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and hence, finally, the extraordinary precision and discrimination, with which the single ancient authors have been characterized, and which has taken place, we trust for ever, of that loose and indistinct tone of pedantic admiration, in which it was the fashion to praise ancient authors of all ages and characters, to the same degree, and almost in the same words. In this new school, it is, that an attempt, bold, ingenious, we know not if we ought to add successful, has been made to reverse the popular judgments, with regard to Aristophanes. The Schlegels may be considered as those, who have been most distinctly the organs of the learned, in promulgating this new opinion. The following extract from the lectures of F. Schlegel will be new to few of our readers, having been already quoted in this discussion, but it is necessary here to repeat it, for the sake of distinctness. After a number of fine preparatory remarks, he observes, that

in language and versification the excellence of Aristophanes is not barely acknowledged-it is such as to entitle him to take his place, among the first poets to whom Greece has given birth. In many passages of serious and earnest poetry which, thanks to the boundless variety and lawless formation of the popular comedy of Athens, he has here and there introduced, Aristophanes shows himself to be a true poet, and capable, had he so chosen, of reaching the highest eminence, even in the more dignified departments of his art. However much his writings are disfigured by a perpetual admixture of obscenity and filth-and however great a part of his wit must to us, in modern times, be altogether unintelligible, and after deducting from the computation every thing that is either offensive or obscure, there will still remain to the readers of Aristophanes a luxurious intellectual banquet of wit, fancy, invention and poetical boldness. Liberty, such as that of which he makes use, could indeed have existed no where, but under such a lawless democracy as that, which ruled Athens, during the life of Aristophanes. But that a species of drama originally intended solely for popular amusement in one particular city, should have admitted or hazarded so rich a display of poetry, this is a circumstance which cannot fail to give us the highest possible idea, if not of the general respectability, at least of the liveliness, spirituality, and correct taste of the populace, in that remarkable State, which formed the focus and central point of all the eloquence and refinement, as well as of all the lawlessness and all the corruption of the Greeks.' F. Schlegel's Lectures, Vol. I, p. 59.

After this defence of the poetical character of Aristophanes, the learned Austrian proceeds to assert his political independence and merit as a citizen, a point to which we may perhaps return, but on which we will not now linger. This quotation may be taken as an adequate representative of the opinion cherished of Aristophanes, by the new school in Germany. Wieland is the last perhaps who has viewed him in the ancient, unfavorable light; for writers like Fuhrmann and even Harles can hardly be quoted as of authority, in so delicate a discussion as this. That a doctrine so new, so plausible, and, if we may be pardoned the phrase, so paradoxical, should have found favor in Germany, was not surprising. There is an intensity of the speculative principle, and a forgetfulness of the practical in the German character, which are continually producing similar results. But it is a phenomenon, without many parallels, that these views should have found such a welcome in England. Till the days of Porson, Aristophanes had been but little studied in that country. The labors of Dawes had been principally confined to the correction of the text, especially by the application of his beautiful canon with respect to the optative mode and imperfect tense, in which he has been so admirably borne out by the text of the Ravenna MS.* Cumberland's labors on the Greek comedy, and Aristophanes in particular, in his Observer, were not certainly of a kind to put the student on any new track in his researches into this obscure department; and the labors of Porson on this author having been for the most part unfortunately lost by the burning of his copy of Aristophanes,† failed to produce their whole effect in turning the attention and zeal of his school to these remains. By what accident then Mr Mitchell was led to so careful a study of them, as he has made, we are not able to say, nor by what uncommon causes he has been induced to embrace in its fullest extent, nay, to exceed in extravagance, one of the theories of the German school, which we should have thought least calculated for the English taste. For ourselves, we regard the learning of the Germans with highest admiration, and look on them as the authors and masters of the true school of ancient literature. We can, however, specify but few points, where we do not think they have pushed their

*See Dawesii Misc. Crit. Ed. Kidd. Indic. p. 636.

+ See Porsoni Aristophanica: Ed. Dobree Præfat. ii. and Kiddii Præf. ad Porson. Opusc. p. xxxix, which is referred to by Mr Dobree.

fine speculations too far; and where, having begun with the most sharp-sighted rectification of popular errors of errors sanctioned by a prescription, which it is an equal proof of courage and learning to assail-they do not end by being carried into an extreme, in which they can be neither safely imitated by others, and in which they are not very consequent, always, themselves A remarkable instance of this is presented in those most profound, original, and interesting speculations on the authenticity of the poems of Homer, which were first effectually started by Wolf. So long as he confined himself to enforcing the portentous improbability that two poems, each of twenty-four books of a texture so artificial and elaborate as that of the Iliad and Odyssey, should have been produced before alphabetical writing was in general use, and while recitation was the only instrument, and festivals the only occasion of publication, (an instrument and an occasion, which of themselves exclude even the conception of poems so long), while he confined himself to these points, the learned world were enchanted with the wisdom and sagacity, the conclusiveness, and the erudition which marked his argument.-Misled, however, by his success, he aimed at something higher, and formed in his mind an obscure image of a literary phenomenon so paradoxical and wild, that were it not heralded in with the most select and exquisite learning, no good taste would even pause to examine it; viz. the idea that the Iliad and Odyssey are a fortuitious accumulation of ancient poems never written as parts of one work, but the production of different ages, authors, and countries. We say he formed in his mind an obscure image of this theory, for no where does he distinctly state, and never has he in terms defended it. But it is plain to see that his mind does fondly dally with such a philological sorceress; and his enemies and his indiscreet admirers (those worst enemies of a daring mind) familiarly attribute to him a plurality of Homers. Though, after long labouring under this

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* Mr Campbell, in his lectures on poetry, thus expresses himself.— The idea of one author having composed either of the two great poems, that pass under Homer's name, has been violently controverted in recent times, and a general scepticism has been diffused on this subject by the learning of Wolf and Heyne. Those great men have had antagonists, it is true, but none that were worthy Αντίβιον μαχέσασθαι ἐν αἰνῇ δηϊοτῆτι, till our own countryman Payne Knight, vindicated the had and Odyssey, from the imputation of having been patched into beauty and unity, by a crowd of equivocal rhapsodists.' Mr Campbell then adds, in a note to this passage, that Mr Knight is so far a dis

imputation, or enjoying this reputation, you are astonished to find that he no where distinctly asserts the theory in question, and that when forced to make a categorical statement of his doctrine, he ventures no farther than to teach that the present form of the Iliad and Odyssey, the division into the twentyfour books, the insertion of some of the episodes, with numerous scattered lines throughout, are to be ascribed to the rhapsodists and grammarians; that these poems were originally in a shorter and simpler form; and that there is no historical certainty about the person of Homer.* We forbear to enlarge on this interesting topic, as we wish to take an early opportunity of laying before our readers a full account of this curious controversy. We have alluded to it now, in confirmation of our remark, that the Germans are not only prone to push their learned and ingenious speculations to an extreme, whither it is unsafe to follow them, but where they themselves are not sure, to be fully persuaded in their own minds. The case of Aristophanes appears to us another example in point. They found out, that instead of being merely a ribald and a buffoon, he was a poet of true and lofty vein. Thus much was finely illustrated; but then they, or their colleagues in England, would prove that he was not chargeable at all with the vice of indecency as a personal blemish, but that he spoke merely in the

senter from the old opinion, that he conceives the Iliad and Odyssey to contain internal marks of separate authors; and he admits that both have many interpolations. But the admission of both those two suppositions is a very different innovation on our accustomed ideas, from supposing such a work as the Iliad to have been a work of medley production and fortuitous design.' We design, as we have intimated in the text, to take an early opportunity of returning to this subject, and treating it at length. Meantime, if Mr Campbell will carefully weigh the closing remark in the preface to the edition of the Iliad, published by Wolf in 1795, we think that he will admit with us, that the theory of Wolf, in its deliberate statement, does not differ essentially from that of Mr Knight.

* The following is the passage from the preface of Wolf, alluded to in the preceding note.

Nam quoniam iisdem rationibus, quibus reliquæ suspiciones nituntur, certum est, tum in Iliade tum in Odyssea orsam telam et deducta aliquatenus fila esse a VATE, qui princeps ad canendum accesserat; (illuc autem non potuit ipse non trahi serie cycli Troiani et studiis auditorum et proprii ingenii magnitudine) forsitan ne probabiliter quidem demonstrari poterit, a quibus locis potissimum nova subtemina et limbi procedant: at id tamen, ni fallor, poterit. effici, ut liquido appareat, Homero nihil praeter maiorem partem Carminum tribuendum esse, reliqua Homeridis, praescripta lineamenta persequentibus; mox novis et insignibus studiis ordinata scripto corpora esse a Pisistratidis, variisque modis perculta posthac a diaoxevarraïs, in levioribus quibusdam rebus etiam a criticis, a quorum auctoritate hic vulgatus textus pendet.'

tone of the age, nay, that he struggled to rise above it. They found out that, instead of being a malignant flatterer of a base populace, as he is described in some of the quotations at the head of our article, he was the fearless denouncer of abuses both low and high, and ventured to drag upon the stage, in the most opprobrious, contemptuous, and hateful light, Cleon, the leader and idol of this people, to whose malignity he is charged with pandering. But not content with asserting this, it is also maintained that he was positively good tempered, diffident, and amiable in his character, and was actuated by no motives of personal enmity, in his most virulent personal attacks. Lastly, while it is justly maintained that in his clouds, he was actuated by an intrepid and noble purpose of rendering the Sophists odious and ridiculous, and exploding their pernicious principles, it is maintained, as it seems to us in the wildest spirit of paradox, that in making Socrates the hero of this piece, who was not only no sophist himself, but devoted his life to refuting and exposing them-he was actuated by no ill will towards this philosopher, but laboured under a mistake, or wished to correct some foibles which Socrates really possessed, or we know not what-for this is the portion of the theory, which wraps itself in obscurity. As the Wolfian school shrinks from asserting the downright plurality of Homers, so the Aristophanic champions appear to dread the inevitable consequence of their justification of the comedian, viz. the corruption of Socrates. Though Mr Mitchell and the quarterly reviewer play and play about this dark suggestion, as if attracted to it by a horrid fascination, and flutter over it like the bird over the serpent coiled round her nest, our learned and cloquent brother of the Edinburgh more boldly says,

But while Mr Mitchell contends that proofs have been displayed by him," that the character of Socrates is a little more open to remark, than some admirers, in their ignorance, are aware of, and more than some, in their knowledge, are willing to bring to notice," he seems, like the executioner of Marius, so struck with the dignity of his victim, so awed by the splendid powers of Socrates, and the sublimity of some of the doctrines he unfolds, that he has no heart to deal the final blow, or to press his assault so closely as he might have done. We confess that our nerves are much more hardy. We have not that respect for the whole fabric of ancient philosophy,-a fabric within whose dark cells the genius of VIRGIL had so nearly been immured, to waste its radiance New Series, No. 10.

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