wild and extravagant son, whom he aids in his pious endeavours to cheat a suspicious, severe, and griping father. When to these three are added, a wily courtezan, a procuress, a stolen virgin, who is generally a mute or nearly such, we have all the stock-characters which are proper to the classic comedy. Upon this limited scale of notes the ancients rung their changes, relieving them occasionally, however, by the introduction of a boastful soldier, a boorish clown, or a mild and good-natured old man, to contrast with the irascible Chremes of the piece, the more ordinary representative of old age.

The plot is in general as simple as the cast of the characters. A father loses his child, who falls into the hands of a procuress or slave-merchant. The efforts of the youth, who falls in love with this captive, to ransom her from her captivity, are seconded by the slave, who aids him in the various devices necessary to extort from his father the funds necessary for the purchase, and their tricks form the principal part of the intrigue. When it is necessary that the play shall close, the discovery of the girl's birth takes place, and the young couple are married. The plots are, indeed, sometimes extended or enlarged by additional circumstances, but very seldom by any novelty of character or variety of general form.

It is a necessary consequence, that the ancient comic authors were confined within a very narrow compass. The vast and inexhaustible variety of knavery, folly, affectation, humour, &c. &c., as mingled with each other, or as modified by differ

ence of age, sex, temper, education, profession, and habit of body, are all within the royalty of the modern comic dramatist, and he may summon them up under what limitations, and in what circumstances he pleases, to play their parts in his piece. The ancients were much more limited in their circle of materials, and, perhaps, we must look for the ruling cause, once more, in the great size of their theatres, and to the use of the mask; which, though it easily presented the general or generic character of the personage introduced, was incapable of the endless variety which can be given to ridicule of a more minute, refined, and personal kind, by the flexible organs of a modern actor.

But besides this powerful reason for refraining from any attempt to draw characters distinguished by peculiar habits, there is much reason to think that the mode of life pursued by the ancient Athenians was unfavourable to the formation of whimsical, original, or eccentric characters. Citizens of the same state, they lived in the habits of familiar intercourse with each other, and the differences of ranks did not make the same distinction in taste and

manners as in modern Europe. The occupation, also, of Grecian citizens had a uniform and national character. They were all public men, and had a common interest in the management of the state; and it probably followed, that, in men whose thoughts and pursuits were all bent the same way, the same general similarity of manners might be found to exist, which is remarked in those who follow the same profession. The differences of youth and age, of riches and poverty, of good or bad tem

per, &c. must have been much modified in Attica, where all free citizens were, to a certain degree, on a level,—discussed the same topics of state, and gave their votes in the same popular assemblies,enjoyed without restriction the same public amusements,—and where the same general cast of manners might descend to the lowest of the citizens, for the very reason that even a poor herb-woman understood the delicacy of the Attic dialect so perfectly, as to distinguish a stranger by the first words he addressed to her.

The Chorus, silenced, as we have seen, owing to the license of the old comedy, made no appendage to that which was substituted in its place. The exhibition of the Grecian comedy did not, in other respects, in so far as we know, materially differ from that of the tragedy. Instead of the choral interludes, the representation was now divided, by intervals of cessation, into acts, as upon the modern stage. And the number five seems to have been fixed upon as the most convenient and best adapted for the purposes of representation. The plot, as we have seen, and the distinct and discriminated specification of character, were, in either case, subordinate considerations to the force of style and composition. It follows, of consequence, that we can better understand and enjoy the tragedies than the comedies of the ancients. The circumstances which excite sublime or terrific sensations are the same, notwithstanding the difference of age, country, and language. But comic humour is of a character much more evanescent. The force of wit depends almost entirely upon time, circumstance,

and manners; in so much, that a jest which raises inextinguishable laughter in a particular class of society, appears flat or disgusting if uttered in another. It is, therefore, no wonder that the ancient comedy, turning upon manners so far removed from our own time, should appear to us rather dull and inartificial. The nature of the intercourse between the sexes in classic times was also unfavourable for comedy. The coquette, the fine lady, the romp, all those various shades of the female character which occupy so many pleasant scenes on the modern stage, were totally unknown to ancient manners. The wife of the ancient comedy was a mere household drudge, the vassal, not the companion, of an imperious husband. The young woman

whose beauty is the acting motive of the intrigue, never evinces the slightest intellectual property of any kind. And the only female character admitting of some vivacity, is that of the courtezan, whose wit as well as her charms appear to have been professional.

After subtracting the large field afforded by female art or caprice, female wit, or folly, or affection, the realm of the ancient comedy will appear much circumscribed; and we have yet to estimate a large deduction to be made on account of the rust of antiquity, and the total change of religion and manners. It is no wonder, therefore, that the wit of Plautus and Terence should come forth diminished in weight and substance, after having been subjected to the alembic of modern criticism. That which survives the investigation, however, is of a solid and valuable character. If these Dramas do not enter VOL. VI.

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tain us with a display of the specific varieties of character, they often convey maxims evincing a deep knowledge of human passion and feeling; and are so admirably adapted to express, in few and pithy words, truths which it is important to remember, that even the Apostle Paul himself has not disdained to quote a passage from a Grecian dramatist. The situation, also, of their personages is often truly comic; and the modern writers who have borrowed their ideas, and arranged them according to the taste of their own age, have often been indebted to the ancients for the principal cause of their success.

Having dwelt thus long upon the Grecian Drama, we are entitled to treat with conciseness that of Rome, which, like the other fine arts, that people, whose national disposition was much more martial than literary, copied from their more ingenious neighbours.

The Romans were not, indeed, without a sort of rude dramatic representation of their own, of the same nature with that which, as we have already noticed, usually rises in an early period of society. These were called Fabula Atellana; farces, for such they were, which took their name from Atella, a town belonging to the Osci in Italy. They were performed by the Roman youth, who used to attack each other with satirical couplets during the intervals of some rude game in which they seem to have represented the characters of fabulous anti

1 [The maxim" Evil communications corrupt good manners," 1 Cor. xv. 33., is said to be from Menander.]