way, and at night goes to his prayers: prating of charity and hospitality, with his chained Christian slaves about him, and, with his pretences to remorse, persisting to lead a life of very wholesome activity. But Manfred,' with all its faults, is a sustained lyric, a monologue of impressive unity: while the Burgraves,' with great literary merit, is continually running off into the most incoherent absurdities.

The monologues and speeches in this 'trilogie' look as if the author had at first written a series of ballads founded upon legends of the Rhine, and attempted afterwards to weave them into the more ambitious form of a drama. His descriptions of the festive board of the old Burgrave, and of the order of the Burgraves, have all the simplicity and fire of the old ballad. Many of the verses even, which now create a smile because their prosaic poverty follows close to some high-sounding declamation, would be in their proper place in the ballad: just as the beggar of old sat side by side with the noble. (At least the Burgrave Job makes it a boast that in his time it was so.) In conclusion, let us not omit to add, that there are, not seldom, those natural bursts of feeling which of themselves redeem Victor Hugo's fame, and make us grieve that he will not select subjects and methods more worthy of that genius which we unquestionably think the first in France. We have room but for one example, which we endeavour to render sufficiently faithful to enable the English reader to form an idea of the beauty of the original. Job is speaking of his lost child.

Thy noble face, Regina, calls to mind
My poor lost little one, my latest born.
He was a gift from God-a sign of
pardon-

That child vouchsafed me in my eightieth
year!

I to his little cradle went, and went, And even while 'twas sleeping, talk'd to it.

For when one's very old, one is a child! Then took it up and placed it on my knees,

And with both hands stroked down its fair, fair hair

Thou wert not born then-and he would

stammer

Those pretty little sounds that make one smile!

And tho' not twelve months old, he had a mind.

He recognised me,-nay, he knew me well,

And in my face would laugh-and that child's laugh,

Oh! poor old man-'twas sunlight to my heart.

I meant him for a soldier-ay, a con

queror

And named him George. One day-oh, bitter thought

The child play'd in the fields. When thou art mother,

Ne'er let thy children out of sight to play.
They took him from me-wherefore?-
oh! for what?

Perhaps to kill him at a witch's rite.
I weep!-now, after twenty years-I
weep

As if 'twere yesterday. I lov'd him so!
I used to call him my own little King.'
I was intoxicated, mad with joy,
When o'er my white beard ran his little
hands,

Thrilling me all through!

( 199 )

ART. XIV.-M. Acci Plauti Comœdiæ quæ supersunt, ad meliorum codicum fidem recensuit, versus ordinavit, difficiliora interpretatus est CAROLUS HERM. WEISE. (The Comedies of Marcus Accius Plautus, edited by C. H. WEISE.) Quedlinburgi et Lipsiæ: Sumptibus Bassi. 1838.

M. WEISE, in preparing for the world what has long been wanted, a new and thoroughly digested edition of Plautus, has proceeded on the principle of applying, in his emendations of the text, an accurate knowledge of Latin comic metres, with which he became eminently familiar by superintending the publication of Terence according to the reading of Bentley, and by a minute attention to the dramatic fragments which are interspersed through the writings of Cicero. Deeply occupied in revising the Greek and Latin authors published by Tauchnitz, in the cheap form which is familiar to every schoolboy, and finding that some of them—Aristotle above all-demanded a most painful expenditure of toil, he turned to Plautus as a kind of recreation: and the result of this truly German notion of amusement is the two volumes before us.

In flying to Plautus as a relief, M. Weise probably had before his eyes the example of St. Jerome and that pious man's celebrated words: After frequent watchings by night, after the tears which the remembrance of my past sins drew from the depths of my bowels, I took Plautus in my hand.' There is, to be sure, the slight difference in the proceeding, that the good saint merely took up Plautus to read, while the philologist took him up to edit. But the literary world in general, as well as the circle of professed students, has every reason to be thankful that M. Weise's notion of amusement was of so sedate a character. His Plautus is a valuable acquisition: a most readable book, thoroughly illustrated with explanatory notes, yet not overdone in this respect, so as to scare him who would seek information into contentment with his ignorance. The readings are briefly and acutely compared, and doubtful passages are included between brackets; the editor having perhaps carried somewhat too far his admiration of his author, as he frequently assumes that the inferiority of a passage is a sufficient reason for placing it in the doubtful category. Each play is accentuated throughout, and followed by a description of its metre; and a treatise on the metres of Plautus generally is prefixed to the second volume. One omission, however, we cannot help lamenting, and that is the omission of a life of Plautus by Ranke, which was promised in the preface to the first volume, but for which an apology is

made in the second. A well-digested collection of the materials that threw light on a life which is of such high importance, and of which so little is known that the records most familiar to us are glimmering through the mist of fable, would be one of the greatest boons that a learned man could offer. M. Weise, however, promises the biography on some future occasion, and till then we must wait patiently.

The great fame of Plautus in the ancient world has been but faintly reflected in modern days. Editions and translations have appeared from time to time; ardent admirers have endeavoured to force him into a celebrity; Molière borrowed from him two comedies that are familiar to every one; but the name of Plautus still remains far more extensively known than his works, and the French imitations are more thought of than the Latin originals. Four of his plays were, to be sure, edited by Dr. Valpy, as a school-book, but this book is by no means in universal use, and many a youth who is proud of his classical attainments has no knowledge of Plautus, beyond what is furnished by the authorities in his dictionary. The antiquated style of the venerable comedian has placed him out of the ordinary routine, a position which, with a Greek or Roman writer, completely bars all chance of being read, except by a very chosen few. When we leave school, we lay aside our Greek and Latin,' is the declaration of nineteen out of every twenty men of business we may meet in society, and to remove a classical author out of the list of school-books is to consign him to oblivion as far as the multitude is concerned.

The name of Plautus was, nevertheless, mighty in the latter days of the Roman republic, and for a long period during the empire. When Dr. Johnson, referring to Shakspeare, gave the duration of celebrity for a century and a half as a fair test that immortality had been attained, he gave a weak standard compared to that reached by Plautus. Two hundred years before the birth of Christ did he delight the Romans, and urge them to applaud his dramas, as they hoped to vanquish the Carthaginians; and when the Roman republic had fallen, and Paganism was tottering towards its final ruin in the time of the Emperor Diocletian, the plays of Plautus still were acted with approbation. Among the literati' of Cicero's time it was an accomplishment to be able to distinguish a genuine verse of Plautus from a spurious one; and as a doubt had arisen even at a very early period which were actually the plays of Plautus and which were not, it was the delight of the learned to endeavour to remove it. Cicero tells us that Servius Claudius, the brother of Papinius Pætus, had such a well-trained ear, that he could say, This verse

Neglect of Plautus.

201

belongs to Plautus, and this does not;' the erudite Varro separated twenty-one plays from the rest, and declared them to be genuine; while the grammarian Ælius, more liberal, extended the number to twenty-five. Though his life was buried in obscurity, and it was uncertain what works should be assigned to him, there was no doubt of their importance, and of their worthiness to occupy the attention of the wise and great of republican Rome. Cicero, dividing jests into two classes, the illiberal' and the 'elegant,' gives the works of Plautus as an instance of the latter, and even places him in honourable juxtaposition to the Socratic philosophers; while another admirer declares, that if the Muses spoke Latin they would speak the language of Plautus. But a severe blow was dealt to his memory in Horace's chilly Art of Poetry a blow that, although it does not seem to have injured his reputation among the Romans, has been more felt among the moderns than the praises of Cicero or of Varro, and is probably one of the chief causes why he is not more generally read and admired. The dictum of Horace was once omnipotent, the laws of taste were to be received at his hand, and Plautus having once been voted, as Chaucer was by Cowley, an old wit,' his doom was sealed with the majority of classical scholars. The bad name once given, his delinquencies would be caught at with an eager eye. His antiquated idioms and mode of spelling, so different from those of the Augustan age; the badness and puerility of some of his jokes; and the obscenity of some of his plots, so different from the steady propriety of his successor Terence; would soon be made to outweigh the ingenious construction, the bold colouring, the flow of humour, the masterly power of description, which distinguish the fine old Roman comedian.

But let us hope that the veil which is at present in a great measure spread over Plautus, may be removed, and that if his works be neglected by those to whom the cultivation of a Latin style is rather an object than the knowledge of Latin authors, he may at least become an object of sedulous study to those to whom the history of the modern drama is of interest. For in Plautus not only will the germ of our modern comedies and farces be found, but even in the detail the modern dramatists have departed but little from him, as far as concerns the form of their works. The same characters, the same motives, the same intrigues, the same ludicrous blunders, were used by the Roman comedian, two hundred years before Christ, that are used by the farce-writer of the

* At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudavere sales: nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stulte, mirati....

Ars Poet. 270.

nineteenth century. Once it was the fashion to imitate Plautus consciously, as Molière did in his Amphitryon,' and his Avare; but even then the unconscious imitation was far more frequent; and now, when his works are certainly not familiar to our ordinary dramatists, they little think that when they introduce a comical equivoque arising from two persons having the same name, or bearing a strong personal resemblance, nay even when they make a smart footman plan a scheme to get his young master out of a scrape, they are treading in the path which Plautus had marked out, and which has been handed down traditionally from generation to generation. We say PLAUTUS emphatically, for the plays of Terence, more elegant, are on the same principle of construction, and present us with few combinations, if any, that are not to be found in the work of his more comic predecessor. As for the Greek comedians from whom Plautus borrowed his plays, they, of course, are the first ancestors of our modern comedy. But of the 'new' Greek comedy nothing is left us but a few fragments; and though we may judge of the beauty of the thoughts and language of the writers, their merits as dramatists we can only know through the medium of those Latin imitators, but for whom Philemon and Diphilus would be little more than empty names. Of the 'old' Greek comedy nothing is left us, in any thing like a complete state, but the eleven plays of Aristophanes; and though the fathers and sons of that great poet may be the origin of those of the 'new' Greek comedy, the principle of Aristophanes is so utterly different from our own, and the principal connecting links, if there be any, are so utterly lost, that his remains, valuable as illustrating the history of philosophy, politics, and poetry, have but little to do with a history of the drama. Hence if we find the origin of our comedy in Plautus, we must be satisfied with the result of our inquiry; and knowing him to be little else than a translator or an adapter, as far as plot was concerned, though doubtless much of his humour was his own, we must, for want of better material, assume him to be the fountain-head.

It is neces

sary to keep this in view, that when we speak of the ingenuity or invention of Plautus,' we may be understood to refer to the inventor of the plays, whoever he may be, it being absolutely impossible to proportion the share of praise or blame to which the Roman is entitled. In his 'Dramatic Lectures,' Schlegel pointed out the connexion between modern comedy, and the two Latin authors to which we have just referred, and it is our purpose in present article to observe that connexion in more minute detail, as far as respects Plautus.

the

The characters which appear throughout the twenty plays which come down to us under the name of Plautus, are but few