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Mr. Mitchell has hit the very key-note of Aristophanes, whose choruses throughout this play are contrived to afford a relief and contrast to the vulgar acrimony of his dialogue; not in their logical and grammatical sense, but in their form and rhythm, and in the selection of the words; which, if heard imperfectly, would appear to belong (as in the present instance) to a grave, or tender, or beautiful subject.

We may except from this general observation the first chorus, Ω μιαρὲ καὶ βδελυρέ, as it forms a transition from the eager and vehement part which the chorus has taken just before. This also is translated by Mr. Mitchell with great power and effect. Cho. Wretch without a parallel—

Son of thunder-child of hell,-
Creature of one mighty sense,
Concentrated impudence!-
From earth's centre to the sea,
Nature stinks of that and thee.
It stalks at the bar,

It lurks at the tolls;

In th' Assembly, black war
And defiance it rolls.

It speaks to our ears
In an accent of thunder;

It climbs to the spheres

And rives heav'n asunder

Athens deafens at the sound in her ears still drumming;

While seated high,

You keep an eye

Upon the tolls like those who spy

If tunny-fish be coming.'-pp. 188, 189.

Having extracted already the contest between Cleon and his adversary in the senate, we shall subjoin a part of their subsequent altercation before the assembly of the people, personified in the character of Demus.

Cl. (to Demus.) For service and zeal I to facts, sir, appeal :-say of all that e'er sway'd this proud city,

Who had ever more skill your snug coffer to fill,

undisturb'd by respectance or pity?

For one and for two I've the rope and the screw, to a third I make soft supplication;

And I spurn at all ties, and all laws I despise,

so that Demus find gratification.

Saus. Mere smoke this and dust! Demus, take it on trust,
that my service and zeal can run faster :

I am he that can steal at the mouth a man's meal,

and set it before my own master.

Vol. XXIII. No. 46.-Q. R.

64

Other

Other proofs than of love in this knave's grate and stove, noble lord, may your eyes be discerning :

There the coal and the fuel that should warm your own gruel, to your slave's ease and comfort are burning. Marathon's day, when thy sword (to Demus) pav'd the way to Persia's disgrace and declension,

Nay, since

(That bountiful mint in which bards without stint fashion words of six-footed dimension,)

Like a stone or a stock, hast not sat on a rock,

cold, comfortless, bare and derided :While this chief of the land never yet to your hand a cushion or seat hath provided?

But take this (giving a cushion) to the ease of your hams and your knees: for since Salamis' proud day of story,

With a fleet ruin-hurl'd, they took rank in the world,

and should seat them in comfort and glory.

Dem. What vision art thou! let me read on thy brow,
what lineage and kindred have won thee!

Thou wert born for my weal, and the impress and seal
of Harmodius are surely upon thee.

Cleon (mortified.) O feat easy done! and is Demus thus won by diminutive gifts and oblations ?

Saus. Small my baits I allow, but in size they outgo

your own little douceurs and donations.

Cl. (fiercely.) Small or great be my bait, ne'er my boast I abate, but for proof head and shoulders I offer,

That in act and in will to Demus here still

a love unexampled I proffer.

[bleed;

Saus.(dactylics.) You proffer love indeed! you that have seen him buffing and roughing it years twice four;

A tub-and-cask tenant,-vulture lodg'd-sixth floor man ; batter'd and tatter'd, and bruis'd and sore!

There was he pent and shent with a most vile intent,

his milk and honey sweet from him to squeeze; Pity none e'er he won, tho' the smoke pinch'd his eyes, and his sweet wine it was drawn to the lees.

When Archeptolemus lately brought PEACE to us;

who but you (to Cieon) scatter'd and scar'd the virgin,

While your foot rudely plac'd, where Honour's soul is cas'd, spurn'd at all such as acceptance were urging?

Cl. (fanning.) And, my good sir, the cause ?-Marry that Demus' laws.

Greece universal might obey :

Oracles here have I, and they in verity

bear that this lord of our's must hold sway,

Judging in Arcady, and for his salary,

earning him easily a five-obol coin.

Let him but wait his fate, and in mean time his state,

food and support shall be care of mine.'-pp. 230–233.

Upon

·

Upon the whole, the specimens of lyrical execution which we have given above, will justify us in venturing the opinion (which Goldsmith's friend suggested to the travelling connoisseur as a safe one in all cases), that the picture would have been better, if the painter had taken more pains.' There is evidently a very just comprehension of the intended effect of the original, and a full power of expressing it, but this power is not uniformly exerted. With respect to the dialogue, we have already noticed the defects which are inseparable from an obsolete and unfamiliar language, and which, in our opinion, would make it impossible for any talent to produce an adequate representation of Aristophanes in a style so unsuited to this species of Comedy. This, however, is an estimate of the work merely as compared with the original;-as compared with former translations, it stands on the highest ground-and even the original does not, at the first perusal, reveal to the young student, so much perhaps, as the mere English reader may collect from Mr. Mitchell's translation. His estimate of the character of his author, as detailed in the Preliminary Dissertation, is (in our opinion) perfectly correct and curious, and interesting in the highest degree. The notes, though we have pointed out one or two defects, are in general spirited, judicious and learned :-and even if we were inclined to attribute to the translator a degree of poetical merit much inferior to that which he may justly claim; we should still consider British literature as under the highest obligations to him, for an addition of such a mass of curious, interesting and instructive matter; which has hitherto been inaccessible, and which is now laid open to every English reader, to a point beyond which many professed scholars have not thought it worth their while to proceed. Since the publication of Mr. Mitford, nothing has appeared, so calculated to convey a true impression of the character of antiquity, or to efface those theatrical and pedantic notions, which are become the source not only of infinite absurdity and distortion of mind among scholars, but of much practical mischief and error, in proportion as the blunders of the learned are diffused among the vulgar.

W.

ART. X.-Advice to Julia.

THIS

A Letter in Rhyme.
London. 1820.

pp. 236.

HIS little poem has a great many merits, but it has, we fear, one fault, the worst which a poem, great or little, can have-it fails in interest. We find it difficult at first sight to account for this. The writer possesses a very agreeable vein of pleasantry if not of wit, great command of language, and a happy facility of versi

fication.

fication. His subject is gay and varied, and he treats it with the ease and good breeding of a gentleman, and occasionally not without the imagination of a poet-and yet it is on the whole heavy; so much so, indeed, that though we have read it all, we cannot boast of having been able to read it through: we have read it by fits and starts, and here and there, with great satisfaction; but whenever we endeavoured to proceed right on with a regular perusal it fatigued us-like a French avenue or a Dutch canal, which is pretty to look at from an occasional crossing, but which becomes exceedingly wearisome when you are obliged to travel on it for leagues.

The causes of this tediousness appear to us to be, first, the didactic and narrative style to which the author's original design restricted him.-Three thousand lines of uninterrupted advice, even though it be the advice of a dandy to a dolly, are very appalling; and a whole poetic novel with but a single character, affords the prospect of no very enlivening tête-à-tête :-and secondly, the bad taste shewn by him in selecting a woman of that style as the object of a literary tribute: it throws a sameness of vulgarity and fulsomeness over the whole work, and though the author's language and his scenes are always decent, nay though they often rise into high life, our feelings are shocked in every page with the appearance of a connexion which would degrade its hero in the eyes even of the partners of such follies.

The author seems to have anticipated this last objection; and urges, in his defence, that he copies Horace; for that, to the Eighth Ode of the First Book,

'Lydia, dic,

per omnes

Te Deos oro, Sybarin cur properas amando
Perdere ?"

he is indebted for his idea but in the first place, Horace's ode is a pleasantry of only sixteen lines; and, secondly, there is not a word in it which obtrudes Lydia upon us as a courtezan. The Scholiast thinks she was one, and we think so too; because from the state of manners in ancient Rome, no other kind of female society was likely to have drawn Sybaris from his usual exercises or amusements; but the ode itself conveys no idea which might not, according to our manners, be applied to a legitimate love, nay even to domestic and conjugal happiness : and we cannot but think, that if the adviser had jocularly com plained that a happy marriage had domesticated his friend, and drawn him from the gayer pleasures of his former society, it would have been a much more agreeable hypothesis; though even that would have wanted truth and nature, since marriage does not now-a-days remove a man from scenes of decent amusement,

such

such as the author describes.-In short, we cannot praise the plan of the work. It proceeds on principles altogether false, both in point of fact and in point of taste; and the author's powers of fancy and of language are incapable of giving any lasting interest to so indelicate and so ungrateful a subject. That these powers are considerable a few extracts will shew. Our readers cannot but admit that there is much pleasantry and spirit in some of the following portraits, and a lively, accurate and original view of nature in some of the following landscapes. His description of the dandy's conversation, though not perhaps in his best manner, is characteristic and clever.

How much at home was Charles in all
The talk aforesaid-nicknamed small!
Seldom embarrassed, never slow,
His maxim always "touch and go;"
From grave to gay he ran with ease,
Secure alike in both to please.
Chanced he to falter? A grimace
Was ready in the proper place;
Or a chased snuff-box, with its gems
And gold, to mask his ha's and hems,
Was offered round, and duly rapp'd,
Till a fresh topic could be tapp'd.
What if his envious rivals swore
"Twas jargon all, and he a bore?
The surly sentence was outvoted,
His jokes retail'd, his jargon quoted;

And while he sneered or quizzed or flirted,

The world, half angry, was diverted.'-pp. 22, 23.

The following passages of autumnal London are extracted from a too long and too minute description; yet are they, in themselves, sprightly and amusing.

"Tis August. Rays of fiercer heat
Full on the scorching pavement beat,
As o'er it, the faint breeze, by fits
Alternate, blows and intermits.
For short-lived green, a russet brown
Stains every withering shrub in town.
Darkening the air, in clouds arise
Th' Egyptian plagues of dust and flies;
At rest, in motion-forced to roam
Abroad, or to remain at home,
Nature proclaims one common lot
For all conditions-" Be ye hot!"
Day is intolerable-Night

As close and suffocating quite ;

And

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