OF THE ARISTOPHANIC COMEDY.

THIS is a species of composition which no modern writer seems to have attempted to revive. Although it was among the earliest inventions of the Greeks, and was afterwards superseded by what they considered as a more refined species of comedy, it is by no means barbarous in its nature, but, on the contrary, highly philosophical, and apparently well adapted to please cultivated minds.

The distinctive principle of the Aristophanic comedy is not its personality, but its practice of investing general ideas, in appropriate visible forms, and turning them into dramatis persona. It has often been remarked, that allegorical personages are cold, and excite little sympathy, because, so long as we keep the allegory in view, we are reminded that they are not real. This, however, is no argument against the Aristophanic comedy, which does not appeal to our sympathies and passions. It is addressed to the understanding; its true object being reflection and pleasantry, and the diversion produced by the play of general ideas, under their dramatic garb. Allegory, although unfavourable to sentiment, is well suited to the purposes of pleasantry, which can hardly bring general ideas into collision, unless by giving them a local habitation and a name. If Swift's Tale of a Tub had been written in the form of a drama, it would have been a modern specimen of Aristophanic comedy.

To relish this species of composition, an audience would require to be acute, observative, and susceptible of pleasantry, in a high degree, and at the same time much interested in, and familiar with, the subjects handled in the piece. All these requisites were found among the Greeks; but it is questionable whether they can be found among modern nations. Madame de Stael, in speaking of this subject, observes, that modern nations, from the nature of their institutions, are not sufficiently habituated to contemplate bodies of men en masse; meaning, that when we think of the interests, passions, and opinions of particular classes, we do not conceive these classes, under any visible form, capable of being brought upon the stage. A lively imagination, however, might surely remedy this defect, and furnish us with personifications,

more amusing and characteristic, than any exhibitions which popular institutions, addressed to the senses, can furnish. As, in this species of comedy, the expression of the countenance would be of secondary importance, masks of the boldest and most fanciful construction might be used, which would serve to denote the characteristics of the person who wore them; and an excellent source of pleasantry might also be found in their dresses. The political parties of England, and the views and characteristics of the different classes who compose them, would form a good subject for an Aristophanic comedy, provided it was handled in a manner somewhat philosophical, and not allowed to sink into the tone of vulgar political squibs. Each class might be represented under the form of an individual, with the appropriate dress, language, and manners, boldly caricatured; and the plot of the play might turn upon the solution of their contentions. A play of this description, however, could not be sufficiently impartial to save it from being condemned and overset, either by one party or another.

Aristophanes made use of the absurdities of pagan theology to heighten the burlesque of his pieces, and was scarcely blameable for doing so; but in modern times, even the opinions of fanatics, who view Christianity through a perverted medium, are perhaps an unfit subject for the stage. The Tale of a Tub does not relate so much to the Christian revelation as to the temporal conduct of the different sects of Christians.

Professions are no longer sufficiently pedantic and narrow-minded to answer the purposes of the Aristophanic comedy. Their respective characteristics and prepossessions have been so much obliterated by the diffusion of knowledge, that there would no longer be any diversion in bringing them into contact. When individuals become too knowing with regard to the point of view from which others contemplate them, there is an end to comedy, which founds its choicest scenes upon a mutual ignorance of sentiments and feelings, and upon that unsuspecting steadiness of self-love, natural to minds which have remained hoodwinked within their own peculiar sphere.

The principal objection which occurs against the Aristophanic species

of comedy is, that philosophical pleasantries and satires would not gain so much as ordinary dramas do from being acted. Sentiment and passion acquire a new warmth and interest in the person of a good actor; and his looks and gestures take an irresistible hold of our sympathies; but every one must have observed, that mere repartees or reflections, when they are once known by rote, fall very coldly from the stage, because they are little improved by looks or gestures. A good actor, in representing passion, knows how to kindle the flame anew in our bosoms, although we may have seen the same piece twenty times before. And there is also a species of humour consisting in the exhibition of feeling, contrasted with situation, which gains from the actor, because it hinges up on sentiment, and cannot be definitely and adequately expressed in words. But the species of pleasantry, consisting in the play of abstract ideas, capable of being fully conveyed by language, and which is the one peculiar to Aristophanic and allegorical comedy, is rather an intellectual perception than a personal feeling, of such a nature as to be enforced by gesture and sympathy.

An Aristophanic comedy, however, might have all the advantages of a melo-dramatic spectacle; and some practical pleasantries might be represented by such a brilliant apparatus, as would prevent them from appear ing tedious. Allegory would afford many subjects fit for the display of machinery and decorations, in which particulars the Greek theatres seem to have been scantily provided. The intellectuality of the piece would thus be relieved by something addressed to the senses, and the wonder excited by bold flights of wit and imagination, would be supported by wonders better adapted to thick and cloudy capacities. It cannot be denied, nevertheless, that such an exhibition would please only once, unless it contained such diversi fied stores of thought as not to be easily remembered.

These remarks are made merely for the sake of discussion. If any writer were now to succeed in the species of composition above-mentioned, his drama would be known only in the closet, and would not find its way to the stage. Few nations have taken so VOL. III.

much pleasure as the Greeks in mere intellectual perceptions; and the only Greek audience which now remains, consists of men of talent and taste, who are sprinkled over the world at such distances from each other, that they have no chance of meeting within the confines of a theatre. He that looks along the benches of our playhouses, and observes the fine rows of human heads which are nodding around him, would do well to remember how much respect is due to human nature: for, if he sees more traces of the porter and ale which we have been drinking for so many generations back, than of Athenian perspicacity, there may be found an ample excuse for it in our national extraction, which certainly has had little to do with those southern amalgamations now talked of by philosophers.

CASSANDRA.

(From the German of Schiller.)

might more easily be translated into French, although its poetical language is extremely

"CASSANDRA, another work of Schiller's,

bold. At the moment when the festival to celebrate the marriage of Polyxena and Achilles is beginning, Cassandra is seized with a presentiment of the misfortunes which will result from it,--she walks sad laments that knowledge of futurity which and melancholy in the grove of Apollo, and troubles all her enjoyments. We see in this Ode what a misfortune it would be to a

human being could he possess the prescience of a divinity. Is not the sorrow of the prophetess experienced by all persons of strong passions and supreme minds? Schiller has given us a fine moral idea under a very poetical form, namely, that true genius, that of sentiment, even if it escape is frequently the victim of its own feelings. suffering from its commerce with the world,

Cassandra never marries, not that she is either insensible or rejected, but her penetrating soul in a moment passes the boundaries of life and death, and finds repose only in heaven."-MADAME de STAEL'S Germany, vol. i. p. 348.

Joy was heard in Ilium's walls,
Ere her lofty turrets fell,-
Songs of jubilee filled her halls,
Warbled from the golden shell.
Rests each warrior's weary sword
From the work of blood and slaughter;
While Pelides, conquering lord,
Sought the hand of Priam's daughter.

U

LETTERS TO THE SUPPORTERS OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

No I.-To the Reverend THOMAS

CHALMERS, D. D.

SIR,-I know no man who has less reason when a letter is brought to him, to dread that it may contain something disagreeable to his feelings, than Dr Chalmers. You have overcome many disadvantages, and achieved many triumphs: your enemies are few, and the nature of the reproaches which they pour out against you betrays very distinctly the meanness and envy from which they are sprung.Your friends are numerous; all of them admire your genius as an author, and venerate your zeal as a clergyman; and not a few of them, add to all this, a sincere and ardent love of the simplicity and the kindness which form the best ornaments of your character in private life. Your reception in the world is such as might spoil a mind less pure and dignified than yours. The flattery of women, and the vulgar, you could not of course fail to despise ; but the most dangerous of all temptations, the "Laudari a viris laudatis," has been abundantly served up to you; you have been extolled by every one of your eminent contemporaries who has had occasion to hear you preach. You have overcome the cold dignity of Lord Castlereagh, and the reluctant scepticism of Mr Jeffrey, with equal ease; and you have taken a station in the eye of your country, above what is, or has lately been, occupied by any clergyman, either of the English or of the Scottish church.

The praises which have been heaped upon you, have indeed, in many instances, been extravagant and absurd. I consider you as a man of strong intellect and ardent imagination; but I believe, that both in reason and fancy, you have, at the present time, many superiors; and that, had you selected for the subject of your disquisitions any other topic than that of religion, your labours would have attracted much less notice than they have done. I say not this by way of disparaging your talents, for almost every great man is calculated to shine in one department, not in many; and that in which your greatness has been shewn, is certainly as worthy of respect as any which you

could have selected. But, although you have applied to sacred subjects a more vigorous style, and a more energetic imagination, than are commanded by any other preacher of your day, you are not to suppose that you have not been immeasurably surpassed in your own field by many illustrious predecessors. Your reasoning is lame and weakly, when compared with that of Butler and Paley. Your erudition is nothing to that of a Lardner, a Warburton, or a Horsley. Your eloquence is jejune, when set by the side of Barrow, or any of the great old English preachers; and must always seem coarse, and even unnatural, to those who are familiar with Massillon and Bossuet. Nevertheless, you are assuredly a great man. Your mind is cast in an original mould. Your ardour is intense, and no one can resist the stream of your discourse, who has ei ther heart to feel what is touching, or soul to comprehend what is sublime.

A man, situated as you are, cannot fail to be the subject of much conversation among those who are acquainted with his merits. But the "Digito monstrarier et dicier hic est," are sometimes the penalty, as well as the prize, of eminence; and the same causes which secure every exertion of your virtue or your genius from neglect, cannot fail to draw upon every departure from the one, and every misapplication of the other, the eye of a most minute and jealous scrutiny. Your faults are likely to be blazoned with the same clamour which waits upon your excellencies; and the world, which is in no case fond of giving too much praise, will hasten to atone for the violence with which it has applauded, by the bitterness with which it will condemn.

Do not fear that I have made these observations by way of a prelude to abuse. You have no admirer more sincere than myself. Although not personally acquainted with you, I love and respect your character—and every part of it. I by no means coincide with some extravagant positions of the rhapsodist who praised you some months ago in the pages of this Magazine; but the admiration I feel for you is as sincere as his can be; and if you be displeased with any part of my address, remember, I beseech you, that my officiousness is only another illustration of the old Greek proverb, which

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says, that "Love hates to be silent," sgws 8 piksi to Biyay. I think you cannot possibly be the worse of being told, that in my apprehension, and in that of many who admire and love you as I do, you have lately fallen into a great and dangerous error. I by no means wish to set up my voice with any thing like petulance or pertinacity against the conduct of one entitled to so much respect. You may have reasons, perhaps good ones, for what you have done. But, be assured, the world is very anxious to hear them; and till they are explained, in the eyes of all good Christians, and, I will add, of all honest men, you are not what you were. Your conscience has already spoken. -There is no need for going about the bush with a man of your stamp. You are sensible that the world has reason to wonder at your conduct in becoming a contributor to the Edinburgh Review; and you confess, be fore I ask you to do so, that, by assuming this character, you have tarnished the purity of your reputation. As you have committed the offence, however, more frequently than once, I shall not ask your leave to tell you, at somewhat greater length, both the grounds and the nature of the opinion which the public is likely to form in respect to every Christian Minister who lends his support to the declining credit of that once formidable Journal.

From all that I have either heard or read of your discourses in the pulpit, if there is one thing more than any other characteristic of you as a preacher, it is the zeal with which you are never weary of telling your audience, that Christianity should exert an intense and pervading influence, not only over their solemn acts of devotion, but over their minds, even when most engaged with the business and the recreations wherein the greater part of every life must of necessity be spent. True religion, according to the doctrine which you support with such persuasive and commanding eloquence, is not the dark Sybil of some Pythian cell, consulted only on great emergen cies, surrounded with mysterious vapours, and giving utterance to enigmatical responses.-She is, or ought to be, the calm and smiling attendant of all our steps, the tutelary angel of all our wishes and hopes, the confidential friend and guardian, whose

presence lends to pleasure its greatest charm, whose absence, or coldness, would be sufficient to throw a damp over every exertion, and to chill the very fountain of all our enjoyment. We must go out of the world altogether, if we are never to mingle in the society of the ungodly; but, say you, in no moment of our intercourse with the world, and the men of the world, should we allow ourselves entirely to forget that we ourselves have our treasure laid up elsewhere-far less should we ever, by any deportment of ours, confirm the evil principles, or countenance the evil deeds, whose existence we cannot but observe among those with whom we are thus, at times, compelled to associate. On the contrary, we should take every opportunity of letting all inen see what we are we should remember, that the faith which we possess is not a thing to be worn like a gala garment, and laid aside at pleasure for weeds less likely to attract attention-we should take care that civility to our neighbours do not make us forgetful or careless of the duty which we owe to ourselves.

If an ordinary Christian be thus bound to preserve and shew his Christianity in the midst of all his occupations, it follows, I apprehend, pretty clearly, that a Christian author must lie under an obligation no less binding with regard to the conduct, purport, and probable effect of all his writings. The Bible informs us, that the Christian ought to consider himself as "a city set upon a hill;" surely the sacred preacher, the pious author, cannot but consider himself as occupying the most prominent part of this conspicuous situation. He cannot but know, that it is his fate to be "seen and read of all men." Beza wrote obscene songs; but this was in the days of his youth, and he lived abundantly to repent and atone for his errors. Marot wished to expiate the sin of his Madrigals; and he composed, with that view, his metrical version of the Psalms. It was reserved for Dr Chalmers to exhibit the apparent converse of their conduct; and after publishing a powerful treatise on the Historical Evidences of Christianity, and a series of masterly sermons against Modern Infidelity, to delight the malignant, and startle the friendly, by coming forth as the prop and pillar of a Deistical Review.