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I AM aware that Grecian hiftory has not commonly been con- 

 fidered in this point of view ; fo the foregoing remark, though 

 an obvious one, may, to many, appear fomewhat hazardous and 

 novel. The Greeks were a glorious people ! The ftupendous 

 monuments of their genius, in Poetry, Sculpture, and Archi- 

 tecSure, which have triumphed over the ravages of time, infpire 

 us with implicit veneration, and fo dazzle our eyes with their 

 luftre, that we are unable, or unwilling, to turn them on any 

 harfh and barbarous circumftance, any cruel and reproachful tranf- 

 adlion, any thing calculated to diminilh our admiration, I might 

 almoft fay adoration — of beings who could thus write — fpeak — 

 and work; it is with pain that we endeavour to view the.fpots 

 of the fun — yet fuch is the fad ; and to this fource muft we 

 trace the fignal prevalence of the terrible and horrid, in Tragedy, 

 as it firft came from the hands of its Grecian inventors. 



It is obfervable too, that Homer, the venerable father of the 

 Greek drama, as well as of the Epos, though he occafionally flicws 

 himfelf a mafter of the foft, the tender, and amiable, chiefly 

 delights, and moft copioufly abounds, in the grand, the awful, 

 and the dreadful. Ancient tragedy, which did but draw his inci- 

 dents into ftage adion, and reduce his fpeeches into dialogue, 

 muft have taken much of its colouring, charader, and fpirit, 

 from this prevailing tendency in its great archetype. " Tu pater tu 

 " rerum inventor'.' 



It will here be faid that we have remains of the Grecian 

 fculpture, which fhew the moft cultivated mind, the moft 



refined 



