The The Frogs is the most literary of Aristophanes' plays, and for that reason, perhaps, the most entertaining to modern readers. main interest of the piece is the contest for poetical supremacy between the shades of Eschylus and Euripides. Sophocles does not appear; his absence is accounted for with sufficient dramatic plausibility, the real reason for it being that the style of his tragedies does not afford salient points for a parodist. The arbiter is Dionysus, who comes down to Hades with the intention of bringing back Euripides, but ends by changing his mind and taking Eschylus. The argument between the two poets is introduced by a very peculiar and highflown speech of the Chorus : CHORUS. The full-mouthed master of the tragic quire, We shall behold him foam with rage and ire; -Confronting in the list His eager, shrewd, sharp-toothed antagonist. Then will his visual orbs be wildly whirl'd With furious gesture and with lips of foam, O'ershadowing his dark eyes' terrific blaze. While masses of conglomerated phrase, Then in different style In turn will play their part; And every modern tool; Contending for the important choice, -Then having dragg'd and drawl'd along, half-way to the conclusion, He foisted in a dozen words of noisy boisterous accent, 'The original is in four stanzas. One of them in Droysen's version will serve to show the form : Furchtbar grollen im Inneren wird der gewaltige Donuren, Sieht er den stichelgeschwätzigen Feind zum Kampf der Entscheidung Spitzen den Zahn; ja, er wird in entsetzlicher Wildheit Rollen seiner Augen Gluth! Eu. But Bulwarks and Scamanders' and 'Hippogrifs and Gorgons.' 'On burnish'd shields emboss'd in brass;' bloody, remorseless phrases Which nobody could understand. B. Well, I confess, for my part, with guesses I used to keep awake at night, and conjectures To think what kind of foreign bird he meant by griffin-horses. Es. A figure on the heads of ships; you goose, you must have seen them. B. Well, from the likeness, I declare, I took it for Eruxis.' Eu. So! Figures from the heads of ships Nor terms nor images derived from tap'stry When I receiv'd the muse from you found her puff'd and pamper'd,2 With pompous sentences and terms, cumbrous huge virago. a Es. tell us, Come, then, stand forth and What forfeit less than death is due for such an innovation? Eu. I did it upon principle from democratic motives. B. Take care, my friend-upon that ground your footing is but ticklish. Eu. I taught these youths to speechify. Es. I say so too. Moreover I say that for the public good-you ought to have been hanged first. Eu. The rules and forms of rhetoric,the laws of composition, To prate-to state-and in debate to meet a question fairly: At a dead lift to turn and shift-to make a nice distinction. Es. I grant it all-I make it all-my ground of accusation. Eu. The whole in cases and concerns occurring and recurring At every turn and every day, domestic and familiar, So that the audience, one and all, from personal experience, Were competent to judge the piece and form a fair opinion Whether my scenes and sentiments agreed with truth and nature. I never took them by surprise to storm their understandings, With Memnons and Tydides's and idle rattle-trappings. Of battle-steeds and clattering shields to scare them from their senses; But for a test (perhaps the best) our pupils and adherents May be distinguished instantly by person and behaviour; His are Phormisius the rough, Meganetes the gloomy, Hobgoblin-headed, trumpet-mouthed, grimvisaged, ugly-bearded; But mine are Cleitophon the smooth,Theramenes the gentle. In the last line but one Frere had to make four words of the two epithets : σαλπιγγολογχυπηνάδαι, Droysen, with his more plastic German, is able to coin the equivalents The scholiast informs us that he was eminent for ugliness. 2 Euripides speaks in the style of the basest of all occupations, the speculator in female slaves-the Leno of Terence. The philosophic sect to which Euripides belonged were known to be hostile to the democracy. Of these personages the Scholiast tells us that Phormisius wore a long beard, and affected to be formidable; and that Meganetes was a bold, rough soldier. Then comes a dashing reply of Eschylus in long anapasts, after which the parties fall to mutual parody. By far the best thing here is Eschylus' travesty of Euripides" later lyrical manner : Such is your music. I shall now proceed The Burlesque which follows admits of a tolerably close translation. O dreary shades of night! Ye maidens haste, and bring A bucket of fresh water; whose clear stream (My friend and civil neighbour heretofore) With the dawn I was beginning My neighbour hath bereft me, Is flown is flown!-Is gone-is gone! -But, O ye nymphs of sacred Ida, bring Torches and bows, with arrows on the string; And search around All the suspected ground: While Hecate, with her tremendous torch, The half-dozen hexameters which end the play are represented by English hexameters. The remarks prefixed to these show that Frere entertained good hope of the hexameter establishing itself in English poetry: a hope which, notwithstanding all the English hexameters (God help them!) that have been written since, we cannot consider as realised. The translation of the Peace, which closes the Aristophanic series, is unfinished. We can extract only the last piece dictated by Frere, a gem in its kind, in spite of the unlucky hiatus in one line : How sweet it is to see the new-sown cornfield fresh and even, With blades just springing from the soil that only ask a shower from Heaven. There, while kindly rains are falling, indolently to rejoice, Till some worthy neighbour calling, cheers Well, with weather such as this, let us hear, What should you and I be doing? You're In the vineyard there's your lout, hoeing in Send the wench and call him out, this Boil some grain and stir it in, and let us 3 Send a servant to my house-any one that We heard her racketing and tearing round Boy, bring three of them to us--take the other to my father. Cut some myrtle for our garlands, sprigs in flower, or blossoms rather. The 'Monodies.-Verses sung by a single actor unaccompanied by the chorus. burlesque turns upon the faults of Euripides' style, the false sublime-the vulgar pathetic; and impertinent supplications for divine assistance. 2 There is a similar invocation in the Lysistrata, where the dawdling Chorus, instead of going to put out the fire, stand with buckets of water in their hands, praying to Minerva to bring more water. The Translator had forgotten all but the hare-pies. Give a shout upon the way to Charinades our neighbour, To join our drinking bout to-day, since Heaven is pleased to bless our labour. The reconstruction of Theognis, in a poetical version of his remains, interwoven with a commentary, and the other Miscellaneous Pieces which occupy the rest of the second volume, must perforce be passed over but not without special mention of a brilliant fragment from Faust, which makes us strongly wish that Frere had taken in hand the whole play, or at any rate all the social scenes; and of some extremely gracious and ingenious translations from Catullus, to our minds as unmistakably good as the Aristophanes. W THE STORY OF THE PRETENDED DE CAILLE. HILE the first act of the Tichborne drama was still in progress before Lord Chief Justice Bovill, the Times, following the example of the Month, gave its readers an abstract of the wellknown case of Martin Guerre. Now that the curtain has fallen and the plot is disclosed to the audience, we intend to present the public with a narrative even more interesting in its details, and bearing a closer resemblance to the great trial which collapsed so suddenly but a short time ago. In Martin Guerre's case it was never considered certain that he had died, even by those who denied the identity of the claimant with him, and the question was settled only by his actual re-appearance. But in the proceedings we are to examine the defendants' case assumed that the son of Scipio de Caille was positively dead, just as in the Tichborne suit it was alleged that Roger had been lost in the Bella. As it was with Isaac de Caille, so in the modern case no one, even of those who asserted the claimant to be an impostor, thought that there was any chance of the real man ever coming forward, like Martin Guerre, to confront him. The one side said that the claimant was Roger Charles Tichborne, while the other side insisted that Roger was dead and that the claimant was probably Arthur Orton. The state of affairs in the trial of 1712 was very similar: one party maintained that the pretender was Isaac de Caille, but the defendants said he was really Pierre Mêge, and brought forth proof that Isaac had died some years before. Martin Guerre's case takes up forty-nine pages in the first volume of the Causes Célèbres, edited by Gayot de Pitaval, at Paris, in 1739. But the case of the faux De Caille extends over no less than 314 pages in the second volume, and is generally referred to by all French writers as the most remarkable case of disputed identity recorded in the legal annals of their country. Most people know that in 1685 Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes by which Henry IV. had secured religious toleration and civil liberty to his Protestant subjects. At this period the professors of the reformed faith were harassed by the most unheard-of cruelties. After experiencing the horrors of a general dragonnade, the character of which has passed into a proverb, they found themselves deprived of their rights as French citizens and placed outside the protection of the law by a series of enactments almost without parallel in history. Their children were taken from them to be brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, their marriages were declared void, and their offspring branded as bastards; while, to complete the utter disorganisation of society which could not but follow such measures, it was enacted in 1689 that the property of all Protestants who had left the kingdom on account of religion should be given to their nearest of kin who were Roman Catholics. Ruin or death, says Figuier, confiscation or the galleys, the infamous punishment of the gibbet, the terrible punishment of the stake-such were the penalties of that abominable code promulgated by the inflexible monarch who was enthroned at Versailles among his minions, his mistresses and his bastards, and who felt no pang of conscience, no sentiment of pity, in devoting to destruction hosts of his subjects innocent of any crime except the desire to worship God in their own way. One of the chief results of the |