ness, and dissipated amongst minor features.

And yet after all they imperceptibly relapse into the old well-known characters. It is better to lay on the character at once with a certain breadth of colouring, and leave the actor free scope for play, that according to the exigences of the composition in each instance he may define the character more exactly, and make it more individual. Perhaps also in this point of view the use of masks may be excused, which like all the rest in the management of the Greek theatre, (for instance the playing under the open sky,) though originally calculated for other species of the drama, were still retained, and might well seem a greater inconvenience in New Comedy, than in Old and in Tragedy. But certainly it was incongruous with the spirit of this kind of drama, that while the representation approached real nature with a more illusive resemblance, the masks deviated more widely from nature than in Old Comedy, being drawn with overcharged features and in the style of caricature. Surprising as this is, it is too expressly and formally testified to admit of a doubt1. As it was forbidden to bring portraits of real persons on the stage, they were in perpetual alarm, after the loss of their freedom, lest accident should betray them into some resemblance, especially to one of their Macedonian governors, and they adopted this way of evading the danger. this exaggeration was scarcely without its meaning. Thus we find it stated, that an uneven profile with one eyebrow raised and the other depressed denoted a quarrelsome and pragmatical temper2, as we may in fact observe that persons who often look at any thing with an anxious exactness get accustomed to distortions of this kind.

But

The masks in New Comedy among other advantages have this, that as the character is unavoidably repeated, they give the spectator to understand at first sight what he has to expect. I have witnessed at Weimar a representation of Terence's Adelphi, quite in the antique costume, which, under Goethe's superintendence, furnished us with a truly Attic

1. See Platonius, in Aristoph. ed. Küster. p. xi.

2. See Julius Pollux in his section on comic masks. Compare Platonius as above, and Quinctil. XI. 3. The reader will recollect the strange discovery, which Voltaire flattered himself he had made, as mentioned above in the Third Lecture. (Note 2. p. 324.)

evening. The actors used partial masks cleverly fitted to the real face; I did not find, notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, that they occasioned any loss of vivacity of expression. The mask was especially favourable to the jokes of the roguish slave: his grotesque physiognomy, as well as his garb, stamped him at once as a man of a peculiar species, as in fact the slaves were, partly even by extraction, and therefore his speech and gestures might be allowed to differ from those of the

others.

From the limited sphere of civil and domestic life, from the simple theme of the assigned characters, the inventive genius of the Greek comedians managed to educe an inexhaustible multiplicity of variations; and yet, which is very praiseworthy, they remained true to the national costume, even in those particulars on which they grounded the artificial complication and unravelment of their plots.

The circumstances, of which they availed themselves for this purpose, were pretty much as follows. Greece consisted of a number of small separate states, lying round about upon coasts and islands. Navigation was frequent, piracy not uncommon, and one of its objects was a supply of men and women for the slave-trade. Thus freeborn children might be kidnapped, or, in virtue of the rights allowed to parents, they might be exposed, and being unexpectedly preserved, might be subsequently restored to their families. All this forms a groundwork in the Greek comedies for the recognition between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and the like; a means of unravelling the plot, which the comedians borrowed of their tragic brethren. The complicated intrigue is played in the scene of the present: but the strange and seemingly improbable incident, on which its plan is grounded, is thrown back into the distance of place and time, and thus the comedy, though formed out of every-day life, has often a kind of marvellous romantic background.

The Greek comedians were acquainted with Comedy in its whole extent, and wrought with equal diligence upon all its

3. These also were not unusual among the ancients, as is proved by a variety of comic masks, which instead of the mouth have a much wider and circular opening, through which the mouth and adjacent features were displayed, the living distortions of which contrasted with the fixed distortions of the rest of the countenance, no doubt, had a very ludicrous effect.

FF

varieties, the play of intrigue, of fine and of exaggerated character, even including the serious drama. They had moreover a very charming species of play, of which no specimen is extant. We learn from the titles of the plays and other indications, that they sometimes introduced historical personages, for instance, the poetess Sappho, with Anacreon's and Alcæus's passion for her, and hers for Phaon; the story of her leap from the Leucadian rock perhaps took its origin solely from the invention of the comedians. In respect of their subject-matter, such comedies would approach the style of the romantic drama, and the mixture of beautiful passion with the reposeful grace of the usual comic manner must doubtless have been very attractive.

In what has been said, I think I have given a true picture of the Greek New Comedy: I have not disguised its defects and limitations. The ancient Tragedy, and the Old Comedy are inimitable, unattainable, unique in the whole domain of art. But in New Comedy we certainly might attempt to compete with the Greeks, nay even to surpass them. When once we descend from the Olympus of pure poetry

to the common earth, when once we blend with the ideal inventions of fancy the prose of a definite reality, then it is no longer the genius alone and the poetic faculty that determines the success of the productions, but the more or less favourable aspect of circumstances. The images of the gods in the Grecian sculpture exist as perfect types for all times. The sublime employment of refining the human form into the perfection of that ideal model was undertaken once for all by the imagination; the most it can now do, even with a like degree of genius, is only to repeat the attempt. But in respect of personal, individual resemblance, the modern artist vies with the ancient; this is no purely artistic creation; observation must here come to the task, and the artist with all his science, solidity, and gracefulness of execution, is tied down to the reality which he actually has before his eyes.

In the excellent portrait-statues of two of the most famous comedians, Menander and Posidippus (in the Vatican), the physiognomy of the Greek New Comedy seems to me to be almost visibly and personally expressed. They are seated in arm-chairs, clad with extreme simplicity, and holding a roll in

their hand; with that ease and careless selfpossession which always mark the conscious superiority of the Master; in that maturity of years which befits the calm impartial observation that Comedy requires, but sound and active and free from all symptoms of decay; one sees in them that hale and pithy vigour of frame, which bears witness to an equally vigorous constitution of mind and temper; no lofty enthusiasm, but no silliness or extravagance; on the contrary, a sage earnestness dwells on the brow, wrinkled not with care but with the exercise of thought, while in the searching eye, and the mouth ready for a smile, there is a light irony which cannot be mistaken.

EIGHTH LECTURE.

Roman Theatre. Native varieties. Atellane Fables, Mimes, Comœdia Togata. Greek Tragedy transplanted to Rome. Tragedians of the more ancient epoch, and of the Augustan age. Idea of a kind of Tragedy peculiarly Roman, but which never was realized. Why the Romans were never particularly happy in Tragic Art. Seneca.

IN treating of the Dramatic Literature of the Romans, whose Theatre is every way immediately attached to that of the Greeks, we have only to remark, properly speaking, one vast chasm, partly arising from the want of proper creative genius in this department, partly from the loss of almost all their written performances, with the exception only of a few fragments. The only extant works of the good classical age are those of Plautus and Terence, of whom I have already spoken as imitators of the Greeks.

Poetry in general had no native growth in Rome. It was not till those later times, in which the original Rome, by aping foreign manners, was drawing nigh to her dissolution, that poetry came to be artificially cultivated among the other devices of luxurious living. In the Latin we have an instance of a language modelled into poetical expression, altogether after foreign forms of grammar and metre. This approximation to the Greek was at first effected with much violence: the Græcism extended even to rude interpolation of foreign words and phrases. Gradually the poetic style was softened of its former harshness we may perceive in Catullus the last vestiges, which however are not without a certain rugged charm. The language rejected those syntactical constructions, and especially the compounds, which were too much at variance with its own interior structure, and could not be lastingly agreeable to Roman ears; and at last the poets of the Augustan age succeeded in effecting the happiest possible incorporation between the native and the borrowed elements. But scarcely was the desired equipoise