like a lamp in a sepulchre-a philosophy in physics so wildly vissionary, so indolently satisfied with unexperimental error,—in ethics so perplexed, so fluctuating, so unsatisfactory, which can make us tremble to approach its shrine with any thing short of the incense of adulation, or regret to see the hollowness and contradictions of the principles upon which it proceeded exposed, even in the speculations of him, who went so much further in his advances toward truth than any other of his countrymen.'-Edinburgh Review for November 1820.

We think there is however a softening of tone even in this passage; and without calling in question the firmness of our brother's nerves, we fancy we see them shaking a little, as he winds up with going so much further in his advances toward truth, than any other of his countrymen.' We do not mean to embarrass our discussion now with the question of the morals of Socrates. His purity is not the point now under our consideration. We speak of the paradoxical nature of that hypothesis, which maintains that Aristophanes did not mean to assail his purity; and we show its vagueness and the irresolution of its friends, by pointing out how they acquit Aristophanes, at one moment, of the design of attacking the philosopher, and the next, attempt darkly or boldly to intimate, tha he was the fair object of the attack. This shows some defect in the theory; at present we choose to believe that this defect is, that it sacrifices Socrates to Aristophanes. We are not yet prepared to awaken from the vision of veneration, in which we have so long indulged, and that for the sake of turning one, who had borne so general a reputation as a cruel and indecent libeller, into an angel of light, a champion of truth, and a preacher of righteousness: we are not yet ready to immolate the character of the heathen saint, for the sake of establishing the purity of the author of the Lysistrata, or making it appear that he, who wrote the Frogs, was actuated by no per

sonal hostilities.

But we propose to confine our remarks, on the present occasion, as far as we can, to the character and merits of Aristophanes, as maintained by the German scholars, and beyond them, and with singular unanimity and concert by the English. In fact, we have been tempted to these remarks, in no small. degree, from the powerful effect, which may fairly be anticipated on the public taste, by this remarkable alliance. In general, the German literati find but little favor with their English

brethren; and we have commonly trusted to the latter to furnish something of a counterpoise to the speculative extravagance of the Germans, and thus make it easier for the philosophical student to preserve an impartial medium between them. But this controversy seems to have taken a turn calculated to bewilder those, who relied upon the insular critics as likely to preserve the balance of philology, against the continental. Mr Mitchell misses no opportunity of complimenting the latter; and he engrafts his whole preliminary discourse on a proposition of the Messrs Schlegel. Of Wieland, though he commends his taste in one place at the expense of his mad inconsistencies on matters of opinion,' he observes in another, that his extensive erudition and extreme impartiality make him a most invaluable assistant' to the translator of Aristophanes. Göthe, who was so piteously belabored in a review of his life in the Edinburgh, is by Mr Mitchell placed above Aristophanes, (and what higher praise could Mr M. award) even in the comic vein, and allowed to be beyond comparison with him in the higher tones of poetry: while he speaks of A. W. Schlegel, the author of the lectures on dramatic art, as an excellent writer, as warm in his feelings as he is correct and universal in his literature.' Our brethren of the Edinburgh Review express an admiration of the Messrs Schlegel equally unlimited, and they pronounce the field of the controversy holy ground,' for having been trodden by them. We are a little at a loss therefore, why they, being English writers, and speaking of German critics, should designate them by the French name of Monsieur, which will sound as oddly in the ears of those patriotic Germans, when they shall meet with the widely circulating pages of the Edinburgh Review, as it would to Mr Mitchell to hear himself called mein herr in a French, or Don Thomas in a German journal. We are much pleased, at any rate, with the high testimonies to the German scholarship, which the discussions of this topic have elicited, and would gladly regard it as an earnest of a more general acquaintance on the part of our transatlantic brethren, with the too much neglected literature of the most studious and speculative people of the modern world.

In treating the question of the character and merits of Aristophanes, as they have of late been so enthusiastically espoused, we shall follow the example of Mr Mitchell and his English reviewers. As these gentlemen have professed but to

illustrate and assert the theory of the Messrs Schlegel, we shall think we have done good justice to the opposite doctrine, if we shall succeed in laying before our readers the strength of the argument as contained in an admirable Essay of Wieland, on the question, whether, and how far, Aristophanes is guilty or not of the charge of having treated Socrates with personal injustice in the Clouds.* It has excited some surprise in us, considering the opposite nature of the views of Wieland and Mr Mitchell, that the latter should content himself with dismissing the 6 of Wieland in these terms: Wieland has essay written an essay of considerable length on the subject of the differences between Socrates and Aristophanes. As his view of the subject is entirely different from the one here taken up, his line of argument is of course as different.'t This, we fear, will inadequately convey to the reader the information, that the view of Wieland is not merely different from that of Mr Mitchell, but opposite; and his line of argument' not simply different, but contradictory.

We cannot deny our readers the gratification of seeing, in the strong language of Wieland, the precise nature of the question:

'Socrates, a name, with which we are accustomed to associate the idea of whatever is most precious and venerable in man; Socrates, of whom, even in his own day, the saying prevailed, that he was declared by the oracle at Delphi to be the wisest of men, who has been recognized as such by all succeeding ages, and to whom (if without any exaggeration we confine ourselves to the simple portraiture of his character, which two of his worthiest pupils have left us,) no one certainly, either before or after, can be preferred, as wiser or better; this Socrates, in the fortysixth year of his age, when every man in Athens must have known his real character, brought upon the public stage by the acknowledged prince of the Greek comedy, and held up as the most contemptible philosophical quack, the most ridiculous pedant, and the most shameless imposter, betrayer of the young, and foe of the national religion, as a man whose only wisdom consisted in empty subtleties, whims, plays upon words, and sophistical catches, is in truth a phenomenon, of the reality of which no historical testimony

* The title of the essay is Versuch ueber die Frage; ob und wie fern Aristofanes gegen den Vorwurf den Sokrates in den Wolken persönlich misshandelt zu haben, gerechtfertigt, oder entschuldigt werden könne.' It is in the third volume of the Attisches Museum.

+ Preliminary Discourse, p. cxx.

could have convinced us, had not the Clouds been one of the eleven comedies out of the fifty of Aristophanes, which are all that the muse of the Greek comedy has spared us from the general wreck of this department of literature. The question naturally arises on so singular a fact, a question which it has cost the learned, from the days of Plutarch and Ælian, and especially the enthusiastic admirers of Aristophanes, much pains to solve, how was it possible that a man, like Socrates, should be so treated by a man like Aristophanes! How could the sage, to be whose disciples Xenophon and Plato were proud, be so treated by a poet, in whose soul this same Plato found the most lasting temple of the graces! How could so noble and so good a man be so wholly misunderstood, so shamefully and cruelly injured by a contemporary and fellow citizen, whose works, to be sure, are filled with the monuments of his hostility against the bad, but who, with the exception of Socrates and Euripides, did injustice to no single person of acknowledged merit!"

The question is here strongly but fairly stated, and if we mistake not, its very enunciation argues the fallacy of the course pursued by the champions of Aristophanes, in first attempting to soften the facts, and to shew that the substantial features of the Aristophanic Socrates may be found in the Socrates of Plato and Xenophon; and secondly, that Socrates really was the suspicious and ambiguous character, which Aristophanes would make him. It would, we think, have been wiser to accept thankfully the statement of Wieland; to rejoice that the phenomenon admitted of being made so hard of solution. The attempt to unite two theories so totally opposed, to say, on the one hand, that the Clouds is no calumny, for it was deserved by Socrates; and, on the other, that it is no calumny, because it is but another version of what the professed panegyrists and admiring scholars of Socrates assert, is to give the whole discussion an air so paradoxical and strange, that the honest inquirer, who engages in it on the ordinary principles of criticism, is perplexed and baffled.

It would be a happy thing, could we see the way clear to maintain with the worthy philosopher Panatius, that the Socrates mentioned by Aristophanes is another individual from him, whom we venerate in Xenophon and Plato. Since, however, we know nothing of the grounds, on which Panætius made this assertion, nor of the fact itself that he does make it, except from the passing remark of the scholiast, (Frogs, 15391547,) it is not safe to build upon it. We would only observe

that it seems to us one confirmation of the purity of the Platonic Socrates, that so respectable a writer as Panætius, living within three centuries of his time, should have resorted to so violent an hypothesis, as that the Aristophanic and Platonic Socrates were historically different individuals, rather than admit that the true Socrates could have suffered, or Aristophanes have perpetrated such outrage.

Wieland is inclined to consider this idea of Panæætius as having furnished the first hint to the theory, which has been proposed in modern times, and to which we have alluded, that it was not Socrates, personally, whom Aristophanes assailed, but the sophists of Athens. After all that has been said of this class of persons in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and in an article in defence of Socrates in the New Monthly Magazine for the last year, we think it superfluous to detain our readers with any discussion of their character. We are not prepared, at present, to controvert the common opinions formed of it, and they do not need more ample illustration. But in these days, when a reputation, like that of Socrates, is called in odious question, and another, like that of Aristophanes, placed in a light the most imposing and respectable, we too may be pardoned for hinting, that we believe the picture of the sophists drawn by the writers of the Socratic school in antiquity, and by their admirers in modern times, is highly overcharged. Of the controversy between the sophists and philosophers we know nothing, but what the latter have told us. And we do not fear to appeal from their accounts to the common principles of human nature. These principles demand of us, first, not to place implicit reliance on what the members of hostile sects say of each other in any controversy; and secondly, not too readily to admit, what these philosophers and the learned critics in modern days would have us believe, that, in an age like that of Pericles, when the eyes of men were as wide open as they are now, a class of individuals, devoted to the intellectual career, professing all the liberal arts, respected in the politest cities of Greece, advanced in many of them to important public trusts, and charged in most of them with the education of the children of that rank in society best qualified to estimate, and best able to pay for a good education, that a class of individuals thus honored, in such an age, should be the unrighteous throng pretended. We will not pursue this suggestion now, having