consideration the high state of the tributary arts, the ut most distinctness of delivery of the most finished poetry, both in speaking and singing, with the magnificent extent of the theatre, we shall then have some idea of a theatrical enjoyment which has never in an equal degree been since known in the world.' Magnes, Cratinus, Crates, and others; he was indeed one of the latest comic authors of that school, as he survived even the old comedy itself. This writer, the very singularity of whose escape from the general wreck of the elder comic productions renders him so interesting and valuable to the history of dramatic art, has been very erroneously judged of in latter times, owing to two capital defects in the mode in which modern criticism has been applied to him, viz., the want of sufficiently understanding the spirit of Athenian society of that day in general, and yet more, the want of a just view of what constituted the essential character of the old comedy itself. It cannot be too repeatedly urged upon the attention of modern critics that an author must be judged with reference to all the circumstances, not which surround his modern censor, but which surrounded the author himself. It is much more reasonable to make use of the works of Aristophanes as a serious study of some remarkable features in the character of his age, than to cast them angrily aside, on the mistaken inference that because they contain much that is either disgusting or monstrous to modern taste, Aristophanes himself must have been a disgrace and a nuisance to any cultivated age. The old critics were of opinion that Cratinus was powerful in living satire and direct attack, but was deficient in a pleasant humour, in the talent of developing his subject advantageously, and filling up his pieces with the necessary details; that Eupolis was agreeable in his jocularity, and skilful in the use of ingenious allusions and contrivances, so that he never even needed the aid of the parabasis to say whatever he chose, but that he wanted satirical force; that Aristophanes united the powers of both those writers, and that in him we have satire and pleasantry combined in the most perfect and attractive manner. But one of the most honourable testimonies in this dramatist's favour is that of no less an authority than the sage Plato himself, who, in an epigram, says that the Graces would have selected his mind for their dwelling-place, who constantly read him, and who transmitted his comedy of 'The Clouds' to Dionysius the Elder, with the remark that from that play (which, be it remembered, contains the imputedly murderous attack on Plato's master, Socrates) Dionysius would be able to acquaint himself with the state of Athens. This writer, too, is precisely one of those of whose qualifications and peculiarities it is most difficult to acquire an accurate notion without reading him in his original language. His diction is extremely elegant, displaying the purest Atticism, and accommodating itself with the greatest pliability to every tone, from the most familiar dialogue to the lofty elevation of the dithyrambic ode. His general elegance of language is found the more attractive from the contrast which he occasionally displays; for he not only indulges sometimes in the rudest popular expressions, in foreign dialects, and the mutilated articulation of the Greek in the mouths of barbarians, but extends the same arbitrary power which he exercised over nature and human affairs to language itself, and by new compounds, allusion to names of persons, or imitation of particular sounds, produces words of the most singular description. Towards the end of the Peloponnesian war, when a few It has been almost universally the practice of modern As Aristophanes,' says Schlegel, 'appears to me to have Although the new comedy developed itself only in the bore not the slightest comparison with them in a knowledge to be From little s had so enumer austere latter no making loving an the access ributary arts, the most finished; he magnificent me idea of a the ual degree been Cratinus was but was deficie Eveloping his s es with the ne n his jocular ns and contri f the parabasi satirical fore th those Fra try combed But one of th st's favoura himself: _ve selected ar read bi s' to Dicas Olay (which, rderous attan Suld be able the exstar as the alread of the gance, delicacy, and sweetness, is universally yielded to Menander, who was contemporary with Demetrius Phalereus. Though instructed in philosophy by Theophrastus, his inclinations led him to the doctrines of Epicurus; and he boasted in an epigram, that if Themistocles freed his country from slavery, Epicurus freed it from irrationality.' Indeed, the Epicurean philosophy, which placed the highest felicity of life in the benevolent affections, neither inciting men to heroic action nor allowing them to feel the want of it, could hardly fail to be well received among the Greeks after the loss of their old and glorious freedom. We may likewise easily understand why they conceived a passion for the new comedy at the very period when they lost their liberty, seeing that it drew their attention from political transactions and human affairs at large, and absorbed it wholly in the considerations of personal and domestic interests. The Greek theatre, as we have seen, was originally constructed for the exhibition of the higher walks of the tragic drama: its stage was open to the sky, and exhibited but little of the interior of the houses. Comedy was therefore under the necessity of laying the scene out of doors; and had often to make people come out of their houses to confide their secrets to each other in the streets. It is true that the poets were thus spared the necessity of changing the scene, as it was taken for granted that the families concerned in the action lived in the same neighbourhood; besides that the Greeks, like all other southern nations, lived much more in the open air than we do. The chief disadvantage in this construction of the stage is, the circumscription of the female parts. If the actual manners were to be observed, as the essence of the new comedy required, the secluded life of the fair sex in Greece rendered the exclusion of unmarried women, and of young women in general, inevitable. No females could appear but aged mothers, maid-servants, or courtezans. Hence, besides the necessary sacrifice of so many agreeable situations, this other inconvenience is produced, that the whole piece frequently turns on a marriage with or a passion for a young woman whom the audience never once see from the beginning to the end of it. Athens, where the fictitious as well as the actual scenes were generally placed, was the capital of a small territory, and inferior to our principal modern cities in extent and population. The republican equality admitted no marked distinction of ranks: all were alike citizens, richer or poorer. Hence the Attic comedy could admit but little of those contrasts arising from diversity of tone and cultivation which appear in those modern comedies wherein the manners of a court and the refinement or corruption of a monarchial capital are pourtrayed. As regards the relations between the two sexes, the Greeks had nothing resembling either the gallantry of modern Europe, or the union of love with enthusiastic and respectful admiration. AZ ended in sensual passion or in marriage. The latter, by their constitution and manners, was a matter much more of duty or convenience than of inclination. The society of a wife, who frequently had not been once seen before marriage, and had passed all her previous life within the walls of a house, proving no great source of entertainment, the latter was sought among women entitled to less ceremony, and who were generally either foreigners without property or emancipated slaves. The indulgent morality of the Greeks permitted almost every degree of freedom with women of this description, especially in the case of young and unmarried men; and consequently the old comic writers exhibit this kind of life very undisguisedly. Their comedies often end with a marriage-a catastrophe which, according to Schlegel, 'seems to bring seriousness along with it; but with them marriage is frequently nothing more than a means of reconciliation with a father for the irregularities of a forbidden amour: sometimes, however, it happens that the amour is turned into a lawful marriage by a discovery that the woman supposed to be a foreigner or slave was by birth an Athenian citizen. From all the circumstances we have stated, it will appear little surprising that the poets of the later Grecian comedy had so small a circle of characters at their disposal: we enumerate the principal in the words of Schlegel: The austere and frugal or the mild and yielding father, the latter not unfrequently under the dominion of his wife, and making common cause with his son; the housewife, either loving and sensible, or obstinate, domineering, and proud of the accession brought by her to the family property; the young man, giddy and extravagant, but open and amiable, who, even in a passion, sensual at its commencement, is yet capable of true attachment;-the vivacious girl, who is either thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning, and selfish, or still well disposed, and susceptible of higher emotions;-the simple and boorish slave, or the cunning one, who helps his young master to deceive his old father, and obtain money by all manner of devices, for the gratification of his pas sions;-the flatterer or accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to say or do anything that may be required of him ;-the sycophant, whose business it was to set quietly disposed people by the ears, and stir up law-suits, to conduct which he offered his services;-the braggart soldier returned from foreign service, generally cowardly and simple, but assuming airs from the fame of his foreign achievements;-a female servant or pretended mother, who preaches a bad system of morals to the girl entrusted to her guidance;-and lastly, a slave-dealer, who speculates on the extravagant passions of young men.' The cunning servant is usually also the buffoon, who confesses his own sensuality and want of principle with a kind of self-complacent exaggeration, jests at the expense of the other characters, and even occasionally addresses the audiences. We must not, however, forget that the Greek servant was a slave exposed for life to the arbitrary caprice of his master, and often subjected to the severest treatment; so that cunning was his natural weapon of defence, and artifice his habitual practice. It is remarkable that while in other respects the new comedy approached so much nearer to real life than the old, yet the masks in the former deviated farther from reality than in the latter, were more overcharged in the features, and bore a greater resemblance to caricature. It would seem that, as the dramatists were now forbidden to exhibit portraits of real persons on the stage, they were always in fear of stumbling accidentally upon some such resemblance, especially to any of their Macedonian rulers, and so endeavoured in this way to obviate all such danger. Yet the exaggeration in question would hardly be without its peculiar meaning; and accordingly we find it stated that an unequal profile, with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, was expressive of useless and meddling activity; as, indeed, it is observable that persons accustomed to look at things with anxious minuteness are apt to acquire such distortions. Though confined in their choice of subject to the narrow range of their civil and domestic life, the inventive genius of the Greek comic writers contrived to exhibit a wonderful variety in their productions: yet in the selection and arrangement of their incidents they were ever true to their national manners and circumstances. As Greece consisted of a number of small separate states lying near and round one another, on sea-coasts and islands, navigation was general, piracy frequent, and human beings were thus procured for the supply of the slave trade. Freeborn children were liable either to be carried off from their parents, or to be exposed by them, by virtue of the legal right which they possessed, and in some cases would be unexpectedly saved from perishing or delivered from captivity, and so recovered by their parents: here we see the groundwork of the numerous recognitions between parents and children, brothers and sisters, &c., which appear in the later Grecian comedy. The writers in this walk employed themselves, too, on all the subordinate departments,-the farce, the piece of intrigue, the various gradations of pieces of character, from caricature up to the most refined species, and even the serious or sentimental drama. We find also, from the titles of the pieces, and other circumstances, that they sometimes introduced historical persons, as the poetess Sappho for instance, representing the love of Alcæus and Anacreon for her, and hers for Phaon; and we may well suppose that this occasional mixture of beautiful passion with the tranquil grace of the ordinary comedy was exceedingly attractive. The Romans, whose drama immediately follows that of the Greeks, were not led to the invention of theatrical amusements from the want of representations to fill up the leisure of their festivals, and enliven the mind by withdrawing it from the concerns of life; but, in the despondency of a desolating pestilence, against which all remedies seemed insufficient (year of Rome, 391), they had, according to the story, recourse to the theatre as a means of appeasing the anger of the gods, having previously been acquainted only with gymnastic exercises and circus races. The histriones, for whom they sent to Etruria, were however merely dancers, and afterwards a freedman. Their fortunes and associawho probably did not attempt pantomimic movements, but tions however were very different. Plautus, when he was strove to delight their audience by a display of bodily activity. not composing comedies, was under the necessity of working The oldest spoken plays, the Fabula Atellana,' were bor- at a hand-mill for subsistence; while Terence was admitted rowed by the Romans from the Osci, the indigenous inha-into familiar intimacy with the elder Scipio and his bosom bitants of Italy. [ATELLANE.] They were satisfied with friend Lælius. The different habits of life of the two these amusements till Livius Andronicus, somewhat more dramatists distinctly appear in their respective modes of than five hundred years after the foundation of Rome, writing; the bold roughness of Plautus, and the coarse began the imitation of the Greeks; and the regular com- originality of his jests, betray his intercourse with the lower positions of tragedy and the new comedy (the old it was orders; while in Terence we discern the tone of good impossible to transplant) were then, for the first time, known society. Plautus inclines to the exaggeratedly droll and in Rome. Thus the Romans owed the first idea of a play farcical; Terence prefers the delicately characteristic, and to the Etrurians, the effusions of a sportive humour to the approaches the seriously instructive and the sentimental. Oscans, and the higher class of dramatic productions to the Some of the pieces of Plautus are taken from the Grecian Greeks. They displayed, however, more originality in the comic writers Diphilus and Philemon, whom we have comic than in the tragic department. already had occasion to mention among those of whose works only fragments remain: there is little doubt however that he added much of his native coarseness to his originals. From whom he derived the other does not appear; except, as Schlegel remarks, we may consider ourselves warranted by the assertion of Horace, It is said that Plautus took for his model the Sicilian Epicharmus,' in conjecturing that he borrowed his Amphitryo,' a piece of quite a different kind from the others, and which he himself calls a tragi-comedy, from that old Doric writer, who employed himself chiefly on mythological subjects. Among the plays of Terence, whose copies from the Greek are probably much more faithful in details than those of Plautus, we find two taken from Apollodorus, and the rest from Menander. Julius Cæsar bestowed some verses of his own composition upon Terence, wherein he pays him the rather equivocal compliment of calling him a half Menander; praising the elegance of his style, and only regretting that he falls short of the comic strength of his original. The Romans had, besides, their peculiar mimi. Their foreign name for these small pieces might lead us to conclude that they bore a great affinity to the Greek mimi: however, they differed considerably in form: we know also that the manners pourtrayed in them had a local truth, and that the subject was not derived from Grecian compositions. The later Greek mimi were dialogues in prose, yet written with a kind of rhythm, not designed for the stage; the Roman were in verse, were represented, and often delivered extempore. Their most celebrated authors in this way were contemporary with Julius Cæsar. These were, Laberius, a Roman knight, and P. Syrus, his freedman and scholar in the mimetic art. Not one of these compositions has descended to us entire. We have, however, a number of sentences from the mimi of Syrus, which, from their internal worth and elegant conciseness of expression, deserve to rank with those of Menander. One entire mimus, which unfortunately time has not spared for us, would have thrown more light upon the question than all the confused accounts of the grammarians, and all the conjectures of modern scholars. most distinguished spectators, the senators and knights, now sat), but remained on the stage itself. At the very introduction, too, of the regular drama, Livius Andronicus, a Grecian by birth, and the earliest tragic poet and actor of Rome, in the monodies (lyrical pieces chanted by a single person, and not by the chorus), separated the singing from the mimetic dancing, so that the latter alone remained to the actor; and instead of the former, a boy stood beside the flute-player, and accompanied him with his voice. Among the Greeks in better times, the tragic singing and the accompanying rhythmical gestures were so simple, that one person was sufficient to do at the same time the most ample justice to both. The Romans, however, it would seem, preferred separate skill to harmonious unity, Hence arose their fondness, at an after period, for pantomimes, of which the art was, in the time of Augustus, carried to the greatest perfection. From the names of the most celebrated of the performers, Pylades, Bathyllus, &c., it would appear that those who practised this mute eloquence in Rome were Greeks; and the lyrical pieces which their dancing expressed were also delivered in the Grecian language. Roscius frequently played without a mask, and in this respect probably did not stand alone; but so far as we know, there never was any such instance among the Greeks. With respect to tragedy, it must first of all be observed that the Grecian theatre was not introduced into Rome The regular comedy of the Romans was for the most part without considerable changes in its arrangement; that the palliata, that is, it appeared in a Grecian dress, and repre-chorus no longer had a place in the orchestra (wherein the sented Grecian manners. This is the case with the whole of the comedies of Plautus and Terence. But they had also a comedia togata, so called from the Roman dress which was worn in it. Afranius is celebrated as the principal writer in this department. We have no remains whatever of him; and the accounts of the nature of his works are so very scanty, that we cannot even determine, with certainty, whether the togata were original comedies of an entirely new invention, or merely Greek comedies adapted to Roman manners. The latter supposition is the more probable, as Afranius lived in a period when the Roman genius had not yet attempted to soar on the wings of original invention; and yet we cannot well conceive the possibility of adapting Attic comedies, without the most violent constraint, to local circumstances of so very different a nature. The Roman way of living was in general serious and grave, though in private society they showed a great turn for wit and joviality, The diversity of ranks among them was politically marked in a very decided manner, and the wealth of private individuals was frequently not inferior to that of sovereigns: women lived much more in society, and acted a much more important part than among the Greeks, through which independence they fully participated in the overwhelming tide of corruption, and the external refinement by which it was accompanied. With these essential differences in the social system, an original Roman comedy would have been a most interesting phenomenon, and would have enabled us to view those conquerors of the world under an aspect altogether new. That this however was not accomplished in the comœdia togata, the indifferent manner in which it is mentioned by the antients will hardly leave us room to doubt. Quintilian himself tells us in plain terms that the Latin literature was lamest in comedy. It remains to say a few words of Terence and Plautus, of whom alone, among the Roman comic writers, we have any perfect remains. Among the Greeks, the poets and artists lived at all times in the most honourable social relations. Among the Romans, on the contrary, polite literature was at first cultivated by men of the lowest class, by indigent foreigners, and even by slaves. Plautus and Terence themselves, who lived about the same period, towards the end of the second Punic war, and in the interval between the second and third, were of the lowest rank; the former a poor day-labourer, the latter a Carthaginian slave, In the tragic literature of the Romans there are two epochs: the first is that of Livius Andronicus, Nævius, Ennius, and also of Pacuvius and Attius, who both flourished somewhat later than Plautus and Terence; and the second, the refined epoch of the Augustan age. The former produced only translators and imitators of Greek models; but it is probable that they succeeded better in tragedy than in comedy. Elevated expression usually appears rather stiff in a language not sufficiently cultivated, although it is attainable by perseverance; but to catch the negligent grace of social raillery, we must ourselves be possessed of humour and refinement. Here, however, as in the case of Plautus and Terence, we have not a single fragment of the Greek originals to enable us to judge of the accuracy and general felicity of the copies; but a speech of considerable length of the Freed Prometheus' of Attius is hardly unworthy of Eschylus, and is also, in versification, much more polished than the productions of the Latin comic writers generally are. This earlier style was carried to perfection by Pacuvius and Attius, whose pieces kept their place on the stage, and seem to have had many ad- to surprise by the novelty of mechanical inventions. In this way, one Roman, at the burial solemnity of his father, caused two theatres to be constructed in honour of him, with their backs resting on each other, and made to move in such a manner on a single hinge, that at the end of the play they were wheeled round with all the spectators within them, and formed together into one circus, in which gladiatorial combats were exhibited. In the gratification of the eyes that of the ears was altogether lost; rope-dancers and white elephants were preferred to every dramatic entertainment; the embroidered purple robes of the actor were applauded, as Horace informs us; and so little attentive and quiet were the great body of the spectators, that he likens their noise to that of the roaring of the ocean, or of a mountain forest in a storm.' The contemporaries of Augustus were ambitious of measuring their powers with the Greeks in a more original way. The number of amateurs who attempted to shine in tragic composition was particularly great; and we find mention made even of works of the emperor himself. Hence there is strong reason for supposing that Horace wrote his epistle to the Pisos chiefly with a view to deter those young men from so dangerous a career, as they were probably infected by the prevalent literary passion without possessing the requisite talents. One of the most renowned tragic poets of that age was Asinius Pollio, a man of impassioned disposition, as Pliny informs us, and who, in plastic works, was fond of whatever bore the same character. It was he who brought with him from Rhodes the well-known group of the Farnesian Bull, and erected it at Rome. If,' ob-mans that remains to us it would, however, be unfair to serves Schlegel, his tragedies bore the same relation to those of Sophocles which this bold, wild, and rather extravagant group does to the tranquil grandeur of the Niobe, we have every reason to regret their loss.' But the political importance of Pollio might easily bias the judgment of his contemporaries as to the value of his poetical labours. Ovid, who tried so many departments of poetry, likewise attempted tragedy, and was the author of a Medea;' and Quintilian asserts that he proved here, for once, what he could have done had he chosen to restrain himself, instead of yielding to his natural propensity to diffuseness. From the sole specimen of the tragic talent of the Rodraw a conclusion as to the productions of better times: we allude to the ten tragedies which go under the name of Seneca. Respecting their real authorship the opinions of the learned are very much divided; some attribute them partly to Seneca the philosopher, and partly to his father the rhetorician; others ascribe them to one Seneca a tragedian, a different person from either. It is generally admitted that the several pieces are neither from the same hand, nor even of the same age. We might be induced to consider them as productions of a very late period; but Quintilian quotes a verse from the Medea' of Seneca, which is to be found in the play of that name in the collection in question, and hence the authority of this piece cannot be doubted, though in merit it does not seem in any way pre-eminent above the others. The state of violence and constraint in which Rome was kept under a series of sanguinary tyrants had also given an unnatural character to eloquence and poetry. Under the wise and mild government of a Vespasian, a Titus, and more especially a Trajan, the Romans returned to a purer taste. But whatever period may have given birth to these tragedies of Seneca they have been severely, perhaps, yet not unjustly, characterized as bombastical and frigid, unnatural in character and action, revolting from their violation of every propriety, and so devoid of theatrical effect as to induce a belief that they were never intended to leave the rhetorical schools for the stage. These and all the other tragic attempts of the Augustan age have perished. Yet, according to all appearances, the loss to the interests of dramatic art is not very great. The Grecian tragedy had at first to struggle in Rome with all the inconveniences of a plant removed to a foreign soil: the Roman religion was in some degree related to the Greek, though by no means so completely the same as many have supposed; but the heroic mythology of the Greeks was merely introduced into Rome by the poets, and was in nowise connected with the national recollections. And although,' as Schlegel remarks, the Romans were at length desirous of becoming thorough Hellenists, they were deficient in that milder humanity of which we may observe traces in Grecian history, poetry, and art, even in the time of Homer. From the most austere virtue, which, like Curtius, sacrificed every personal inclination to love of With pagan Rome fell antient art. Nevertheless there country, they proceeded, with the most fearful rapidity, to a are one or two links of connection between the antient state of corruption, from avarice and luxury, equally unex- drama and that of the middle ages, which modern writers ampled. In their character they always betrayed that their have not always observed. There are even still existing first founder was not suckled at the breast of a woman, but some fragments of a play in Greek Iambics on a Jewish of a raging wolf. They were the tragedians of the world's Scripture subject, taken from the Exodus or departure of history, who exhibited many a deep tragedy of kings led in the Israelites from Egypt. The principal characters are, chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron neces-Moses, Sapphora, and God from the bush,' that is, God sity of other nations-universal destroyers, for the sake of rearing at last, from the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom in the midst of an obsequious world reduced to one dull uniformity. It was not given to them to excite emotion by the mitigated accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a delicate hand every note of the scale of feeling. They naturally sought also in tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, to reach at once the extreme, both in the stoicism of heroism, and in the monstrous fury of criminal desires. Nothing of their antient greatness had remained to them but their contempt of pain and death, when, after an extravagant enjoyment of life, they were at length called upon to submit to those evils. They then impressed this seal of their former grandeur upon their tragic heroes, with a self-satisfied and ostentatious profusion. 'Finally, in the age of polished literature, among a people fond, even to a degree of madness, of shows and spectacles, the dramatic poets were still in want of a poetical public. In the triumphal processions, the fights of gladiators and of wild beasts, all the splendours of the world, all the wonders of every clime, were brought before the eye of the spectator, who was glutted with scenes of the most violent and sanguinary description. What effect could the more refined gradations of tragic pathos produce on nerves so steeled? It was the ambition of the powerful among them to exhibit in one day to the people, on stages erected for the purpose, and immediately afterwards destroyed, the immense plunder which they derived from foreign or civil war. The relation which Pliny gives of the architectural decoration of the stage erected by Scaurus borders on the incredible. When magnificence could be carried no farther, they endeavoured speaking from the burning bush. Moses delivers the prologue in a speech of 60 lines, and his rod is turned into a serpent on the stage. The author of this piece, a Jew named Ezekiel, is supposed by Warton, the historian of English poetry, to have written it after the destruction of Jerusalem, to inspire his dispersed and captive brethren with hopes of deliverance under a new Moses, and to have composed it in imitation of the Greek drama, at the close of the second century. (See the edition and German translation of L. M. Philipson, Berlin, 1830, 8vo.) It appears that in the first ages of Christianity any one connected with the theatre was not allowed baptism. Among the fathers,' Cyril declares that when in our baptism we say 'I renounce thee, Satan, and all thy works and pomps,' those pomps of the devil are stage-plays and the like vanities. Tertullian, in like manner, affirms that they who in baptism renounce the devil and his pomps cannot go to a stage-play without turning apostates. Cyprian, Basil, and Clement of Alexandria are no less vehement on the same point; and Chrysostom exclaims loudly against such as could listen to a comedian with the same ears with which they heard an evangelical preacher. Augustine maintains that those who go to plays are as bad as they who write or act them. Tertullian, in his warmth against the buskined actors in particular, observes, with peculiar emphasis, that the devil sets them upon their high pantoffes to give Christ the lie, who said nobody can add one cubit to his stature.' Rymer, in his 'Short View of Tragedy,' adds, that these flashes and drops of heat, from single authors, had no such wonderful effect, for that the tragedian still walked upon his high shoes. might they well expect a more terrible storm from the 'Yet,' says he, 4 DRASTICS. [CATHARTICS.] reverend fathers when met in a body together, in council | Beauclerk collected a great number of Italian mysteries; ecumenical. Then indeed began the ecclesiastical thunder and at the sale of their libraries, Dr. Burney purchased to fly about; and presently the theatres, tragedy, comedy, many of the most antient, which he speaks of as being bear-baiting, gladiators, and heretics, are given all to the evidently much earlier than the invention of printing, from devil without distinction.' But when the blind zeal of the the gross manner in which the subjects are treated, the fathers against all heathen literature had been ironically coarseness of the dialogue, and the ridiculous situations into seconded by the emperor Julian with an edict forbidding which the most sacred things and persons are thrown. any Christian to be taught in the heathen schools or to DRAMMEN, a seaport town of Norway, situated on make use of that learning, two ecclesiastics of that time, both sides of the broad and impetuous river of the same of considerable learning, undertook to supply in some de- name, which here discharges its waters into the Drammengree the deficiency of instruction and entertainment ex- fiord, in the gulph of Christiania. It lies in 59° 39′ N. lat. perienced by their Christian brethren from the operation of and 10° 28' E. long. The town is divided into three Julian's law. These were Apollinarius, bishop of Laodicea, quarters, of which Bragnaes is situated on the northern, and his father, a priest of the same city. [APOLLINARIUS.] and Stroemsoe and Tangen on the southern bank of the The latter not only, in treating Scriptural subjects, imitated river: they are united by a flying-bridge. Bragnaes consists on a large scale the great epic and lyric poets of Greece, but of a row of houses about a mile in length. Altogether, it is also turned various historical passages of the Old and New a lively town; the main streets are chiefly composed of Testament into comedies and tragedies after the Greek storehouses. Tangen is, in fact, the roadstead and landingmodel. About the same time the celebrated Gregory place, and is consequently the resort of mariners, fishermen, Nazianzenus, patriarch and archbishop of Constantinople, and small dealers. Drammen has a parish church and twe composed plays from the Old and New Testament, which, filial churches, two superior and several elementary schools, converting the choruses into Christian hymns, he substi- and manufactures of leather, tobacco, sail-cloth, oil, &c. tuted for those of Sophocles and Euripides at Constan- The number of houses is about 1000, and of inhabitants tinople, where until then the old Grecian stage had con- about 6000. It is extensively engaged in trade and natinued to flourish. One only of Gregory's plays (or at least vigation, in building ships, and in the export of timber, a play attributed to him) is extant, a tragedy, entitled deals, iron, &c. The water in the harbour is of depth Christ's Passion:' the prologue calls it an imitation of sufficient to allow all vessels to lie alongside the quays and Euripides (it being, in fact, made up of scraps of that other landing-places. There are marble quarries in the author), and at the same time acquaints us that in this vicinity. piece the patriarch has the honour of introducing the Virgin Mary's first appearance on the stage. It is not known whether the religious dramas of the Apollinarii perished so early as some of their other writings, which were ordered to be destroyed for the very common offence of heresy; but certain it is that the species of literary culture which they endeavoured to supply gradually disappeared before the progress of Constantine's establishment. | In the general extinction of polite literature and liberal art, which darkened for so many centuries the moral face of Europe, every trace of truly dramatic performance or composition seems to have disappeared. The Saturnalian | pageants-the Feast of Fools, the Feast of the Ass, &c., exhibited during that long interval, chiefly at the Christmas and New Year festivities, claim notice here, not as bearing much affinity to, but merely as in some degree filling up the place of, the old theatrical portion of the religious celebrations. To arrive once more at any indication of the general existence of what can with propriety be called a religious drama, we must descend to a later period of European history. And as in each of the great nations of modern Europe this religious drama gave way but gradually before that rise of the modern stage which accompanied the revival of letters, and has even, in one of those nations, strongly maintained its ground until very recent times, so as to become permanently incorporated, as it were, with the national theatre, we can most conveniently and effectively give such more particular notice of it in each nation as we have to present to our readers, in combination with the rapid view which we have to take of the rise and progress of the modern stage in each of the five great literary countries of Europe, viz., in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England. The theatre of each of these countries we shall consider, in the order of succession in which we have here enumerated them, but for the sake of convenience we have arranged the whole under ENGLISH DRAMA. If there really survived, throughout the darkest period of the middle ages, in the form of successive imitations, any traces of the Christianized Greek drama of the primitive church, they seem to have been preserved, where perhaps we should most naturally look for them, among the Italians. Dr. Burney, in his researches into the history of music, ascertained that a spiritual play was performed at Padua as early as the year 1243; and in 1264 a company or fraternity was instituted at Rome, whose chief business was to represent, in the Passion week, the sufferings of Christ, and whose statutes were printed at that city in 1654. In 1298 the Passion was played at Friuli; and the same year, at Whitsuntide, the clergy of Civita Vecchia performed the play of Christ, that is, of his passion, resurrection, ascension, judgment, and the mission of the Holy Ghost: in 1304 they acted the creation of Adam and Eve, the annunciation, the birth of Christ, &c. The late Rev. Mr. Croft and the Hon. Topham DRAVE, or DRAU, a river of Austria, which issues from a bed of limestone on the Toblacher Heide, or heath, near Innichen, in the western part of the Tyrol. It thence descends in a south-easterly direction to Villach, in Carinthia, whence it flows easterly as far as Mahrburg in Styria: it then winds, chiefly south-eastwards, until it falls into the Danube, about 13 miles below Eszeg, in Croatia, close to the castle of Erdödy, which lies on the right bank of that river. The whole length of the Drave, from its source to its junction with the Danube, is about 300 miles. It becomes navigable at Villach. Its tributaries are the Muhr, or Mur, which joins it at Legrad; the Guil, which rises in the Carinthian Alps, near Villach, and falls into the Drave below Cszaktornya; the Gurk, Glan, Lavant, &c. The valley of the Drave, which commences not far from Innichen, in the Tyrolese vale of the Puster, runs by Lienz, Sachsenburg, Villach, Mahrburg, and Pettau, until it approaches Varasdin, in Croatia, from which point the river flows through a level country. The valley is bounded by mountains nearly as far as Spital, from which point they sink to gentle elevations, and the valley grows wider: the hills again approach, within a short distance, on each side of the river, near Villach, and skirt the Drave as far as its confluence with the Glan. The valley of the Drave is confined to a breadth of a hundred paces near Kossig, and is narrowed to a few feet of towing ground near Seidlach, as well as between Saldenhofen and Mahrenberg. In its descent from Mahrburg, the Drave is accompanied, on its left bank only, by a range of heights, which continue as far as the neighbourhood of Pettau and Friedau, where the precipitous sides of the Mutzel mountains form its right bank. The current of the Drave is very rapid until it reaches Sclavonia, where it flows sluggishly, forms swamps, and occasionally inundates the low country. Gold-dust is found in this river. DRAWBACK, in commerce, is a term used to signify the sum paid back by government on the re-exportation of goods, upon the importation of which an equal sum has already been paid as duty. The object of this repayment is to enable the exporter to sell his goods in foreign markets unburthened with duties; and it is clear that if duties are required to be paid on the first importation, no transit trade can possibly be carried on unless drawback is allowed by the government. Payments of this nature, although they are sometimes confounded with bounties, are in principle essentially different from them. [BOUNTY.] Previous to the establishing of the warehousing system in this country in 1803, and when the payment of duties on all foreign and colonial merchandise, with the exception of tobacco and East India goods, was required on the first importation, drawbacks were in all cases allowed upon re-exportation. This course was injurious, not only to trade, but also to the revenue. It was injurious to trade, because of the larger |