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    I June 16, 1855.] THTS ilAD^E. 679 1

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    ) OWEN MEREDITH'S POEMS. ' Clytemnestra,...

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    ' % Menander And The Greek Comedy. | Mdh...

    I cess as a dramatist , his friendship for Ep . curus and Theophrastus , his addic- ton to _pleasure in general , and to the pleasure of loving Glycera m par- I ticu ar . / "deed , if we accept the rather dubious authority of _Phedrus , II neither Menanders wisdom nor his wit saved him from being something of a m fop ; for that fabulist says of him , we hope calumniously , i Unguento delibutus , vestitu adfluens , H Vemebat _gressu _dehcato et languido ; IS which is as much as to say of a man in these days that he scents himself with ffl otto of roses , is fastidious about the cut of his trousers , and walks—like a ! | " walking gentleman . " This description is strangely at variance with the | H calm , massive dignity of his fine statue in the Vatican , of which M . Guizot m g ives us an excellent engraving at the beginning of his volume . But then , M dear reader , Menander squinted , and where relentless destiny has inflicted H a personal defect of that sort , poor human nature is rarely great enough to If keep between the two extremes of an attempt to dazzle beholders into ob- i | livion of the defect by finery , and a despairing self-neglect . So , for our M parts , we think Menunder ' s foppery belonged to the pathos of his life ; and , H indeed , what weakness of a great man is not pathetic ? . . . The third w chapter discusses the Subjects of the Drama in the three periods of Greek II comedy : the ancient period , when its main object was political satire , a form H of comedy peculiar to Greece , and made immortal by the genius of Aristo- H p hanes ; the middle period , when its subjects ceased to be political , and if became purely social , but-when the manners were chiefly caricature and the 1 characters conventional types , corresponding in many respects to the early 1 comedies of Moliere ; and the new period , when it became what the highest I modern comedy is , a picture of real domestic life and manners . Of this last species of comedy , Menander was , by the common consent of critics sub- 1 sequent to his own age , the greatest master Greece ever produced ; and the I simple statement of this fact is enough to indicate how great a loss is the _Jf destruction of his comedies to those who care about a knowledge of Greek life ; for Terence , while appropriating the plots and characters and poetry of I Menander , threw away all that was specifically Greek and substituted what ¦ i ! was specifically Roman . The succeeding chapters on the plot , the charac- f ters , the sentiments , and the passions in the Greek drama of the three i periods are really fascinating , from the skill with which M . Guizot weaves m together his materials and the judgment with which he chooses his illustra- If tive extracts . The fragments of Menander—mere " dust of broken marble" |! as they are—afford us some interesting glimpses into the Greek interieur of H his time . Amongst other things , we gather that the married woman in fl Greece had then ceased to be a mere piece of furniture , or live stock , too r | insignificant to determine in any degree a man ' s happiness or misery . The I bitter invectives against women and marriage in the New Comedy are the i best—or the worst—proofs of the domestic ascendancy women had acquired . If Here is afragment in which a female emancipationist of that day asserts the rig hts of woman , according to the moderate views of 300 b . c : — " Above all if a man is wise , he will not keep his wife too much a prisoner in the 3 recesses of his house . For our eyes take delight in outdoor pleasures . Let 1 a woman have as much as she likes of these pleasures , see everything , and : 4 go everywhere . This sight-seeing will of itself satisfy her , and keep her out J of mischief ; whereas all of us , men , women , and children alike , ardently _fe desire what is hidden from us . But the husband who shuts up his wife if under lock and seal , fancying that he shows his prudence in this way , loses 1 his labour , and is a wiseacre for his pains ; for if one of us has placed her i heart out of the conjugal home , she flies away more swiftly than an arrow I or a bird ; she would deceive the hundred eyes of Argus ! . . . I It is amusing also to see how despotic 4 ersonage ° the cook had become i in the cstabl . shment , giving himself the > urs common to peop e who are ? conscious of being indispensable . " Ho -who insults one of us , said these " i mighty functionaries , " never escapes the punishment he deserves : so sacred j | is our art . " They piqued themselves immensely on their skill . Here is a Sj Story of one _who'Seems to have been the prototype of that famous French | chef who prepared a multifarious dinner tout en hecuf . " I was the pupil of 1 Soterides . One day the King Nicomedcs wished to cat some sardines . It 1 was the depth of winter , and twelve days march from the sea . Never- 1 _theless Soterides satisfied the king so completely , that there was a general I cry of admiration . Pray how was that po sibleV He took a radish , cut it Is . i _, , , " _•• _"" _;•¦ j i ' I into long thin slices , which he shaped like sardines ; then , while they wore I frying , he basted them with oil , sprinkled them with salt very cleverly , I threw over them a dozen black poppy seeds , and presented this ragout to | the Bythinian appetite of his master . _Nicuniedes ate the radish , and praised I the sardines . You see , cooks difler in nothing from poets : the art of both is equall y an art of intelligence . " " In his two last chapters , M . Guizot considers the style and the imitatord of Menander , and in an appendix ho presents a translation of all the frag- merits that , have any other than a philological interest . Among these there are no fewer than seven hundred and _fil'Ly-seven aphorisms , which are pro- served to us in greater abundance than other fragments , because they were collected as " beauties" by ancient scholars . Very grave and very inolan- choly some of these moral sentences are , but probably an equal number of sad and serious sayings _inigjit be culled from Moliere . We may say of the highest comed y what Demetrius said in another sense of the satiric drama— that it is 7 nu £ Wa _rnaycodca , " tragedy in the disguise of mirth . " Indeed it may be likened to those choicest of nil fruits , ' the flavour of which is so cunningly mixed by Nature that we know not whether to call them sweet or acid , and in this wonderful equivoque lies their very _oxquisileness . Among the _fragments of Menander there aro some passages of elegiac sadness ; for example : " O Parmeno , I cull him a happy man , nay , the

    thou wilt go without having made enemies . But he who late in the day falls into _poverty-a wretched old man , weary , disenchanted , and ruined- VA loses his way , and meets nothing but hatred and snares : a Ion- life leads II not to a gentle death " ° j j But perhaps we are dwelling a little too long on this subject of Menander ! and Greek Comedy—we should rather say flitting about it a little too long . Let us hope , however , that we have dwelt enough on it to persuade the reader that he will find in M . Guizot's book a masterly treatment of a subject which has a really human and not merely a scholarly interest . i

    I June 16, 1855.] Thts Ilad^E. 679 1

    I June 16 , 1855 . ] _THTS ilAD _^ E . 679 1

    ) Owen Meredith's Poems. ' Clytemnestra,...

    OWEN MEREDITH'S POEMS . ' Clytemnestra , The Earl ' s Return , The Artist , and other Poems . By Owen Meredith . j Chapman and Hall . ; It is our painful duty , in the course of every year , to express feelings ! not of admiration about many volumes of verse . This arises from no [ ; i indiposition to admire , as we hope certain exceptions have proved ; it arises \ from the utter mediocrity of the verses , and from the impossibility of our . _i [ accepting mediocrity in verse . In prose , mediocrity , though not agreeable , ] may be pardoned ; but there is absolutely no excuse for feeble verse : if it is j ' 'I not beautiful , it is an abortion , it is a most imperfect form of-utterance if when it is not the most perfect , when it does not utter that which Prose , in i | its highest exaltation , is incompetent to reach : in a word , when it is not \ § Song . As Speech it is very bad speech ; only as Song is its existence vin- ; | i dicated . | On principles thus rigid we are naturally severe in criticism . Our seve- f » "ity , however , gives greater seriousness to our praise ; and when we call - i ; Owen Meredith a poet—a poet in spite of many defects—we mean it to be ; i understood that , in our judgment , he has the " something" which distin- : j guishes him from the crowd of even the ablest versifiers : he has the gift of jj ' l Song . So highly do we prize this quality , that in introducing the volume Hi f to our readers we shall , as formerly in the case of Alexander Smith , point j rather to excellencies than defects , and write encouragingly rather than with j Rhadamantine justice ; for , in the first place , many of these defects will fall \ away as the poet grows older , much of what is crude ripening into mellowness ; and , in the next place , these defects did not prevent our reading the volume with a peculiar thrill , such as Song , and Song only , communicates . In Clytemnestra the poet has , with youthful audacity , taken up the Agamemnon of _iEschylus , and rewritten it , as Racine rewrote Hippolytus , and as f Goethe rewrote Iphigenia . Such audacity ( when it is not mere stupidity ) If has a charm in its very peril . The greatest praise we can give Owen Mere- . h dith is to say that his audacity has leaped on the very back of success ; his I « _,-, " vaulting ambition" has not " o ' erleaped itself . " He has rewritten the old ¦ j Ladacidan tale , that is to say , he has , while following the old legend , and , i indeed , the very march of the old play , made the tragedy modern , by throw- | ing into it the modern passionate element . _IEschylus , grand as he is , gives : - _; us but a tragic Myth : it stands there gnarled , rugged , sublime , like a secular I oak ; it is not a Drama , in our modern sense of the word ; and although \ ) dealing with human passions , does not treat them passionately . Owen I ] Meredith opens his Tragedy with a monologue from Clytemnestra : Clytemnestra . M orning at last ! at last the lingering day Creeps o ' er the dewy side of yon dark world . O dawning light already on the hills ! j ; O universal earth , and air , and thou , ; _£ _irstJr , _^ ness _I f tke ? ' _™ b + \ ch a _* a hx _^ _t !< ;' _*« _££ * < _%££ * _£ _^^ _"SMS _^ k Wherefore to me is solacing sleep denied ? _)] And honourable rest the right of all ? _go t ] iat no medicine of the slumbrous shell , \ . I Brimm'd with divinest draughts of melody , J Nor silence under dreamful canopies , ! . 1 Nor purple cushions of the lofty couch _^ May lull this fever for a little while . : l Wherefore to me—to me , of all mankind , ' Tins retribution for a deed undone ? j \ lor many m _^ outlive their sum of crimes , . * | And eat , and drink , and lift up thankful hands . ¦•» And t _^ e tlwip vea > _^ _^ fcho _^^ ; | Am I not innocent—or more than Uicso ? ' ] I There is no blot of murder on my brow , ] : A Nor any taint of blood upon my robo . ' ¦ '' ¦ —It is the thought 1 it is the thought ! . . . and men ' ¦ , _' ¦'' ¦¦?¦ Judge us by acts ! . . . aa tho ' _ono thunder-clap Let nil Olympus out . ¦ ( The last passage , by the way , rings with familiar tones in our ear surely Browning or Alexander Smith lias said fhis ?) She continues her _> soliloquy from which we snatch these lines : — ' With such fiorco tnou , ri , ts for evermore at war , - ¦ Voxt not ulono by i , linilOring wild _rogrota * i , ; But fears , yet worse , of that which booiv must come , « | My heart waits _arni'd , and from the citadel - . 1 Of Us high sorrow , wees far oil" dark _ahapes , f _« And hoars the _footsteps of Ncc « Hflity , _,, | Tread near , and nearer , hand in hand _v th Woo . .. U | The Herald of Fire " the giant beard of Flame , ns _A-schylus cam it ,, _naa , | brought the news of Uion _' i _* fi > U , and startled her with the tliotigiit . oi Aga- m memnon ' _s return . In iEsehy lus—where dramatic representation oi pasbion i _^ i is never a main object—there is no delineation of the fluctuating tears , _uopea , _, r , |

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1855, page 3, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/scld_16061855/page/3/