considered excellent are allowed by his countrymen to have lost much of the spirit of the great originals.

It cannot be doubted that he possessed to an astonishing fulness the talent so little known in the ancient world, and which has exalted our Shakspeare in lofty preeminence above the rest of mankind, of portraying nature in every condition of human life. We have heard of, and frequently read many terse and witty compliments to the genius of Shakspeare, on account of his intimacy with nature; but we know of none superior to that paid to Menander by the great Byzantian grammarian Aristophanes, who, on reading his comedies exclaimed in an ecstasy, "O Menander! O Nature! which of you have copied the works of the other?" Ovid held him in no less admiration; and Plutarch has been lavish in his praise: the old rhetoricians recommend his works as the true and perfect patterns of every thing beautiful and graceful in public speaking. Quintilian advises an orator to seek in Menander for copiousness of invention, for elegance of expression, and all that universal genius which is able to accommodate itself to persons, things, and affections: but that which appears to us more decisive than any other eulogy bestowed upon him, is the opinion of Cæsar, who, praising his favourite Terence, calls him a half-Menander, thereby leaving upon record his testimony that Menander had twice the merit of the greatest comic poet of Rome.

Such was the poet from whom the mob of Athens snatched the laurel to bestow it upon a mean and execrable scribbler, and to one hundred of whose comedies the prize was denied, while only eight of them were rewarded with it.

From the death of Menander which happened in his fifty-second year, not a dramatic poet arose, nor a circumstance occurred relating to the art in Greece, worthy of commemoration: here, therefore, history drops the dramatic poetry of that country, till in a future page the merits of the ancient and modern drama come to be viewed in comparison with each other, and proceeds to commemorate some of the Grecian actors.

"Poetry," says a celebrated French writer, "has almost always been prior to every other kind of learning, which is undoubtedly owing to its being the produce of sentiment and fancy, two faculties of the mind always employed before reason. Sensible minds are led by a kind of instinct to sing their pleasures, their happiness, the gods whom they adore, the heroes they admire, and the events they wish to have engraven on their memories; accordingly poetry has been cultivated in all savage nations. The warmth of the passions has been of great use in promoting this delightful art." It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Athenians, who, to use the words of the same writer, possessed a lively imagination, great fertility of genius, a rich harmonious language, and eminent abilities excited by the most ardent emulation, should be extravagantly fond of poetry, and no less partial to those who displayed a vigorous spirit of emulation in that art, and an ambition to excel in any of the employments that served to illustrate or give it effect. For these reasons they systematically honoured not only dramatic poets but actors.

How much the important concerns of mankind are swayed and pre-influenced by manners and habits is strongly illustrated in the discrepance which maintained between the taste, the amusements, and opinions of the lively Athenians, and those of the austere and exact people of Sparta, though they were in fact one people. In their amusements, and partly in their taste for literature, they differed essentially. The Athenians loved poetry and music; while the Spartans, whose schemes were founded on utility alone, rather rejected them as superfluous. Poets and musicians, however, who confined themselves to sober and simple subjects, and to grave and dignified expression, were not without admirers and supporters in the latter: and when the Spartans destroyed and sacked the city of Thebes, they spared the house that had been inhabited by Pindar, in respect to that great poet's memory. Terpander too, a lyric poet and musician is related by Ælian to have appeased a tumult at Sparta by the sweetness of his notes and the fire of his poetry. They would not, however, endure either poetry or music which did not breathe exalted sentiment, and produce a beneficial impression on the mind.

On the subject of dramatic poetry and its adjuncts, theatres and actors, the Spartans differed as essentially from the Athenians, as the puritans, methodists, quakers, and rigid presbyterians differ from the amateurs of the present day. During a reign of thirty-six years, Agesilaus who held the drama in contempt, discouraged and kept the actors in depression. This extreme austerity prevailed through all ranks of the rigid Lacedemonian people, who indeed carried it to a length equally absurd and cruel; for they punished with great severity a famous poet and musician, for adding three strings to the harp; grounding their sentence upon a principle universally assented to among them, that the softness of musical sounds produced effeminacy among the people. Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is in the rigid application and extreme extension of it the fault lies. Music has certainly a powerful influence on the passions, and produces happy effects upon the human heart and mind when cultivated moderately: but when it becomes the general prevailing passion of a nation, or, as it were, gets dominion over them, it unquestionably produces not effeminacy merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. Whether the unexampled depravation of the modern Italians has been caused by their passionate devotion to music, or their passionate devotion to music by their monstrous depravity shall not be discussed in this place. But the closeness of the connexion between the two things, no matter which may be the cause or which the effect, will serve as an illustration of the subject.

It is related that once, when Callipedes a celebrated tragedian, offered his homage to Agesilaus, and for some time received no notice in return, he said to the king, "Do you not know me, sir?" To which the king replied, "You are Callipedes, the actor," and turned from him with contempt. This harshness and severity extended even to the slaves of the Spartans, some of whom, being taken prisoners of war by the Thebans, and ordered to sing the odes of Terpander for their captors, peremptorily refused to comply, because it was forbidden them by their old masters.

In all Greece, however, Sparta stands a solitary instance of this austerity; for the drama, poetry, and music were enthusiastically cultivated in Athens, and even in every country into which the Grecians penetrated. Players became in many instances the confidential friends, counsellors, and ministers of kings themselves; and Alexander the Great sent Thessalus, an actor, as an ambassador to Pexodorus, the Persian governor of Caria, to forbid a marriage intended by the governor between his daughter and Aridœus, an illegitimate son of the late king Philip. The proofs which that mighty conqueror has left on record of his partiality to celebrated professors of the histrionic art, are no less extraordinary than numerous, and in some instances, do no great credit to his judgment. Every general in his camp had along with him his poets, musicians, and declaimers. One time Alexander's favourite, Hephestion, accommodated his musician named Evius, with the quarters which belonged of right to Eumenes, the most worthy and renowned of all the Grecian generals. Eumenes boldly remonstrated, and told Alexander that he plainly saw the best way to