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ftitution of the human body, and the character, at least the a cidental character, of the human mind, i. e. its prefent fenfations, impreffions, paffions, and habits: but the particular effects of this connection between physics and morals have not been often circumftantially pointed out, as they are, with more or lefs ac curacy and truth, in the Memoir before us. The Author fhews, by examples taken from the characters and manners of all the nations that compofe our globe, the effects of climate, diet, and the conftitution they form, upon mind, genius, fentiments, and morals. He even reckons education among phyfical caufes, becaufe, according to him, its fecret fprings are fet in motion by them; he, however, acknowledges, that every mind has a fundamental character, bent, nature, or propenfity, which phy fical caufes affect, modify, and influence, but can never entirely destroy; and thus he keeps clear of the bottomlefs pit of materialifm; he even acknowledges, that phyfical caufes are often counteracted by moral ones, and thus explains the many excep tions that prove a fufpenfion of the general influence of climate, diet, and other material agents. His defcription of the influence of cold and warm climates on the northern and fouthern inhabitants of the globe, though not new, is circumftantial, and fometimes ingenious; exhibiting to the reader a curious mixture of fancy, philofophy, and geographical morality.

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MEMOIR I. Concerning the Influence of the Sciences on Poetry, First Part-III. MEMOIR. By M. MERIAN.

It is with particular pleasure that we continue to follow this elegant scholar and philofopher in his poetical journey through Greece. After the days of Homer, he finds a great chafm in the hiftory of Grecian poetry, at the end of which, the Lyric Bards, his admirers, arofe, and finding his heroic verfe too fublime for their vein, ftruck out other numbers, that were more fuitable to the fubjects they treated. Archilochus, Alemanus, Tyrtæus, Stefichorus, Sappho, and Alceus, are mentioned by our Author, as the best known of that clafs, by the fragments of their writings, that have come down to our times; but none of thefe had any pretenfions to science and philofophy: wine, love, and the pleasures of the table, were their chief purfuit,-to celebrate thefe, they ftrung their lyres, and, to judge by their ftrains, they feemed to be as much intoxicated by Venus and Bacchus as they were infpired by the Mufes. Tyrtæus, fays our Academician, was a poor lame fchoolmaster, who was looked upon, at Athens, as a ftupid fellow, was fent in derifion to the Spartans, to command their army against the Messenians, though, in the event, he aftonifhed them by his valour, and the prodigies he performed by his verfes: Archilochus and Alceus were foldiers and runaways: Alcmanus gives himself

out for a great eater, πολυβρώματος, and Bacchus and Venus were the gods of Anacreon. Pindar has left behind him no veftige of his acquaintance with philofophy, but the fimple mention of the Three Tranfmigrations of Pythagoras in his fecond Olympic, which may have been an old tale or tradition, or the expreffion of fome ceremony in the myfteries of Eleufis, which both poets and philofophers have made a part of their domain all his accounts of a future ftate, of the happiness of the juft, and the pains of the wicked in a Palingenefia, are poetical doctrines; he fpeaks of wisdom; but his wifdom was poetry, and his fages were poets;-the graces are his darling goddeffes-and his piety, which was remarkable, was of the poetical kind. M. MERIAN proves all this in a long feries of difcuffions and examples; he defcribes, with all the powers of fine colouring and bold expreffion, the fpirit and genius of this immortal bard: and thefe colours and expreffions are often borrowed from the poet himself.

Dramatic Poetry of the Greeks.

While Pindar (fays our Author) was finging the praises of his gods and heroes, refcuing from oblivion the virtues of the golden age, and raifing immortal monuments of fame to the Olympic victors, the dramatic ftage rifes at Athens, the waggon of Thefpis is changed into a fplendid fcene, adorned with ftatues, colonades, temples, and palaces, and Efchylus comes covered with glory from the plains of Marathon, the battle of Salamis, and the field of Platea, to transport the Athenians with this new entertainment, and to twine around his head the mixed laurels of Mars and Melpomene. Æfchylus appeared in his tragedies, as he had appeared in his battles, always elevated and fublime, always full of bold ideas, daring figures, and exalted images.'Such is the tone, and almost such also are the terms of our Author, who returns to his main object, and obferves, that a genius of this kind, whofe auftere mufe breathes nothing but terror, could receive little or no nourishment from the fubtilties of philofophy, and that it was neither from the academy of Athens, nor from the fchools of the philofophers, nor from abstract reflections on the nature and effence of the drama, that tragedy derived either its origin or its perfection. The defire of transforming a recital into a fcene of action, and the illuftrious models of dramatic action that are exhibited in the Iliad, gave, undoubtedly, the first notion of tragedy, of which the philofopher Polemon called Sophocles the Homer.

Neither the tragic art, nor any of the fine arts are the offfpring of fience, according to M. Merian: they are the fruits of paffion and genius. Science, after they come forth from the bofom of nature, may examine and criticize them, reduce them to method, and exalt them into theories, but it can never

create

create them. The different branches of poetry were created by poets the mafter-pieces of the tragic fcene exifted before rules were thought on; and they produced the art, instead of being produced by it. Our Author criticizes Stanley for looking upon fchylus as a follower of Pythagoras, and for finding his tragedies impregnated with the philofophy of that fect; and not without reafon.

M. Merian acknowledges, and indeed cannot deny that Euripides had ftudied philofophy with great fuccefs; but he denies, that his tragic productions gained by this circumftance; for, fays he, the moral maxims and political difcuffions that difcover in the tragedies of Euripides, the difciple of Anaxagoras and Socrates, give them a certain fcholaftic air; and, notwithstanding the national and local merit they might have at Athens, they are, after all, but heterogeneous beauties, which diminish the effect of the piece, and make the fcene languish. This defect, continues our Academician, was accompanied, indeed, with great and excellent qualities: Euripides fpeaks, with feeling and propriety, the language of the paffions, particularly the foft and tender ones: his verfification is admirable and full of harmony his ftyle is the quinteffence of attic elegance; but thefe excellencies make his eflential defect more ftriking; and this defect renders him much inferior to Sophocles, the firft, in merit of the Greek, and perhaps of all other tragic poets.'Our Academician enters into a long account of the philofophy of Euripides, who fcattered throughout his pieces certain lines of the phyfics and cofmology of Anaxagoras, as well as of the morals of Socrates.

The Grecian Comedy does not greatly engage our Academician; because it is not there that fcience is to be expected fo much as in tragedy, whofe afpect is folemn and ferious. It was admitted, indeed, into the comedies of Ariftophanes, becaufe this Cynical and licentious mocker could not facrifice cofmology, phyfics, geometry, and philofophy, in general, to the laughter and amulement of the populace, without having fome knowledge of thefe fciences. But this abominable taste, this odious abufe of fatire, did not laft long: even Ariftophanes himfelf furvived it, and was obliged to change his tone. The comic poets, indeed, after him directed often their pleafantry against the philofophers, but not with thofe difgufting perfonalities that difgrace the productions of Ariftophanes. The philofophers, in their turn, treated the poets with no fmall degree of feverity; fo that fcience and poetry feem to have been always by the ears. Plato, 'tis true, compofed dithyrambics and hymns in his early youth; but he foon took leave of the mufes, and looked with contempt upon poetry as a frivolous and dangerous art, the enemy of morals, veracity, and fcience. Arif

totle

totle diftinguished himself by fome poetical productions; but in thefe the poetical vein keeps its diftance from the philofophical fpirit, and fcience has no part either in the fubject or in the ftyle of his poems. Zeno looked upon poetry as incompatible with the study of the fciences, and even Epicurus reprefented it to his difciples as a childish amufement, which they would do well to avoid with the utmost care; from all which our Author concludes that, generally fpeaking, there was no great union betwen the Grecian philofophers and poets, and that fcience had very little influence upon poetry, and could have no influence on it, but what was pernicious. But if it is difficult, adds he, to attribute to fcience the honour of the progress of poetry in Greece, it would be ftill more fo to account, on this hypothefis, for the high degree of perfection to which poetry rofe in the periods we have hitherto been confidering, period's in which the fciences were in a state of infancy. The lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks, fays our Academician, have always been looked upon as models, and those of the mo derns who have fhone moft in this enchanting art, revere the ancients as their guides; while ancient fcience is funk in oblivion, and philofophers in after-times were obliged to pull down entirely the edifice, and to erect another on its ruins. This is true with refpect to natural philofophy, but we maintain it false with respect to that nobler branch of philofophical science, the mafter-fcience of fentiments, life and manners.

Óf Grecian Poetry under Alexander and the Ptolemies.

Our Academician finds his ideas confirmed by a literary phanomenon, that was vifible under this period, viz. that Grecian poetry fuffered an eclipfe, at the very time that philofophy was rifing to a high degree of luftre, and forming fects and fchools that were to tranfmit its progrefs to future ages. Poetry made but a forry figure under the reign of Alexander: the writers of the new comedy belong to the times of his fucceffors; for the first piece of Menander was not acted before the 3d or 4th year of the 114th Olympiad. Under his fucceflors, poetry revived, particularly in Egypt; which under the three firft Ptolemies became a fecond Athens:-but our Academician (who seems to have fworn the bittereft enmity to the alliance between poetry and science) tells us that the famous poetical Pleiad of that time, were much inferior to the luminaries that arofe upon Greece in the days of its freedom; and had, moreover, their luftre tarnished by the exhalations (we believe our Author says smoke) of erudition and fcience. Euclid taught his elements at Alexandria: this city fwarmed with natural philofophers, and, what was still worfe for poetry, with rhetoricians, critics, and grammarians, who were feriously occupied in counting fyllables, meafuring verses, and weighing phrafes. Callimachus was one of thefe formalifts

that

that clipped the wings of genius, and his own productions feem to have gone through that operation. He, indeed, excludedfrom the clafs of poets all thofe whom Apollo did not infpire, and pronounced the philofophers incapable (not excepting even Plato) of poetical compofition, and of judging concerning it; but notwithstanding this, his poems difcover the constraint of a courtier and the formality of a grammarian. The fame obfervation is applicable to Apollonius, improperly called the Rhodian, whofe poem, on the Argonautic expedition, is entertaining and agreeable, and fuftains, throughout, its middle courfe between the fublime and the bathos. The moft eminent bard of the Pleiad, and the moft worthy of being ranked among thofe of the Golden Age of poetry, was the amiable thepherd of Syracufe, whofe Doric lay refounds with fuch melody in the Sicilian vales, and even under the gilded roof of Ptolemy, his benefactor, and the friend of the Mufes. He (continues our Academician) was the child of the Graces; and his genius, tafte, and fubjects remove him far from all pretenfions to philofophy. It would be difficult ever to find him guilty of fcience, or of any refpect for thofe that profefs it."

Such is the manner in which our ingenious Academician fpeaks of Theocritus, to whom he joins Bion and Mofchus, his contemporaries, or immediate fucceffors, whofe paftoral ftrains are full of amenity and elegance, and breathe a fpirit of gallantry, which favours fomewhat of the modern tafte, but are difengaged from every thing that looks like fcience and philofophy.

The three laft bards of the Pleiad are Aratus, Nicander, and Lycophron; and our Author mentions them only to fhew the antipathy that there is between the language of poetry and the fubjects they treated. The firft of thefe he confiders as a fubtile pedant and a plagiary, the fecond as a therapeutic bard, who verfified for the apothecaries, a grinder of antidotes; who fung of fcorpions, toads, and fpiders; and the third, as a kind of a fool, who places all his glory in being obfcure and unintelligible; and whofe commentator Tzetzes, fuppofes that many of his verses were compofed when he came home drunk from the table of Ptolemy.-Lycophron was the inventor of anagrams; he made feveral for the king and the queen, and by diflocating the name of Arfinoe he was lucky enough to find in it the Violet of Juno; a rare and delightful difcovery, no doubt, for the Grecian and African beauties at the court of Ptolemy. Our Academician dates from this period alfo the invention of poems in the forms of eggs, wings, hatchets, and altars ;-a wretched, trifling, and Jack-a-dandy method that portended, or rather accompanied, and fucceeded, the decline of true taste, and the extinction of poetical genius. It is our Author's opinion, that L1 APP. Rev. Vol, lxi.

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