particular object he had in view under this title, but from the following fragment he seems to have levelled some share of his satire against the fair sex

Remark how wisely ancient art provides
The broad-brimm'd cup with flat expanded sides;
A cup contriv'd for man's discreeter use,
And sober potions of the generous juice :
But woman's more ambitious thirsty soul
Soon long'd to revel in the plenteous bowl;
Deep and capacious as the swelling hold

Of some stout bark she shap'd the hollow mould,
Then turning out a vessel like a tun,

Simp'ring exclaim'd-Observe! I drink but one.
PHERECRATES.

Athenæus has preserved a considerable fragment from this author, extracted from his comedy of The Miners, which I look upon to be as curious a specimen of the old comedy as I have met with. It is a very luxuriant description of the riches and abundance of some former times to which he alludes, strongly dashed with comic strokes of wild extravagance and hyperbole. These Miners were probably the chorus of the drama, which no doubt was of a satirical sort, and pointed at the luxuries of the rich. By the mention made of Plutus in the first line, we may suppose that these Mines were of gold, and probably the deity of that precious metal was one of the persons of the drama.

FROM THE MINERS OF PHERECRATES.

The days of Plutus were the days of gold;
The season of high feeding and good cheer:
Rivers of goodly beef and brewis ran

Boiling and bubbling thro' the steaming streets,
With islands of fat dumplings, cut in sops
And slippery gobbets, moulded into mouthfuls,
That dead men might have swallow'd; floating tripes
And fleets of sausages in luscious morsels
Stuck to the banks like oysters: here and there,
For relishers, a salt-fish season'd high

Swam down the savoury tide: when soon behold!
The portly gammon sailing in full state
Upon his smoaking platter heaves in sight,
Encompass'd with his bandoliers like guards,
And convoy'd by huge bowls of frumenty,
That with their generous odours scent the air.

-You stagger me to tell of these good days,
And yet to live with us on our hard fare,
When death's a deed as easy as to drink.

If your mouth waters now, what had it done, Cou'd you have seen our delicate fine thrushes Hot from the spit, with myrtle-berries cramm'd, And larded well with celandine and parsley, Bob at your hungry lips, crying-Come eat me! Nor was this all; for pendant over-head The fairest choicest fruits in clusters hung; Girls too, young girls just budding into bloom, Clad in transparent vests, stood near at hand To serve us with fresh roses and full cups Of rich and fragrant wine, of which one glass No sooner was dispatch'd, than strait behold! Two goblets, fresh and sparkling as the first, Provok'd us to repeat the encreasing draught. Away then with your ploughs, we need them not, Your scythes, your sickles, and your pruning hooks! Away with all your trumpery at once! Seed-time and harvest-home and vintage wakesYour holidays are nothing worth to us. Our rivers roll with luxury, our vats

O'erflow with nectar, which providing Jove

Showers down by cataracts; the very gutters
From our house-tops spout wine, vast forests wave
Whose very leaves drop fatness, smoaking viands
Like mountains rise-All nature's one great feast.

AMPHIS, the son of Amphicrates an Athenian, was a celebrated comic poet: we have the titles of one and twenty comedies, and he probably wrote many more: by these titles it appears that he wrote in the satirical vein of the old comedy, and I meet with a stroke at his contemporary Plato the philosopher. He has a play in titled, The Seven Chiefs against Thebes, which is probably a parody upon Eschylus, and proves that he wrote after the personal drama was prohibited: there is another called The Dicers; and by several scattered passages he appears to have exposed the persons of drunkards, gamesters, courtesans, parasites, and other vicious characters of his time, with great moral severity: there are also two comedies, intitled, Women's Love and Women's Tyranny.

Hermippus was a writer of the old comedy, and an Athenian. No less than forty comedies are given to this author by Suidas; he attacks Pericles for his dissolute morals, and in one of his plays calls him King of the Satyrs, advising him to assume the proper attributes of his lascivious character: he was the son of Lysides, and the brother of Myrtilus, a comic writer also.

Hipparchus, Philonides and Theopompus compleat the list of poets of the old comedy. Philonides, before he became a votary of the muse, followed the trade of a fuller, and, if we are to take the word of Aristophanes, was a very silly vulgar fellow, illiterate to a proverb. Athenæus and Stobæus have however given us some short quotations,

which by no means favour this account, and it is probable there was more satire than truth in Aristophanes's character of him. Theopompus is described as a man of excellent morals, and though he was long afflicted with a defluxion in his eyes, which put him from his studies, time has preserved the titles of twenty-four comedies of his composing: very little remains upon record either of him or his works.

One short fragment of Philonides is all that remains of his works, and it is a specimen which convinces me that we must not always take the character of a poet from a contemporary wit, engaged in the same studies.

FRAGMENT OF PHILONIDES.

Because I hold the laws in due respect,
And fear to be unjust, am I a coward?
Meek let me be to all the friends of truth,
And only terrible amongst its foes.

-Soli æquus virtuti atque ejus amicis.

I now take leave of what is properly called The Old Comedy in the further prosecution of this work (if that shall be permitted to me) it is my intention to review the writers of the Middle, and conclude with those of the New Comedy.