too short for the mental eye to observe each minute particular, nor too large, so that it cannot comprehend all its parts in one view. It is just of that length that the mind is capable of containing every particular without any great exertion of the memory. Some modern critics have proceeded to calculate the precise time that an epic poem should occupy; but as this is a point not at all agreed on, we shall without giving any decision, leave it entirely to the reader to judge of Temora in this particular. The thing itself is really of so little consequence, that was the point quite determined, our labour in the enquiry would be far from being recompeused by the advantage which we would draw from it.

It has been remarked that greatness can only exist in the subject of an epic poem, when the action, which it celebrates, is not of me. dern date; because when an action is of recent occurrence, there is no room for fiction. Every law, whether it relate to the interests of a nation, or merely to an epic poem, must be regulated and enforced differently as circumstances require. The events, which Homer celebrates, had happened much nearer the time in which he lived, than those which formed the subject of the Eneid to the time in which Virgil lived; and those which afford matter for the Paradise Lost, were still further removed from the period in which they were celebrated: while Ossian lived in the very same age, and was himself an actor in those very scenes, which he has immortalized in the poems of Fingal and Temora. It is evident from this, then, that there is no stated period, which must elapse before a poet is authorised to celebrate the events, which have happened. The cause of this great difference may be accounted for, by taking into view, as we have done in a previous case, the different periods of society in which each poet flourished. The countries which

gave birth to Homer and to Ossian had advanced very nearly to the same state of civilization; but the age of Homer was more refined than that of Ossian. In the Augustan age, and in the age of Charles II. civilization had reached that period, when every little circumstance which occurs is committed to writing; so that had either Virgil or Milton attempted to celebrate deeds which had taken place many ages before the time in which they wrote, these poets would have had no room to exercise their imaginations. Even had Homer ventured to make choice of a subject which had happened as recently in his time, as the subject which Ossian has transmitted to posterity, he would have been encumbered by fetters of the same nature. In Ossian's time there were no annals. He had lived to an old age, which had seen all the friends of his youth laid with their fathers. There was no one to give evidence against the authenticity of his narrative. In those times, when men's chief employment is hunting, and when bards, devoted solely to gratify the chiefs to whom they are attached, are the only recorders of events, what is done in one age, in the next borders upon romance; so that

we may conclude, that Ossian possessed all the advantages of obs scurity and fiction that any of his competitors for the prize of merit had enjoyed.

The third qualification, which we stated as requisite to make the fable complete, was, that it should be interesting. To make the fable interesting it should be diversified by a variety of circumstances, so interwoven, that the mind may never become tired with any particular object. It has been stated as an objection to Homer's poems that his readers become tired with the continuation of battles and scenes of bloodshed. If in Homer this is a fault, it must cere tainly be reckoned a very trivial one: probably laid to his charge by that illiterate and illiberal class of readers, who judge of every thing, as if it was intended for their own country, and the present generation, and never once think of regarding it as written for a tribe of men, who lived three thousand years ago, and who considered a victory as their greatest glory. This objection cannot be stated against any of the other epic writers whom we have mentioned.

The interest excited by the fable depends greatly upon the choice of subject. When we view Milton's Paradise Lost in this respect, no poem which has yet been produced can stand in competi tion with it. The creation of the world, the fall of the wicked angels, and the promise of redemption given us by our father, must attract the attention of mankind as long as the world continues. I may say with safety that our English poet's works have been translated into a greater number of languages than those of any author of modern times. It is, however, impossible for every poet to fix upon so adequate a subject. We should lay it down as a maxim, well becoming the individuals of a great nation; that we should direct all our exertions to support and advance the interests of our native land. Poets, accordingly, who have chosen an event connected with the history of their country, have fixed upon one of the most laudable subjects they can celebrate. Homer has given posterity an account of a war, which embroiled the whole states of Greece, which changed the balance of power, and long continued to act in its effects through every state of ancient Europe. Virgil, to flatter his patron Augustus, had it particularly in view to make out an ancient race from which he might deduce the line of the Roman Emperors; and he has celebrated the deeds of Æneas the supposed founder of his native country. Ossian, too, has immorta→ lised the actions of Fingal, one of the earliest Scottish Monarchs. His poem, therefore, will always continue to live among the inhabitants of Great Britain.

The conduct of the author in the management of his fable ris more likely to excite interest than any adventitious circumstance. If the subject should be in itself the most interesting that could be selected, unless it be properly managed, the poet may never expect that he will raise

Monumentum ære perenuius,
Regalique situ Pyramidum altius,

Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis

Annorum series, et fuga temporum.

It is not merely great events, it is not the recital of great actions, which produce interest, for if they are continued without intermis sion, there is nothing more apt to become cold and tiresome. The poet must not only appeal to the understanding and amuse the mind, but he must touch the feelings. Nothing gains a poet greater admiration than tender and pathetic scenes. There are some passages of this nature interspersed through Homer and Virgil. Milton has a greater number, but Ossian surpasses all his rivals. His tenderness is his strongest recommendation. But the tenderness of his sentiments is not his only beauty. The chasteness and delicacy, with which he expresses every idea, touch the fibres of the heart, and vibrate through every nerve. We catch the fire of his warriors, we are warmed by the friendship of his heroes, we sigh in the tender strains of his lovers, and we drop a tear of pleasing sorrow over the grave of his departed.

Edinb. 12 Dec. 1915.

LENNOX.

1

ON THE CLOUDS OF ARISTOPHANES.

BY

PROFESSOR VOSS or HEIDELBERG.

THE Comedy of the Clouds was produced in an age when the schools of philosophy at Athens, abandoned by teachers of reputation, were under the direction of young and incompetent masters; and quibbling sophists promoted the decline of public niorals.

The poet shows how by the spurious philosophy of fashionable preceptors, the strength and simplicity of the noble age of Marathon were degenerating into effeminate voluptuousness; and the presumptuous disputations of mob-orators among a raw populace were confounding right and wrong and unsettling the foundations of virtue and religion.

In order to combat this dangerous sophistry from the stage, the poet could not dispense with the name of a known character. But why, it may be asked, did he select that of Socrates, the genuine

philosopher, whom ignorance and malignity alone could charge with the offences of those sophists whose declared enemy he was ? The tale that Aristophanes was bribed by Ánytus, and Melitus, who three and twenty years afterwards accused Socrates of a capital offence, is sufficiently answered by a reference to the great distance of time between those events. As little was Aristophanes stimulated by enmity or even revenge against Socrates, because, as Elian and others assert, he had seduced the audience from the comedies of the day. We ascertain the respect which Socrates bore for Comedy in the symposium of Plato, in which Socrates urges Aristophanes and Agathon to admit that it belongs to the same poet to write Tragedies and Comedies, and that the art of composing both, is one and the same art; a doctrine which Shakespeare has triumphantly demonstrated. In the symposium we learn that a friendly intercourse subsisted between the poet and the philosopher; and how innocent Aristophanes must have appeared to the friends of Socrates is evident from several circumstances. Xenophon repeatedly mentions Aristophanes without any intimation of dislike; and Plato's celebrated epigram imports that the Graces, seeking an imperishable abode, chose the breast of Aristophanes. We know also that Plato sent the Clouds to king Dionysius, as conveying the best account of the state of Athens; and that he died in advanced years with his head resting on the works of the great poet. What therefore has been remarked by some Scholiasts concerning the natural antipathy between comic poets and philosophers is at least inapplicable to Aristophanes and Socrates. And the Scholiast judges better who says, that the poet had brought the philosopher on the stage without any bitterness.

It was just such a man, respected in Athens as a most acute thinker and of unblemished reputation, who could afford to abandon his name and person to the poet, that in them might be exposed the useless and pernicious subtleties of the age. His established celebrity protected him from being confounded with the farcical copy, He, who with playful humour ventures to hold up an upright, generous, and intelligent man as a liar, miser, and fool, does not offend. An altogether inapplicable reproach is praise, as undeserved praise is censure. The gay Athenians understood jesting, and that so thoroughly, that they could see the sublime Dionysus himself, the inspirer of the drama, exhibited in a ludicrous caricature without withdrawing their reverence from him. Neither Secrates nor any other philosophical leader is treated in this piece with that serious hostility, with which in the Knights he has pursued the mighty and dangerous Cleon.

There was no individual Sophist of importance enough to be the object of attack. It was the whole system of sophistry, in which every one bore a part, that was to be overturned. Now as a num

ber of these spurious philosophers affected not merely the subtle manner, but also the rigid morals, of Socrates, or as it is called in the Birds v. 128.socratised, the poet gave a personality to this socra tising, and created a sham Socrates, in whom only certain striking features of the inimitable original were farcically represented. We may imagine Kantranism, Pestalozzism, or any other ism of our age and country, personified in an individual, on whose head the imputed folly and wickedness of all the disciples, and at the same time the actual peculiarities of the pretended master, may be exhibited in caricature. It is in this way that Aristophanes has in his socratising buffoon caricatured certain remarkable peculiarities of the genuine Socrates, as, step, gesture, dress, manners, (v. 104. 361.414.) similies taken from ordinary life (v. 235); his images from midwifery, his mode of instruction, (96. and 737.) his insisting on precision, (v. 1180) his love of jesting, (v. 146) his predilection for Euripides, the corrupter of morals, (v. 1373.) who is perhaps of tener aimed at than can now be conjectured; his indulgence towards the fanatical Charephon (105.).

In other respects, the poet passes over rich materials for satire, in the habits of Socrates, viz. his convulsions, his belief in a warning dæmon, his fatherly love of beautiful young men, his mode of entangling disputants in contradiction by questions, &c.

And on the other hand he ascribes to him what appertained to others, as v. 115. the art of Protagoras of turning right to wrong; v. 379 the doctrine of Empedocles of the etherial vortex, the scholastic language of Pythagoras: v. 824. the rashness of the Atheist Diagoras; v.403. the fancies of certain natural philosophers. Socrates is represented v. 199. as the gloomy enemy of athletic exercises in the open air, though Plato in his symposium praises his skill in wrestling, and Alcibiades in the same dialogue celebrates with glowing enthusiasm his well known fortitude in the endurance of all the fatigues of war, The Socrates of the fable, like the mercenary sophists, actually keeps school for hard cash (v.99.) while the real Socrates was seldom in his own house, (Xenophon's Memorabilia) and gave his instructions without compensation; and, which exceeds every thing else, he is made (v. 497.) to take shoes and clothes from new comers, and (v. 179.) steal a cloak in order to provide a supper for his pupils. And thus Socrates, who in his 71st year died the wisest and uprightest of the Grecians, was in about his 50th year to pass for a crazy and impudent swindler! What mind can understand, what heart can endure such an absurdity? Though noble characters but gradually ripen into excellence, no man ever became a Socrates after having been the very contrary character. Certainly in Athens, where the philosopher was familiarly known, and where the dissimilarity between him and his caricature must have been perceived even from many features which