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graded it as much at one time by a grossness perfectly loathsome, as he does it justice at another by a singular grace and tenderness. But Lucretius, I suspect, was the only Latin writer who could have produced Atys; and Lucretius came out of the groves of Epicurus. The literary genius of the Romans in general, besides being a copier from the Greeks, was inexpressibly cold and critical; and the people themselves appear to me, in the comparison, a nation of gladiators.

It has been well said by a German critic, that "the Greeks invented the poetry of gladness." But it is very ill advised by the same German, that we should imitate their poetry of a different complexion ;-I mean the spirit of their tragic drama, in which they have contrived to concentrate all that was fiery and un-just in their mythology. It is Ætna among the fields of Sicily. M. Schlegel, with a great deal of talent, not uninstructed perhaps by an eminent German scholar of our own, has also,

like the Knight of the Rueful Countenance before mentioned, a sickly imagination. He loves to get into the void atmosphere out of the pale of sunlight, and to sit staring through the darkness, upon fancied "Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimeras dire." M. Schlegel, I am afraid, owes a sort of grudge to cheerfulness, because he thinks it possessed by the French; yet he can enjoy Aristophanes, especially where the sceptic Euripides is cut up; and the glad poetry he speaks of, as well as Shakspeare whom he so well appreciates, might have relieved his philosophy from any responsibility on that score. The best excuse for his melancholy vagaries is his fondness for whatever he writes upon, always excepting, however, the French and Euripides, with whom he seems to agree in nothing but sneering at women. But be this as it may, he fairly doats upon the shocking plots and catastrophes of the Greek tragedy, and wishes to make out that the tragic spirit of Shakspeare owes it's

grandeur to the same use of the idea of destiny, a position certainly not made out by facts, and wholly incompatible with the universality as well as cheerfulness of the poet's philosophy.* Shakspeare may or may not have believed in destiny; I believe he did, just about

* It is a striking instance of the exquisite good sense of Butler, which shared the palm with his wit, that notwithstanding his great book-learning and the unpoetical nature of his class of poetry, both of which might be supposed to give him a leaning to the prejudices of the French school, he would not hear of servile adherences to rules, much less of imitating the gratuitous horrors of Greek tragedy. Among his Posthumous Works, which ought to be more known (they are luckily in Chalmers's Poets) is a set of verses upon "Critics who judge of modern plays precisely by the rules of the ancients." There is as warm a feeling of Shakspeare and Fletcher in them, as if he had written imagination all his life instead of satire; and as to M. Schlegel's pet sphinx Destiny, he cuts a series of exquisite jokes against the system, by which some god or dæmon

Chances to have piques

Against an ancient family of Greeks,

That other men may tremble and take warning

How such a fatal progeny they're born in.

as much as he believed in the contrary. But whatever he might have thought of it's use in a play or so, as connected with popular superstition, he knew well, that utility of some sort or other, though not the mere mechanical idea of it, was the only test of truth within the limits of the human understanding; and therefore he would extract from the idea of destiny all that was necessary for human charity or kindness, being certain that so far he was realizing something with it: but beyond that, he would anticipate the inevitable ignorance to which the rest of the question would lead him; and much more would he refuse to look at the question diseasedly; and because there is evil mixed with good, blaspheme the obvious beauty of nature, and have chimney-corner fears about "a great Sphinx who will eat you up, if you do not discover her secret." The body of the German people, though it had a good shake given it by the French revolution, and produced some sprightly children in Wie

land and others, does not seem to have recovered yet from the nightmares of it's old eating and drinking habits, and it's sedentary schooldivinity. But I am forgetting the object of this part of my conclusion.-All I meant to say was, that one melancholy vein in their poetry was necessary perhaps for the lively Greeks in order to keep sentiment alive among them, and prevent their happiness from running into mere levity; but with us of the north, the vicissitudes of climate supply this wholesome counteraction quite enough; we should be sufficiently admonished by "the skyey influences," even if we made the most (which we certainly do not) of our green fields and our firesides; and he, in my opinion, wishes his countrymen most good, who would see fair play between their real wants and a cheerful leisure.

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