218 SWINBURNE'S TRAGEDIES 



of them. Men quote a platitude in either of those 

 tongues with a relish of conviction as droll to the un- 

 initiated as the knighthood of free-masonry. Horace 

 Walpole's nephew, the Earl of Orford, when he was in 

 his cups, used to have Statius read aloud to him every 

 night for two hours by a tipsy tradesman, whose hic- 

 cupings threw in here and there a kind of csesural pause, 

 and found some strange mystery of sweetness in the dis- 

 quantitied syllables. So powerful is this hallucination 

 that we can conceive of festina lente as the favorite maxim 

 of a Mississippi steamboat captain, and apiaroi/ fUv ZSap 

 cited as conclusive by a gentleman for whom the bottle 

 before him reversed the wonder of the stereoscope, and 

 substituted the Gascon v for the b in binocular. 



Something of this singular superstition has infected the 

 minds of those who confound the laws of conventional 

 limitation which governed the practice of Greek authors 

 in dramatic composition — laws adapted to the habits 

 and traditions and preconceptions of their audience — 

 with that sense of ideal form which made the Greeks 

 masters in art to all succeeding generations. Aristoph- 

 anes is beyond question the highest type of pure comedy, 

 etherealizing his humor by the infusion, or intensifying 

 it by the contrast of poetry, and deodorizing the person- 

 ality of his sarcasm by a sprinkle from the clearest 

 springs of fancy. His satire, aimed as it was at typical 

 characteristics, is as fresh as ever ; but we doubt whether 

 an Aristophanic drama, retaining its exact form, but 

 adapted to present events and personages, would keep 

 the stage as it is kept by " The Rivals," for example, 

 immeasurably inferior as that is in every element of 

 genius except the prime one of liveliness. Something 

 similar in purpose to the parabasis was essayed in one, 

 at least, of the comedies of Beaumont and Fletcher, and 

 in our time by Tieck ; but it took, of necessity,- a differ 



