Euripides: he analyzes and defines a poem, then actually carried to its perfection; but gives no new lights, no leading instructions, for the furtherance and improvement of what had not arrived to the like state of maturity.

With the remains of the three tragic poets above mentioned in our hands, I profess I do not see how we are edified by Aristotle's dissertation, which offers nothing but what occurs upon the reading of their dramas; unless posterity had seen fit to abide by the same laws which they observed, and the modern tragedy had been made exactly to conform to the Greek model.

Aristotle, as we have before remarked, speaks of no comedy antecedent to the comedy of Epicharmus: there is reason to think that this author did not fall in with the personal comedy, in the licentious manner it prevailed upon the Athenian stage, even to the time of Aristotle; for it was not reformed there, till the personal satirists were awed into better respect by the Macedonian princes, who succeeded to Alexander; whereas Epicharmus wrote for the court of an absolute prince.

Now it is remarkable, that Aristotle makes no strictures upon the licentiousness of the Athenian comedy, nor offers any rules for the correction of the stage, though the schools proscribed it, and the tribunals were at open hostility with it. It is plain he states things as they were, not as they ought to have been; for he pronounces of comedy-' that it is a picture of human nature, worse and more deformed than the original.'

I cannot hold this to be a just character of comedy, as it stood at the time when Aristotle pronounced it: the only entire comedies we have to refer to, are a contradiction to the assertion; for no

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one will contend that the corrupt and abominable manners of the times in which Aristophanes wrote, did not fully warrant the severity of his satire, or that his characters of depravity are in general overcharged, and his pictures of human nature more deformed than their originals.' As for the rest of the comic fraternity, their fragments only can plead for them; but they are fragments of such a nature, as prove them to have been moralists of the sublimest sort, and they have been collected, translated, and applauded, by the gravest and most sententious of the Christian writers for many ages. I will venture to say, that in these scattered reliques of the comic stage, more useful knowledge and good sense, better maxims for right conduct in life, and a more generous display of benevolence, justice, public spirit, and all the moral virtues of natural religion are to be found, than in all the writings of the philosophers, which are so much more entire.

Socrates, it is true, could hardly be prevailed upon to enter the comic theatre, but I infer very little against the poets on that account; Plato, I am aware, though an intimate of Aristophanes, banished the drama out of his visionary republic; but what is that more than to say, that if all men were virtuous there would be no need of satirists? The comic poets in return lashed the philosophers over the stage, and they had what they merited, the public applause on their side; the schools and academies of sophists furnished an inexhaustible fund for wholesome ridicule; their contradictory first principles, their dæmons and clouds, and water and fire, with all their idle systems and hypotheses, their fabulous conceits, dreams and devices to catch the vulgar, and the affected rigour of their manners, whilst in secret they were addicted to the grossest debauchery and impu

rity, were continual subjects of satire; and if hypocrisy is not the comic poet's lawful game, what is? There is not a play of Aristophanes to be named, in which these sanctified sinners have not their share in the ridicule; and amongst the fragments above mentioned, a very large proportion falls to their lot.

Aristotle, who had very little feeling for Plato and his academy, or indeed for practical philosophy in general (which he seems to have professed only in opposition to Xenocrates) concerned himself no further about the state of the stage, than to comment and remark upon the tragedies of the three chief writers above mentioned; and it is humiliating enough to the pride of criticism to observe, that tragedy, after all his pains to hold it up to the standard of Sophocles and Euripides, sunk with those authors, and was no more heard of; whilst comedy, without his help, and in defiance of his neglect, rose in credit with the world, till it attained perfection under the auspices of Menander.

I have spoken of tragedy as a written poem before comedy of the same description, because I think that Susarion did not write comedy, though he acted it so early as the fiftieth Olympiad; and I also think that Thespis did write tragedy in the sixtyfirst Olympiad, if not sooner; in other words, although the complexion of the original drama was comic in the most extravagant degree, yet it appears probable that tragedy had the start in point of publication. The nature of the first comedy, compared with that of the first tragedy, seems to warrant this opinion; for it is easy to suppose that the raillery and satire of the village masques, which would pass off at a lawless festival, spoken off-hand and without the malice of premeditation, would not so readily have been committed to writing by the poet, as

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the tragic drama; which being composed in honour of deceased heroes, or on religious and grave subjects, not only called for greater deliberation on the part of the author, but would also be made public without danger or offence.

It now remains to inquire into the chronology of the written comedy.

I have already observed, that Aristotle ascribes the first written comedy to Epicharmus.

Both Aristotle and Horace call him a Sicilian, but in what particular place he was born is not agreed; some contend that he was a Syracusan, some that he was a native of Crastum, others of Megara in Sicily: Diomedes the grammarian says he was born in Cos, and derives the word comedy from the name of that island, a derivation that sets aside his authority altogether. The father of Epicharmus was named Chimarus, or according to others Tityrus, and his mother Sicida. Cicero in his Tusculans calls him, acutum nec insulsum hominem: Demetrius Phaleræus celebrates him for the elegant and apposite choice of his epithets, on which account the Greeks gave the name of Epicharmion to his style, making it proverbial for its beauty and purity. It is difficult to fix the precise time when he began to write comedy, especially as he lived to the great age of ninety-seven: it is certain however he was still writing in the reign of Hiero, in or about Olymp. LXXIV. at which time Phormis also wrote comedy in Sicily; and Chionides, Dinolochus and Magnes, comic poets, flourished at Athens.

Suidas's chronology does agree with_Aristotle's, for he makes Chionides antecedent to Epicharmus, and calls him the first writer of comedy; adding, that Evetes, Euxenides and Mylus, all Athenians, were his contemporaries; he allows, however, that

Epicharmus and Phormis were the first writers in the island of Sicily; but this is in the vague manner of his dates, and not to be relied upon: he takes no notice of Aristotle's express assertion, that Epicharmus was long senior to Chionides; and yet he might have recollected, that facts are so far in favour of Aristotle's chronology of these poets, that there is a title upon record of one of Chionides's plays called The Persians, which must have been posterior to the Persian æra, when it is on all hands agreed that Epicharmus was living.

Amongst the epigrams of Theocritus, published by Henry Stevens in 1579, there are some lines upon Epicharmus, which appear to have been inscribed upon the pedestal of a statue of brass, which the Syracusans had set up in his honour as their fellow-citizen: it consists of ten lines in the Doric dialect, which he used; it settles the point of his birth, expressly saying he was a Syracusan, and ascribes to him the invention of Comedy

χώνηρ, ὁ τὴν Κωμωδίαν

Ευρών Επίχαρμος

Epicharmus, the man who invented Comedy.' In the conclusion, it celebrates him for the many useful maxims which he gave for the instruction of youth; but this I am disposed to think may apply to the circumstance of his having been a schoolmaster at Syracuse; for if we are to take our judgment of Epicharmus's drama from his imitator Plautus, perhaps its morality, though not to be overlooked amongst other excellencies, is nevertheless not the most striking feature in its character. And though it is probable that Epicharmus did not launch out into that personality, which the freer Athenians in

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