and aimed at a perfect simplicity in our observations, that the complete sincerity of our own conviction might be made as manifest as possible. Aristophanes will of course continue to be underrated by all who choose to submit ancient subjects to the test of modern opinions: who cannot perceive any excellence in dramas that are composed upon rules entirely different from the only principles they can understand: or who are generously satisfied to draw decided inferences from what floats upon the surface, without the pains or perhaps without the power of diving into those depths which so often hide the gems of 'purest ray.' Justice to Mr Mitchell makes it now high time for us to hasten to the consideration of his work.

Shenstone or some one who was as fond, as that very inconsiderable author, of turning commonplaces-has remarked, that every original writer wonders no one ever thought of the best possible subject before,-every translator-of the best possible original.'-Though Aristophanes has undeniably been thought of before,-and by sundry aspirants,-we still think that, in one respect at least, Mr Mitchell has hit upon the best possible original, '-inasmuch as no translation has hitherto appeared by any means satisfactory. It has seemed as if his spirit could not be transfused, without losing all its raciness and flavour, into any other language than his native tongue that we might almost write Dante's terrible inscription for the gates of hell upon his title-page,-and warn the most resolute interpreter to expect nothing for his portion but despair.-In Latin we have Bergler's translation of the Frogs, which is much too timorously literal, to afford any satisfaction to the reader of taste, or any illustration of obscure and doubtful passages to the scholar;-Plutus, the Clouds, the Frogs, the Kniglus, and the Acharnians, by Nicodemus Frischlin, are so intolerably full of the grossest blunders that we cannot conceive why Kuster should have printed this traduction in his otherwise excellent edition, except as a continual excuse for his own comments ;-and the Wasps, Peace, and Lysistrate, are rendered by Septimus Florus into such a strain of crabbed phraseology and obsolete diction, as makes his explanation far more difficult to comprehend than the original.France has given us the Theatre of Aristophanes,' by Poinsinet de Sivry, written partly in prose and partly in verse,-a work of no conspicuous merit; the Birds by Boivin the younger; and Plutus and the Clouds from the pen of Madame Dacier, —whose 200 perusals of the latter play have not saved her from falling into many strange mistakes. Wieland, the German translator of the Clouds, has the advantage of writing in a language, that alone of modern tongues may compete with the

rich melody and tuneful inflections of the Greek;-but notwithstanding his extensive erudition and great impartiality, which Mr Mitchell gratefully acknowledges,—we cannot quote either that translation,-nor his Demagogues,-as more than useful aids to a person engaged in a similar task.-The literature of England has not been enriched by any complete version of this Poet, and the attempts that have been made, from time to time, to effect one, are not such as to make us regret that the labour has been reserved for the hands into which it has fallen at last. White's translation of the Clouds and Plutus we have never seen; but that of Theobald is taken, not from Aristophanes, whom he could not understand, but from the French of Madame Dacier, which he has servilely imitated. The Clouds of Cumberland is a well-written, high-sounding poem,-but it is not the Νεφέλαι. He has not caught the tone, nor expressed the manner of the Athenian bard. He has made it too stiff, too pompous. It is Aristophanes imprisoned in brocade, and mounted upon stilts into the bargain. The Frogs by Dunster has not only this fault, but is exceedingly dull and vapid besides; which cannot be affirmed with any truth of Cumberland's production. We believe we have enumerated all the versions that have been essayed in our own language, except it be the very stupid translation in prose of Plutus that disgraces the memories of Fielding and William Young; and a most impudent version of the Birds,-every second word an error,-published by an anonymous Member of one of the Universities, in what he calls a comico-prosaic style, with this modest motio from Juvenal,

Haud facilè emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat

Res angusta domi :—

which, as it has no conceivable reference to Aristophanes, must be presumed to apply to the translator himself. Knowledge of Greek, or an ability for translation, are not to be reckoned a mong his virtues, whatever they may be.-It is no great compliment to Mr Mitchell, after this, to say that his version, as far as the present volume carries it, is incomparably the best that has been given to the public. But when we add that we consider him, judging from his publication, to be a writer fully and admirably qualified to accomplish the difficult task he has undertaken, and to present the literary world in this country with a translation of Aristophanes completely adequate to the merits of the great Original,-we esteem this as praise so exceedingly high, that it shall make us the less tender of expressing our dissatisfaction wherever he has fallen short-we will not say of our expectations-but of our wishes and his own

powers. The English translators hitherto have never proceeded beyond one play, or two at the utmost:-like the chatter-boxes' of the Ranæ, they have done no more than approach the Muse, or have retired exhausted by a single embrace. Mr Mitchell seems made of stouter stuff,--and we doubt not will maintain his promise of greater perseverance. We have yet only the foot of Hercules,-but if he will correct some parts of his design, and-under favour-attend to a few hints we shall feel it our office to administer, we believe that the remainder of his work will even improve upon the sample.The volume now put forth is made up of two distinct parts:versions of the Acharnians and the Knights,--which have never yet been rendered into English,-and a most interesting Preliminary Discourse, to which we shall beg leave first to call the attention of our readers.

With a few inaccuracies and inconsistencies of reasoning,-of which we have already pointed out some specimens ;-without any attempt to support his arguments by the aid of verbal criticism,-for indeed Mr Mitchell is too good a soldier in the cause of literature to make himself a mere pioneer, and has too just a notion of his own peculiar powers to devote himself to what― except in the hands of a Porson or an Elmsley-is worse than trifling;-and with here and there a little needless episodic deviation from the straight path of his design, for the sake of displaying stores of information that are extremely copious ;—we consider this Preliminary Discourse to be one of the most amusing, and at the same time valuable treatises, we ever remember to have perused. It is amusing-as the work of a man who has thought much, and read perhaps still more; and whose command of a style at once so rich, so lively, and so dramatic, would of itself give interest to a much duller subject than he has chosen to discuss. It is valuable-not only as it is always an important matter that Truth should be clearly ascertained and placed in as conspicuous a light as possible, but as it draws the curtain from a department of knowledge that has heretofore lain as a sort of terra incognita,-opens a new world upon the eyes of curious speculation, and guides the student to a greater familiarity than has usually been attained with topics very interesting in themselves, and essential towards a thorough comprehension of the Grecian classics. Seizing with particular felicity upon ground that has been strangely left unoccupied by preceding writers, he makes it a vehicle for conveying to his readers a great variety of collateral information on almost every poin

тa sœμvλuaτα.-Vide Ranas. v. 92.

connected with the ancient comic drama,-and though we cannot always coincide with his sentiments incidentally expressed, we cordially assent to the main object of his reasoning, and owe him all gratitude for the pains he seems to have bestowed upon his task, and the learning he has adduced in support of opinions with the general tenor of which we so heartily agree.

*

Cumberland-while he defended Aristophanes from the absurd charge of collusion with Anytus and Melitus in their prosecution of Socrates-a charge directly confuted by the stubborn argument of dates, if indeed the contemptuous language of the Apologia did not evince it to be one that it is ridiculous to advance with any appearance of seriousness,—did not venture to justify the poet's motives for his celebrated attack upon that philosopher, but, barely claiming for them the character of being natural, gave up the point of their liberality and fairness.-The Messrs Schlegels-while they place the prince of Ancient Comedy on the lofty eminence he deserves to occupy as a poet and a patriot-can find no excuse for his representing in so odious colours the most wise and the most vir'tuous of all his fellow-citizens,' the title they choose to apply to Socrates, but an almost inconceivable perplexity of intellect, by which they say he mingled and confounded in his own mind, even without wishing it, this inestimable sage with his 'enemies the Sophists, whose schools he frequented in his maturer years, solely with the view of making himself master of that which he intended to refute and overthrow.'

Mr Mitchell makes a bolder stand for Aristophanes; and while he grapples so closely with his subject, and follows it up so minutely through all its bearings and windings, that no one can call his defence a piece of simple declamation or of partial sophistry, he contrives, partly by his ingenuity, partly by his forcible statements, but still more by his candour, and even tenderness towards the great Philosopher, so to turn the whole current of our schoolboy predilections, that the most prejudiced person, we think, must rise from the examination of his treatise convinced that the comic bard-so far from deserving blame for the course he pursued in consequence of what he saw and felt-is entitled to the gratitude of posterity for the assumption and execution. ' of the task.' In order to make out this position, it is evident that the writer has only to identify the Aristophanic Socrates with what must be supposed the faithful, or rather the favourable character of that remarkable man, as it is detailed in the works of his affectionate disciples, Xenophon and Plato,-to

* Vide Platonis Apologiam Socratis, ' §§ 2. 3.

6

connect this character with that of the Sophists,-and by pointing out the evils and mischiefs inflicted on society by the misdirected ingenuity of that pestilential race, to set in its true light the spirit and the patriotism of him who was really their great antagonist, and who has left us in the Clouds so abhorrent a picture of the noxious reptiles he was endeavouring to crush. The first and the last of these propositions have been fully laboured by Mr Mitchell-and with a great deal of honesty as well as of eloquence:-on the second head,-the actual similitude between the Socrates of Plato and the Sophists with whom that Socrates waged so incessant a warfare-he has not so much insisted, although it be a point necessary to be made out for the complete justification of Aristophanes. Without doing this, no one can be said to have done full justice to a man, whose motives have been much mistaken, and whose character, in consequence, has been unduly depreciated.' 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 into 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 own nerves are much more hardy. We have not that respect for the whole fabric of ancient philosophy-a fabric, within whose dark cells the poetic genius of VIRGIL* had so nearly been immured, to waste its radiance like the lamp in a sepulchre,-a philosophy, in Physics so wildly visionary, 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 towards truth than any other of his countrymen. We care not what reproaches we may incur in the exposition of truth,-and shall, therefore, in following Mr M. through his examination of this question, at least avoid the inconsistencies into which he has betrayed himself by his too great timidity.

Mr Mitchell begins his task with a slight and rapid sketch of

* Vide Georgic. Lib. ii. v. 495. See also Dryden's Life of Virgil.