No More Learning

Here, like
Boiardo before him and Tasso after him, he lived and wrote; and it
was to the family of Este that he dedicated that poem in which are
seen, as in a mirror, the gay life, the intellectual brilliancy, and the
sensuous love for beauty which mark the age. At seventeen he
began the study of the law, which he soon abandoned for the charms
of letters. Most of his life was passed in the service first of Cardinal
d'Este, and afterward of the Duke of Ferrara. But the courtier never
overcame the poet, who is said to have begun the famous Orlando
Furioso at the age of thirty, and never to have ceased the effort to
improve it.
>
The literary activity of Ariosto showed itself in the composition of
comedies and satires, as well as in that of his immortal epic. The
comedies were written for the court theatre of Ferrara, to which he
seems to have had some such relation as that of Goethe to the theatre
at Weimar.
The later comedies are much better than the early ones,
which are but little more than translations from Plautus and Terence.
In general, however, the efforts of Ariosto in this direction are far
less important than the 'Orlando' or the 'Satires. At the first
appearance of his plays they were enormously successful, and the
poet was hailed as a great dramatic genius. But these comedies are


## p. 742 (#156) ############################################

742
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
interesting to-day chiefly from the fact that Ariosto was one of the
very first of the writers of modern comedy, and was the leader of
that movement in Italy and France which prepared the way for
Molière.
Of more importance than the comedies, and second only in interest
to the Orlando,' are the 'Satires,' seven in number, the first written
in 1517 and the last in 1531, thus representing the maturer life of the
poet. Nearly everything we know of Ariosto's character is taken
from this source. He reveals himself in them as a man who excites
neither our highest admiration nor our contempt. He was not born
to be a statesman, nor a courtier, nor a man of affairs; and his life
as ambassador of Cardinal Ippolito, and as captain of Garafagno, was
not at all to his liking. His one longing through all the busy years
of his life was for a quiet home, where he could live in liberty and
enjoy the comforts of cultured leisure. A love of independence was
a marked trait of his character, and it must often have galled him to
play the part he did at the court of Ferrara. As a satirist he was
no Juvenal or Persius. He was not stirred to profound indignation
by the evils about him, of which there were enough in that brilliant
but corrupt age. He discussed in easy, familiar style, the foibles of
his fellow-men, and especially the events of his own life and the
traits of his own character.
The same views of life, the same tolerant temper, which are seen
in the 'Satires,' form an important part of the 'Orlando Furioso,'
where they take the form of little dissertations, introduced at the
beginning of a canto, or scattered through the body of the poem.
These reflections are full of practical sense and wisdom, and remind
us of the familiar conversation with the reader which forms so great
a charm in Thackeray's novels.
In the Italian Renaissance there is a curious mingling of classical
and romantic influences, and the generation which gave itself up pass-
ionately to the study of Greek and Latin still read with delight the
stories of the Paladins of Charlemagne and the Knights of the Round
Table. What Sir Thomas Malory had done in English prose, Boiardo
did in Latin poetry. When Ariosto entered the service of Cardinal
Ippolito, every one was reading the Orlando Innamorato,' and the
young poet soon fell under the charm of these stories; so that when
the inward impulse which all great poets feel toward the work of
creation came to him, he took the material already at hand and con-
tinued the story of Orlando. ' With a certain skill and inventiveness,
Boiardo had mingled together the epic cycles of Arthur and Charle-
magne. He had shown the Saracen host under King Agramante
driving the army of Charlemagne before them, until the Christians
had finally been shut up within the walls of Paris. It was at this


## p. 743 (#157) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
743
critical moment in his poem that Boiardo died. Ariosto took up the
story where he had left it, and carried it on until the final defeat of
Agramante, and his death at the hands of Orlando in the desert island.
But we must not think that the 'Orlando Furioso' has one definite
plot. At first reading we are confused by the multiplicity of incident,
by the constant change of scene, and by the breaking off of one
story to make place for another. In a single canto the scene changes
from France to Africa, and by means of winged horses tremendous
distances are traveled over in a day. On closer examination we find
that this confusion is only apparent. The poet himself is never con-
fused, but with sure hand he manipulates the many-colored threads
which are 'wrought into the fabric of the poem. The war between
the Saracens and the Christians is a sort of background or stage; a
rallying point for the characters. In reality it attracts but slightly
our attention or interest. Again, Orlando's love for Angelica, and his
madness, although the latter gave the title to the book, and both
afford some of the finest episodes,- have no organic connection with
the whole. The real subject, if any there be, is the loves of Rug-
giero and Bradamante. These are the supposed ancestors of the
house of Este, and it is with their final union, after many vicissitudes,
that the poem ends.
But the real purpose of Ariosto was to amuse the reader by count-
less stories of romantic adventure. It was not as a great creative
genius, as the inventor of new characters, as the earnest and philo-
sophical reformer, that he appears to mankind, but as the supreme
artist. Ariosto represents in its highest development that love for
form, that perfection of style, which is characteristic of the Latin
races as distinguished from the Teutonic. It is this that makes the
'Orlando Furioso' the great epic of the Renaissance, and that caused
Galileo to bestow upon the poet the epithet "divine. "
For nearly thirty years Ariosto changed and polished these lines,
so that the edition of 1532 is quite different from that of 1516. The
stanzas in which the poem is written are smooth and musical, the
language is so chosen as always to express the exact shade of
thought, the interest never flags. What seems the arbitrary breaking
off of a story before its close is really the art of the poet; for he
knows, were each episode to be told by itself, we should have only a
string of novelle, and not the picture he desired to paint,- that of the
world of chivalry, with its knights-errant in search of adventures, its
damsels in distress, its beautiful gardens and lordly palaces, its her-
mits and magicians, its hippogriffs and dragons, and all the parapher-
nalia of magic art.
Ariosto's treatment of chivalry is peculiar to himself. Spenser in
the sixteenth century, and Lord Tennyson in our own day, pictured


## p. 744 (#158) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
744
its virtues and noble aspirations. In his immortal Don Quixote,'
Cervantes held its extravagances up to ridicule. In Ariosto's day no
one believed any longer in the heroes or the ideals of chivalry, nor
did the poet himself; hence there is an air of unreality about the
poem. The figures that pass before us, although they have certain
characteristics of their own, are not real beings, but those that dwell
in a land of fancy. As the poet tells these stories of a bygone age,
a smile of irony plays upon his face; he cannot take them seriously;
and while he never goes so far as to turn into ridicule the ideals of
chivalry, yet, in such episodes as the prodigious exploits of Rodo-
monte within the walls of Paris, and the voyage of Astolfo to the
moon, he does approach dangerously near to the burlesque.
We are not inspired by large and noble thoughts in reading the
'Orlando Furioso. ' We are not deeply stirred by pity or terror. Νο
lofty principles are inculcated. Even the pathetic scenes, such as the
death of Zerbino and Isabella, stir no real emotion in us, but we
experience a sense of the artistic effect of a poetic death.
It is not often, in these days of the making of many books of
which there is no end, that one has time to read a poem which is
longer than the Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' together. But there is a
compelling charm about the 'Orlando,' and he who sits down to read
it with serious purpose will soon find himself under the spell of an
attraction which comes from unflagging interest and from perfec-
tion of style and construction. No translation can convey an adequate
sense of this beauty of color and form; but the versions of William
Stewart Rose, here cited, suggest the energy, invention, and intensity
of the epic.
In 1532 Ariosto published his final edition of the poem, now en-
larged to forty-six cantos, and retouched from beginning to end. He
died not long afterward, in 1533, and was buried in the church of
San Benedetto, where a magnificent monument marks his resting-
place.
1. Oscar Kuhne.


## p. 745 (#159) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
745
THE FRIENDSHIP OF MEDORO AND CLORIDANE
From Orlando Furioso,' Cantos 18 and 19
TWO
wo Moors among the Paynim army were,
From stock obscure in Ptolomita grown;
Of whom the story, an example rare
Of constant love, is worthy to be known.
Medore and Cloridane were named the pair;
Who, whether Fortune pleased to smile or frown,
Served Dardinello with fidelity,
And late with him to France had crost the sea.
Of nimble frame and strong was Cloridane,
Throughout his life a follower of the chase.
A cheek of white, suffused with crimson grain,
Medoro had, in youth, a pleasing grace;
Nor bound on that emprize, 'mid all the train,
Was there a fairer or more jocund face.
Crisp hair he had of gold, and jet-black eyes;
And seemed an angel lighted from the skies.
These two were posted on a rampart's height,
With more to guard the encampment from surprise,
When 'mid the equal intervals, at night,
Medoro gazed on heaven with sleepy eyes.
In all his talk, the stripling, woeful wight,
Here cannot choose, but of his lord devise,
The royal Dardinel; and evermore
Him left unhonored on the field, deplore.
Then, turning to his mate, cries, "Cloridane,
I cannot tell thee what a cause of woe
It is to me, my lord upon the plain
Should lie, unworthy food for wolf or crow!
Thinking how still to me he was humane,
Meseems, if in his honor I forego
This life of mine, for favors so immense
I shall but make a feeble recompense.
"That he may not lack sepulture, will I
Go forth, and seek him out among the slain;
And haply God may will that none shall spy
Where Charles's camp lies hushed. Do thou remain;
That, if my death be written in the sky,
Thou may'st the deed be able to explain.


## p. 746 (#160) ############################################

746
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
So that if Fortune foil so far a feat,
The world, through Fame, my loving heart may weet. »
Amazed was Cloridane a child should show
Such heart, such love, and such fair loyalty;
And fain would make the youth his thought forego,
Whom he held passing dear: but fruitlessly
Would move his steadfast purpose; for such woe
Will neither comforted nor altered be.
Medoro is disposed to meet his doom,
Or to inclose his master in the tomb.
Seeing that naught would bend him, naught would move,
"I too will go," was Cloridane's reply:
"In such a glorious act myself will prove;
As well such famous death I covet, I.
What other thing is left me, here above,
Deprived of thee, Medoro mine? To die
With thee in arms is better, on the plain,
Than afterwards of grief, shouldst thou be slain. "
And thus resolved, disposing in their place
Their guard's relief, depart the youthful pair,
Leave fosse and palisade, and in small space
Are among ours, who watch with little care;
Who, for they little fear the Paynim race,
Slumber with fires extinguished everywhere.
'Mid carriages and arms they lie supine,
Up to the eyes immersed in sleep and wine.
A moment Cloridano stopt, and cried,
"Not to be lost are opportunities.
This troop, by whom my master's blood was shed,
Medoro, ought not I to sacrifice?
Do thou, lest any one this way be led,
Watch everywhere about, with ears and eyes;
For a wide way, amid the hostile horde,
I offer here to make thee with my sword. "
So said he, and his talk cut quickly short,
Coming where learned Alpheus slumbered nigh;
Who had the year before sought Charles's court,
In med'cine, magic, and astrology
Well versed: but now in art found small support,
Or rather found that it was all a lie.
He had foreseen that he his long-drawn life
Should finish on the bosom of his wife.


## p. 747 (#161) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
747
And now the Saracen with wary view
Had pierced his weasand with the pointed sword.
Four others he near that Diviner slew,
Nor gave the wretches time to say a word.
Sir Turpin in his story tells not who,
And Time has of their names effaced record.
Palidon of Moncalier next he speeds;
One who securely sleeps between two steeds.
Rearing th' insidious blade, the pair are near
The place where round King Charles's pavilion
Are tented warlike paladin and peer,
Guarding the side that each is camped upon,
When in good time the Paynims backward steer,
And sheathe their swords, the impious slaughter done;
Deeming impossible, in such a number,
But they must light on one who does not slumber.
And though they might escape well charged with prey,
To save themselves they think sufficient gain.
Thither by what he deems the safest way
(Medoro following him) went Cloridane
Where in the field, 'mid bow and falchion lay,
And shield and spear, in pool of purple stain,
Wealthy and poor, the king and vassal's corse,
And overthrown the rider and his horse.
The silvery splendor glistened yet more clear,
There where renowned Almontes's son lay dead.
Faithful Medoro mourned his master dear,
Who well agnized the quartering white and red,
With visage bathed in many a bitter tear
(For he a rill from either eyelid shed),
And piteous act and moan, that might have whist
The winds, his melancholy plaint to list;
But with a voice supprest—not that he aught
Regards if any one the noise should hear,
Because he of his life takes any thought,
Of which loathed burden he would fain be clear;
But lest his being heard should bring to naught
The pious purpose which has brought them here
The youths the king upon their shoulders stowed;
And so between themselves divide the load.


## p. 748 (#162) ############################################

748
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
Hurrying their steps, they hastened, as they might,
Under the cherished burden they conveyed;
And now approaching was the lord of light,
To sweep from heaven the stars, from earth the shade,
When good Zerbino, he whose valiant sprite
Was ne'er in time of need by sleep down-weighed,
From chasing Moors all night, his homeward way
Was taking to the camp at dawn of day.
He has with him some horsemen in his train,
That from afar the two companions spy.
Expecting thus some spoil or prize to gain,
They, every one, toward that quarter hie.
"Brother, behoves us," cried young Cloridane,
"To cast away the load we bear, and fly;
For 'twere a foolish thought (might well be said)
To lose two living men, to save one dead;"
And dropt the burden, weening his Medore
Had done the same by it, upon his side;
But that poor boy, who loved his master more,
His shoulders to the weight alone applied:
Cloridane hurrying with all haste before,
Deeming him close behind him or beside;
Who, did he know his danger, him to save
A thousand deaths, instead of one, would brave.
The closest path, amid
gray,
To save himself, pursued the youth forlorn;
But all his schemes were marred by the delay
Of that sore weight upon his shoulders borne.
The place he knew not, and mistook the way,
And hid himself again in sheltering thorn.
Secure and distant was his mate, that through
The greenwood shade with lighter shoulders flew.
So far was Cloridane advanced before,
He heard the boy no longer in the wind;
But when he marked the absence of Medore,
It seemed as if his heart was left behind.
"Ah! how was I so negligent," (the Moor
Exclaimed) "so far beside myself, and blind,
That, I, Medoro, should without thee fare,
Nor know when I deserted thee or where? »


## p. 749 (#163) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
749
So saying, in the wood he disappears,
Plunging into the maze with hurried pace;
And thither, whence he lately issued, steers,
And, desperate, of death returns in trace.
Cries and the tread of steeds this while he hears,
And word and threat of foeman, as in chase;
Lastly Medoro by his voice is known,
Disarmed, on foot, 'mid many horse, alone.
A hundred horsemen who the youth surround,
Zerbino leads, and bids his followers seize
The stripling; like a top the boy turns round
And keeps him as he can: among the trees,
Behind oak, elm, beech, ash, he takes his ground,
Nor from the cherished load his shoulders frees.
Wearied, at length, the burden he bestowed
Upon the grass, and stalked about his load.
As in her rocky cavern the she-bear,
With whom close warfare Alpine hunters wage,
Uncertain hangs about her shaggy care,
And growls in mingled sound of love and rage,
To unsheath her claws, and blood her tushes bare,
Would natural hate and wrath the beast engage;
Love softens her, and bids from strife retire,
And for her offspring watch, amid her ire.
Cloridane, who to aid him knows not how,
And with Medoro willingly would die,
But who would not for death this being forego,
Until more foes than one should lifeless lie,
Ambushed, his sharpest arrow to his bow
Fits, and directs it with so true an eye,
The feathered weapon bores a Scotchman's brain,
And lays the warrior dead upon the plain.
Together, all the others of the band
Turned thither, whence was shot the murderous reed;
Meanwhile he launched another from his stand,
That a new foe might by the weapon bleed,
Whom (while he made of this and that demand,
And loudly questioned who had done the deed)
The arrow reached-transfixed the wretch's throat
And cut his question short in middle note.


## p. 750 (#164) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
750
Zerbino, captain of those horse, no more
Can at the piteou sight his wrath refrain;
In furious heat he springs upon Medore,
Exclaiming, "Thou of this shalt bear the pain. "
One hand he in his locks of golden ore
Enwreaths, and drags him to himself amain;
But as his eyes that beauteous face survey,
Takes pity on the boy, and does not slay.
To him the stripling turns, with suppliant cry,
And, "By thy God, sir knight," exclaims, "I pray,
Be not so passing cruel, nor deny
That I in earth my honored king may lay:
No other grace I supplicate, nor I
This for the love of life, believe me, say.
So much, no longer, space of life I crave,
As may suffice to give my lord a grave.
"And if you needs must feed the beast and bird,
Like Theban Creon, let their worst be done
Upon these limbs; so that by me interred
In earth be those of good Almontes's son. "
Medoro thus his suit, with grace, preferred,
And words to move a mountain; and so won
Upon Zerbino's mood, to kindness turned,
With love and pity he all over burned.
This while, a churlish horseman of the band,
Who little deference for his lord confest,
His lance uplifting, wounded overhand
The unhappy suppliant in his dainty breast.
Zerbino, who the cruel action scanned,
Was deeply stirred, the rather that, opprest,
And livid with the blow the churl had sped,
Medoro fell as he was wholly dead.
The Scots pursue their chief, who pricks before,
Through the deep wood, inspired by high disdain,
When he has left the one and the other Moor,
This dead, that scarce alive, upon the plain.
There for a mighty space lay young Medore,
Spouting his life-blood from so large a vein
He would have perished, but that thither made
A stranger, as it chanced, who lent him aid.


## p. 751 (#165) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
THE SAVING OF MEDORO
From Orlando Furioso,' Canto 19
Y CHANCE arrived a damsel at the place,
Β΄ Who was (though mean and rustic was her wear)
Of royal presence and of beauteous face,
And lofty manners, sagely debonnair.
Her have I left unsung so long a space,
That you will hardly recognize the fair
Angelica: in her (if known not) scan
The lofty daughter of Catay's great khan.
Angelica, when she had won again
The ring Brunello had from her conveyed,
So waxed in stubborn pride and haught disdain,
She seemed to scorn this ample world, and strayed
Alone, and held as cheap each living swain,
Although amid the best by fame arrayed;
Nor brooked she to remember a gallant
In Count Orlando or King Sacripant:
And above every other deed repented,
That good Rinaldo she had loved of yore;
And that to look so low she had consented,
(As by such choice dishonored) grieved her sore.
Love, hearing this, such arrogance resented,
And would the damsel's pride endure no more.
Where young Medoro lay he took his stand,
And waited her, with bow and shaft in hand.
When fair Angelica the stripling spies,
Nigh hurt to death in that disastrous fray,
Who for his king, that there unsheltered lies,
More sad than for his own misfortune lay,
She feels new pity in her bosom rise,
Which makes its entry in unwonted way.
Touched was her naughty heart, once hard and curst,
And more when he his piteous tale rehearsed.
751
And calling back to memory her art,
For she in Ind had learned chirurgery,
(Since it appears such studies in that part
Worthy of praise and fame are held to be,
And, as an heirloom, sires to sons impart,
With little aid of books, the mystery,)


## p. 752 (#166) ############################################

752
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
Disposed herself to work with simples' juice,
Till she in him should healthier life produce.
And recollects an herb had caught her sight
In passing thither, on a pleasant plain:
What (whether dittany or pancy hight)
I know not; fraught with virtue to restrain
The crimson blood forth-welling, and of might
To sheathe each perilous and piercing pain.
She found it near, and having pulled the weed,
Returned to seek Medoro on the mead.
Returning, she upon a swain did light,
Who was on horseback passing through the wood.
Strayed from the lowing herd, the rustic wight
A heifer missing for two days pursued.
Him she with her conducted, where the might
Of the faint youth was ebbing with his blood:
Which had the ground about so deeply dyed
Life was nigh wasted with the gushing tide.
Angelica alights upon the ground,
And he, her rustic comrade, at her hest.
She hastened 'twixt two stones the herb to pound,
Then took it, and the healing juice exprest:
With this did she foment the stripling's wound,
And even to the hips, his waist and breast;
And (with such virtue was the salve endued)
It stanched his life-blood, and his strength renewed.
• And into him infused such force again,
That he could mount the horse the swain conveyed;
But good Medoro would not leave the plain
Till he in earth had seen his master laid.
He, with the monarch, buried Cloridane,
And after followed whither pleased the maid.
Who was to stay with him, by pity led,
Beneath the courteous shepherd's humble shed.
Nor would the damsel quit the lowly pile
(So she esteemed the youth) till he was sound;
Such pity first she felt, when him erewhile
She saw outstretched and bleeding on the ground.
Touched by his mien and manners next, a file
She felt corrode her heart with secret wound;
She felt corrode her heart, and with desire,
By little and by little warmed, took fire.


## p. 753 (#167) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
The shepherd dwelt between two mountains hoar,
In goodly cabin, in the greenwood shade,
With wife and children; in short time before,
The brand-new shed had builded in the glade.
Here of his grisly wound the youthful Moor
Was briefly healed by the Catayan maid;
But who in briefer space, a sorer smart
Than young Medoro's, suffered at her heart.
[She pines for love of him, and at length makes her love known.
solemnize their marriage, and remain a month there with great happiness. ]
Amid such pleasures, where, with tree o'ergrown,
Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin,
On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone,
The knife was straight at work, or ready pin.
And there, without, in thousand places lone,
And in as many places graved, within,
Medoro and Angelica were traced,
In divers ciphers quaintly interlaced.
When she believed they had prolonged their stay
More than enow, the damsel made design
In India to revisit her Catay,
And with its crown Medoro's head entwine.
She had upon her wrist an armlet, gay
With costly gems, in witness and in sign
Of love to her by Count Orlando borne,
And which the damsel for long time had worn.
No love which to the paladin she bears,
But that it costly is and wrought with care,
This to Angelica so much endears,
That never more esteemed was matter rare;
This she was suffered, in the isle of tears,
I know not by what privilege, to wear,
When, naked, to the whale exposed for food
By that inhospitable race and rude.
753
She, not possessing wherewithal to pay
The kindly couple's hospitality,—
Served by them in their cabin, from the day
She there was lodged, with such fidelity,-
Unfastened from her arm the bracelet gay,
And bade them keep it for her memory.
Departing hence, the lovers climb the side
Of hills, which fertile France from Spain divide.
They
II-48


## p. 754 (#168) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
754
THE MADNESS OF ORLANDO
From Orlando Furioso,' Canto 23
HE course in pathless woods, which without rein
THE The Tartar's charger had pursued astray,
Made Roland for two days, with fruitless pain,
Follow him, without tidings of his way.
Orlando reached a rill of crystal vein,
On either bank of which a meadow lay;
Which, stained with native hues and rich, he sees,
And dotted o'er with fair and many trees.
The mid-day fervor made the shelter sweet
To hardy herd as well as naked swain;
So that Orlando well beneath the heat
Some deal might wince, opprest with plate and chain.
He entered for repose the cool retreat,
And found it the abode of grief and pain;
And place of sojourn more accursed and fell
On that unhappy day, than tongue can tell.
Turning him round, he there on many a tree
Beheld engraved, upon the woody shore,
What as the writing of his deity
He knew, as soon as he had marked the lore.
This was a place of those described by me,
Whither oft-times, attended by Medore,
From the near shepherd's cot had wont to stray
The beauteous lady, sovereign of Catay.
In a hundred knots, amid these green abodes,
In a hundred parts, their ciphered names are dight;
Whose many letters are so many goads,
Which Love has in his bleeding heart-core pight.
He would discredit in a thousand modes,
That which he credits in his own despite ;
And would perforce persuade himself, that rind
Other Angelica than his had signed.
"And yet I know these characters," he cried,
"Of which I have so many read and seen;
By her may this Medoro be belied,
And me, she, figured in the name, may mean. "
Feeding on such like phantasies, beside
The real truth, did sad Orlando lean


## p. 755 (#169) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
755
Upon the empty hope, though ill contented,
Which he by self-illusions had fomented.
But stirred and aye rekindled it, the more
That he to quench the ill suspicion wrought,
Like the incautious bird, by fowler's lore,
Hampered in net or lime; which, in the thought
To free its tangled pinions and to soar,
By struggling is but more securely caught.
Orlando passes thither, where a mountain
O'erhangs in guise of arch the crystal fountain.
Here from his horse the sorrowing county lit,
And at the entrance of the grot surveyed
A cloud of words, which seemed but newly writ,
And which the young Medoro's hand had made.
On the great pleasure he had known in it,
This sentence he in verses had arrayed;
Which to his tongue, I deem, might make pretense
To polished phrase; and such in ours the sense:—
༥
Gay plants, green herbage, rill of limpid vein,
And, grateful with cool shade, thou gloomy cave,
Where oft, by many wooed with fruitless pain,
Beauteous Angelica, the child of grave
King Galaphron, within my arms has lain;
For the convenient harborage you gave,
I, poor Medoro, can but in my lays,
As recompense, forever sing your praise.
"And any loving lord devoutly pray,
Damsel and cavalier, and every one,
Whom choice or fortune hither shall convey,
Stranger or native, -to this crystal run,
Shade, caverned rock, and grass, and plants, to say,
'Benignant be to you the fostering sun
And moon, and may the choir of nymphs provide,
That never swain his flock may hither guide. '»
――――
In Arabic was writ the blessing said,
Known to Orlando like the Latin tongue,
Who, versed in many languages, best read
Was in this speech; which oftentimes from wrong
And injury and shame had saved his head,
What time he roved the Saracens among.


## p. 756 (#170) ############################################

756
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
But let him boast not of its former boot,
O'erbalanced by the present bitter fruit.
Three times, and four, and six, the lines impressed
Upon the stone that wretch perused, in vain
Seeking another sense than was expressed,
And ever saw the thing more clear and plain;
And all the while, within his troubled breast,
He felt an icy hand his heart-core strain.
With mind and eyes close fastened on the block,
At length he stood, not differing from the rock.
Then well-nigh lost all feeling; so a prey
Wholly was he to that o'ermastering woe.
This is a pang, believe the experienced say
Of him who speaks, which does all griefs outgo.
His pride had from his forehead passed away,
His chin had fallen upon his breast below;
Nor found he, so grief-barred each natural vent,
Moisture for tears, or utterance for lament.
Stifled within, the impetuous sorrow stays,
Which would too quickly issue; so to abide
Water is seen, imprisoned in the vase,
Whose neck is narrow and whose swell is wide;
What time, when one turns up the inverted base,
Toward the mouth, so hastes the hurrying tide,
And in the strait encounters such a stop,
It scarcely works a passage, drop by drop.
He somewhat to himself returned, and thought
How possibly the thing might be untrue:
That some one (so he hoped, desired, and sought
To think) his lady would with shame pursue;
Or with such weight of jealousy had wrought
To whelm his reason, as should him undo;
And that he, whosoe'er the thing had planned,
Had counterfeited passing well her hand.
With such vain hope he sought himself to cheat,
And manned some deal his spirits and awoke;
Then prest the faithful Brigliadoro's seat,
As on the sun's retreat his sister broke.
Not far the warrior had pursued his beat,
Ere eddying from a roof he saw the smoke:
Heard noise of dog and kine, a farm espied,
And thitherward in quest of lodging hied.


## p. 757 (#171) ############################################

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
757
Languid, he lit, and left his Brigliador
To a discreet attendant; one undrest
His limbs, one doffed the golden spurs he wore,
And one bore off, to clean, his iron vest.
This was the homestead where the young Medore
Lay wounded, and was here supremely blest.
Orlando here, with other food unfed,
Having supt full of sorrow, sought his bed.
Little availed the count his self-deceit;
For there was one who spake of it unsought:
The shepherd-swain, who to allay the heat
With which he saw his guest so troubled, thought
The tale which he was wonted to repeat-
Of the two lovers- to each listener taught;
A history which many loved to hear,
He now, without reserve, 'gan tell the peer.
"How at Angelica's persuasive prayer,
He to his farm had carried young Medore,
Grievously wounded with an arrow; where
In little space she healed the angry sore.
But while she exercised this pious care,
Love in her heart the lady wounded more,
And kindled from small spark so fierce a fire,
She burnt all over, restless with desire;
"Nor thinking she of mightiest king was born,
Who ruled in the East, nor of her heritage,
Forced by too puissant love, had thought no scorn
To be the consort of a poor foot-page. "
His story done, to them in proof was borne
The gem, which, in reward for harborage,
To her extended in that kind abode,
Angelica, at parting, had bestowed.
In him, forthwith, such deadly hatred breed
That bed, that house, that swain, he will not stay
Till the morn break, or till the dawn succeed,
Whose twilight goes before approaching day.
In haste, Orlando takes his arms and steed,
And to the deepest greenwood wends his way.
And when assured that he is there alone,
Gives utterance to his grief in shriek and groan.


## p. 758 (#172) ############################################

758
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
Never from tears, never from sorrowing,
He paused; nor found he peace by night or day;
He fled from town, in forest harboring,
And in the open air on hard earth lay.
He marveled at himself, how such a spring
Of water from his eyes could stream away,
And breath was for so many sobs supplied;
And thus oft-times, amid his mourning, cried:
-:
"I am not - am not what I seem to sight:
What Roland was, is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful lady's spite,
Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow left above,
A warning to all such as trust in love. "
All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount
Inflamed his fury so, in him was naught
But turned to hatred, frenzy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more, but bared his falchion bright,
Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestous wrath was ill secure.
So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,
That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,
Or wondrous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight;
But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew,
Was needed by Orlando's peerless might.
He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.


## p. 759 (#173) ############################################

ARISTOPHANES
He many others, with as little let
As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore;
And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,
And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.
The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here, some there, across the forest hie,
And hurry thither, all, the cause to see.
But I have reached such point, my history,
If I o'erpass this bound, may irksome be.
And I my story will delay to end
Rather than by my tediousness offend.
ARISTOPHANES
(B. C. 448-380? )
BY PAUL SHOREY
759
HE birth-year of Aristophanes is placed about 448 B. C. , on
the ground that he is said to have been almost a boy when
his first comedy was presented in 427. His last play, the
'Plutus,' was produced in 388, and there is no evidence that he long
survived this date. Little is known of his life beyond the allusions,
in the Parabases of the 'Acharnians,' 'Knights,' and 'Wasps,' to his
prosecution by Cleon, to his own or his father's estate at Ægina, and
to his premature baldness. He left three sons who also wrote
comedies.
Aristophanes is the sole extant representative of the so-called Old
Comedy of Athens; a form of dramatic art which developed obscurely
under the shadow of Attic Tragedy in the first half of the fifth cen-
tury B. C. , out of the rustic revelry of the Phallic procession and
Comus song of Dionysus, perhaps with some outside suggestions from
the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court
comedy of Epicharmus. The chief note of this older comedy for the
ancient critics was its unbridled license of direct personal satire and
invective. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed
with the utmost freedom any one who deserved to be branded with
infamy. This old political Comedy was succeeded in the calmer times


## p. 760 (#174) ############################################

760
ARISTOPHANES
that followed the Peloponnesian War by the so-called Middle Comedy
(390-320) of Alexis, Antiphanes, Strattis, and some minor men; which
insensibly passed into the New Comedy (320-250) of Menander and
Philemon, known to us in the reproductions of Terence. And this
new comedy, which portrayed types of private life instead of satiriz-
ing noted persons by name, and which, as Aristotle says, produced
laughter by innuendo rather than by scurrility, was preferred to the
"terrible graces" of her elder sister by the gentle and refined Plu-
tarch, or the critic who has usurped his name in the 'Comparison of
Aristophanes and Menander. ' The old Attic Comedy has been vari-
ously compared to Charivari, Punch, the comic opera of Offenbach,
and a Parisian 'revue de fin d'année. '
There is no good modern analogue. It is
not our comedy of manners, plot, and situ-
ation; nor yet is it mere buffoonery. It is
a peculiar mixture of broad political, social,
and literary satire, and polemical discus-
sion of large ideas, with the burlesque and
licentious extravagances that were deemed
the most acceptable service at the festival
of the laughter-loving, tongue-loosening god
of the vine.

The typical plan of an Aristophanic com-
edy is very simple. The protagonist under-
takes in all apparent seriousness to give a
local habitation and a body to some ingen-
ious fancy, airy speculation, or bold metaphor: as for example, the
procuring of a private peace for a citizen who is weary of the priva-
tions of war; or the establishment of a city in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
where the birds shall regulate things better than the featherless
biped, man; or the restoration of the eyesight of the proverbially
blind god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at once en-
listed for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into
execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is
given over to a series of loosely connected scenes, ascending to a
climax of absurdity, in which the consequences of the original happy
thought are followed out with a Swiftian verisimilitude of piquant
detail and a Rabelaisian license of uproarious mirth. It rests with
the audience to take the whole as pure extravaganza, or as a reduc-
tio ad absurdum or playful defense of the conception underlying the
original idea. In the intervals between the scenes, the chorus sing
rollicking topical songs or bits of exquisite lyric, or in the name of
the poet directly exhort and admonish the audience in the so-called
Parabasis.
ARISTOPHANES


## p. 761 (#175) ############################################

ARISTOPHANES
761
Of Aristophanes's first two plays, the Banqueters of Hercules'
(427), and the Babylonians' (426), only fragments remain.
(
The im-
politic representation in the latter of the Athenian allies as branded
Babylonian slaves was the ground of Cleon's attack in the courts
upon Aristophanes, or Callistratus in whose name the play was pro-
duced.
The extant plays are the following:-
'The Acharnians,' B. C. 425, shortly after the Athenian defeat at
Delium. The worthy countryman, Dicæopolis, weary of being cooped
up within the Long Walls, and disgusted with the shameless jobbery
of the politicians, sends to Sparta for samples of peace (the Greek
word means also libations) of different vintages. The Thirty Years'
brand smells of nectar and ambrosia. He accepts it, concludes a pri-
vate treaty for himself and friends, and proceeds to celebrate the
rural Dionysia with wife and child, soothing, by an eloquent plea
pronounced in tattered tragic vestments borrowed from Euripides,
the anger of the chorus of choleric Acharnian charcoal burners,
exasperated at the repeated devastation of their deme by the Spar-
tans. He then opens a market, to which a jolly Boeotian brings the
long-lost, thrice-desired Copaic eel; while a starveling Megarian, to
the huge delight of the Athenian groundlings, sells his little daugh-
ters, disguised as pigs, for a peck of salt. Finally Dicæopolis goes
forth to a wedding banquet, from which he returns very mellow in
the company of two flute girls; while Lamachus, the head of the war
party, issues forth to do battle with the Boeotians in the snow, and
comes back, with a bloody coxcomb. This play was successfully
given in Greek by the students of the University of Pennsylvania in
the spring of 1886, and interestingly discussed in the Nation of May
6th by Professor Gildersleeve.
'The Knights,' B. C. 424: named from the chorus of young Athe-
nian cavaliers who abet the sausage-seller, Agoracritus, egged on by
the discontented family servants (the generals), Nicias and Demos-
thenes, to outbid with shameless flattery the rascally Paphlagonian
steward, Cleon, and supplant him in the favor of their testy bean-fed
old master, Demos (or People). At the close, Demos recovers his
wits and his youth, and is revealed sitting enthroned in his glory in
the good old Marathonian Athens of the Violet Crown.
longation of the billingsgate in the contest between Cleon and the
sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern taste; but the portrait of
the Demagogue is for all time.
The pro-
'The Clouds,' B. C. 423: an attack on Socrates, unfairly taken as
an embodiment of the deleterious and unsettling "new learning,"
both in the form of Sophistical rhetoric and "meteorological" specu-
lation. Worthy Strepsiades, eager to find a new way to pay the


## p. 762 (#176) ############################################

762
ARISTOPHANES
debts in which the extravagance of his horse-racing son Pheidippides
has involved him, seeks to enter the youth as a student in the
Thinking-shop or Reflectory of Socrates, that he may learn to make
the worse appear the better reason, and so baffle his creditors before
a jury. The young man, after much demur and the ludicrous failure
of his father, who at first matriculates in his stead, consents. He
listens to the pleas of the just and unjust argument in behalf of the
old and new education, and becomes himself such a proficient that
he demonstrates, in flawless reasoning, that Euripides is a better poet
than Æschylus, and that a boy is justified in beating his father for
affirming the contrary. Strepsiades thereupon, cured of his folly,
undertakes a subtle investigation into the timbers of the roof of
the Reflectory, with a view to smoking out the corrupters of youth.
Many of the songs sung by or to the clouds, the patron deities of
Socrates's misty lore, are extremely beautiful. Socrates is made to
allude to these attacks of comedy by Plato in the 'Apology,' and, on
his last day in prison, in the 'Phædo. ' In the 'Symposium' or 'Ban-
quet' of Plato, Aristophanes bursts in upon a company of friends
with whom Socrates is feasting, and drinks with them till morning;
while Socrates forces him and the tragic poet Agathon, both of them
very sleepy, to admit that the true dramatic artist will excel in both
tragedy and comedy.
'The Wasps, B. C. 422: a jeu d'esprit turning on the Athenian
passion for litigation. Young Bdelucleon (hate-Cleon) can keep his
old father Philocleon (love-Cleon) out of the courts only by instituting
a private court in his own house. The first culprit, the house-dog,
is tried for stealing a Sicilian cheese, and acquitted by Philocleon's
mistaking the urn of acquittal for that of condemnation. The old
man is inconsolable at the first escape of a victim from his clutches;
but finally, renouncing his folly, takes lessons from his exquisite of
a son in the manners and deportment of a fine gentleman. He then
attends a dinner party, where he betters his instructions with comic
exaggeration and returns home in high feather, singing tipsy catches
and assaulting the watch on his way. The chorus of Wasps, the
visible embodiment of a metaphor found also in Plato's 'Republic,'
symbolizes the sting used by the Athenian jurymen to make the rich
disgorge a portion of their gathered honey. The Plaideurs' of
Racine is an imitation of this play; and the motif of the committal
of the dog is borrowed by Ben Jonson in the 'Staple of News. '
'The Peace,' B. C. 421: in support of the Peace of Nicias, ratified
soon afterward (Grote's 'History of Greece,' Vol. vi. , page 492).
Trygæus, an honest vine-dresser yearning for his farm, in parody of
the Bellerophon of Euripides, ascends to heaven on a dung-beetle.
He there hauls Peace from the bottom of the well into which she


## p. 763 (#177) ############################################

ARISTOPHANES
763
had been cast by Ares, and brings her home in triumph to Greece,
when she inaugurates a reign of plenty and uproarious jollity, and
celebrates the nuptials of Trygæus and her handmaid Opora (Har-
vest-home).
'The Birds,' B. C. 414. Peisthetærus (Plausible) and Euelpides
(Hopeful), whose names and deeds are perhaps a satire on the
unbounded ambition that brought ruin on Athens at Syracuse, jour-
ney to Birdland and persuade King Hoopoe to induce the birds to
build Nephelococcygia or Cloud-Cuckoo-Burgh in the air between the
gods and men, starve out the gods with a "Melian famine," and rule
the world themselves. The gods, their supplies of incense cut off,
are forced to treat, and Peisthetærus receives in marriage Basileia
(Sovereignty), the daughter of Zeus. The mise en scène, with the gor-
geous plumage of the bird-chorus, must have been very impressive,
and many of the choric songs are exceedingly beautiful. There is an
interesting account by Professor Jebb in the Fortnightly Review
(Vol. xli. ) of a performance of 'The Birds' at Cambridge in 1884.
Two plays, B. C. 411: (1) at the Lenæa, 'The Lysistrata,' in which
the women of Athens and Sparta by a secession from bed and board
compel their husbands to end the war; (2) The Thesmophoriazusæ ›
or Women's Festival of Demeter, a licentious but irresistibly funny
assault upon Euripides. The tragedian, learning that the women in
council assembled are debating on the punishment due to his miso-
gyny, implores the effeminate poet Agathon to intercede for him.
That failing, he dispatches his kinsman Mnesilochus, disguised with
singed beard and woman's robes, a sight to shake the midriff of
despair with laughter, to plead his cause. The advocate's excess of
zeal betrays him; he is arrested: and the remainder of the play is
occupied by the ludicrous devices, borrowed or parodied from well-
known Euripidean tragedies, by which the poet endeavors to rescue
his intercessor.
'The Frogs,' B. C. 405, in the brief respite of hope between the
victory of Arginusæ and the final overthrow of Athens at Egos-
potami. Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are dead. The minor
bards are a puny folk, and Dionysus is resolved to descend to Hades
in quest of a truly creative poet, one capable of a figure like "my
star god's glow-worm," or "His honor rooted in dishonor stood. "
After many surprising adventures by the way, and in the outer pre-
cincts of the underworld, accompanied by his Sancho Panza, Xan-
thias, he arrives at the court of Pluto just in time to be chosen arbi-
trator of the great contest between Eschylus and Euripides for the
tragic throne in Hades. The comparisons and parodies of the styles
of Eschylus and Euripides that follow, constitute, in spite of their
comic exaggeration, one of the most entertaining and discriminating


## p. 764 (#178) ############################################

764
ARISTOPHANES
chapters of literary criticism extant, and give us an exalted idea of
the intelligence of the audience that appreciated them. Dionysus
decides for Eschylus, and leads him back in triumph to the upper
world.
The Ecclesiazusæ' or 'Ladies in Parliament,' B. C. 393: appar-
ently a satire on the communistic theories which must have been
current in the discussions of the schools before they found definite
expression in Plato's 'Republic. ' The ladies of Athens rise betimes,
purloin their husbands' hats and canes, pack the Assembly, and pass
a measure to intrust the reins of government to women. An extrav-
agant and licentious communism is the result.
The Plutus,' B. C. 388: a second and much altered edition of a
play represented for the first time in 408. With the 'Ecclesiazusæ
it marks the transition to the Middle Comedy, there being no para-
basis, and little of the exuberant verve of the older pieces. The
blind god of Wealth recovers his eyesight by sleeping in the temple
of Esculapius, and proceeds to distribute the gifts of fortune more
equitably.
The assignment of the dates and restoration of the plots of the
thirty-two lost plays, of which a few not very interesting fragments
remain, belong to the domain of conjectural erudition.
Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral
censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy;
by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a
laugh. Both sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously
argued in Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judi-
cious summing up of the case of Aristophanes vs. Euripides in Pro-
fessor Jebb's lectures on Greek poetry. The soberer view seems
to be that while predominantly a comic artist, obeying the instincts
of his genius, he did frequently make his comedy the vehicle of an
earnest conservative polemic against the new spirit of the age in
Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued Euripides with
relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent themselves to
parody, and his lines were on the lips of every theatre-goer; but
also because he believed that Euripides had spoiled the old, stately,
heroic art of Eschylus and Sophocles by incongruous infusions of
realism and sentimentalism, and had debased the "large utterance of
the early gods" by an unhallowed mixture of colloquialism, dialectic,
and chicane.
Aristophanes travestied the teachings of Socrates because his un-
gainly figure, and the oddity (atopia) attributed to him even by Plato,
made him an excellent butt; yet also because he felt strongly that it
was better for the young Athenian to spend his days in the Palæstra,
or "where the elm-tree whispers to the plane," than in filing a


## p. 765 (#179) ############################################

ARISTOPHANES
765
contentious tongue on barren logomachies. That Socrates in fact
discussed only ethical problems, and disclaimed all sympathy with
speculations about things above our heads, made no difference: he
was the best human embodiment of a hateful educational error. And
similarly the assault upon Cleon, the "pun-pelleting of demagogues
from Pnux," was partly due to the young aristocrat's instinctive aver-
sion to the coarse popular leader, and to the broad mark which the
latter presented to the shafts of satire, but equally, perhaps, to a
genuine patriotic revolt at the degradation of Athenian politics in
the hands of the successors of Pericles.
But Aristophanes's ideas interest us less than his art and humor.
We have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world
there is little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His per-
sonages are mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if
broadly sketched, and genuine touches of human nature lend veri-
similitude to their most improbable actions. One or two traditional
comic types appear for the first time, apparently, on his stage:
the alternately cringing and familiar slave or valet of comedy, in
his Xanthias and Karion; and in Dicæopolis, Strepsiades, Demos,
Trygæus, and Dionysus, the sensual, jovial, shrewd, yet naïve and
credulous middle-aged bourgeois gentilhomme or 'Sganarelle,' who is
not ashamed to avow his poltroonery, and yet can, on occasion,
maintain his rights with sturdy independence.
But the chief attraction of Aristophanes is the abounding comic
force and verve of his style. It resembles an impetuous torrent,
whose swift rush purifies in its flow the grossness and obscenity
inseparable from the origin of comedy, and buoys up and sweeps
along on the current of fancy and improvisation the chaff and dross
of vulgar jests, puns, scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags,"
allowing no time for chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which
are singly feeble combine to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity
when huddled upon us with such "impossible conveyance. " This
vivida vis animi can hardly be reproduced in a translation, and disap-
pears altogether in an attempt at an abstract enumeration of the
poet's inexhaustible devices for comic effect. He himself repeatedly
boasts of the fertility of his invention, and claims to have discarded
the coarse farce of his predecessors for something more worthy of
the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be ac-
knowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of
a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny
column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on
the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning
fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of sur-
prises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous terms


## p. 766 (#180) ############################################

766
ARISTOPHANES
in proverbs, quotations, and legal or religious formulas; scenes in
dialect, scenes of excellent fooling in the vein of Uncle Toby and the
Clown, girds at the audience, personalities that for us have lost their
point, about Cleonymus the caster-away of shields, or Euripides's
herb-selling mother, and everywhere unstinted service to the great
gods Priapus and Cloacina.
A finer instrument of comic effect is the parody. The countless
parodies of the lyric and dramatic literature of Greece are perhaps
the most remarkable testimony extant to the intelligence of an
Athenian audience. Did they infallibly catch the allusion when Di-
cæopolis welcomed back to the Athenian fish-market the long-lost
Copaic eel in high Eschylean strain,—
"Of fifty nymphs Copaic alderliefest queen,»
and then, his voice breaking with the intolerable pathos of Admetus's
farewell to the dying Alcestis, added,
"Yea, even in death
Thou'lt bide with me, embalmed and beet-beste wed»?
Did they recognize the blasphemous Pindaric pun in "Helle's holy
straits," for a tight place, and appreciate all the niceties of diction,
metre, and dramatic art discriminated in the comparison between
Æschylus and Euripides in the 'Frogs'? At any rate, no Athenian
could miss the fun of Dicæopolis (like Hector's baby) "scared at the
dazzling plume and nodding crest" of the swashbuckler Lamachus,
of Philocleon, clinging to his ass's belly like Odysseus escaping under
the ram from the Cyclops's cave; of the baby in the Thesmophoria-
zusæ seized as a Euripidean hostage, and turning out a wine bottle
in swaddling-clothes; of light-foot Iris in the rôle of a saucy, fright-
ened soubrette; of the heaven-defying Eschylean Prometheus hiding
under an umbrella from the thunderbolts of Zeus. And they must
have felt instinctively what only a laborious erudition reveals to us,
the sudden subtle modulations of the colloquial comic verse into
mock-heroic travesty of high tragedy or lyric.
Euripides, the chief victim of Aristophanes's genius for parody, was
so burlesqued that his best known lines became by-words, and his
most ardent admirers, the very Balaustions and Euthukleses, must
have grinned when they heard them, like a pair of augurs.
If we
conceive five or six Shakespearean comedies filled from end to end
with ancient Pistols hallooing to "pampered jades of Asia,” and Dr.
Caiuses chanting of "a thousand vagrom posies," we may form some
idea of Aristophanes's handling of the notorious lines-
«The tongue has sworn, the mind remains unsworn. »
"Thou lovest life, thy sire loves it too. "
"Who knows if life and death be truly one? »


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ARISTOPHANES
767
But the charm of Aristophanes does not lie in any of these things
singly, but in the combination of ingenious and paradoxical fancy
with an inexhaustible flow of apt language by which they are held up
and borne out. His personages are ready to make believe anything.
Nothing surprises them long. They enter into the spirit of each
new conceit, and can always discover fresh analogies to bear it out.
The very plots of his plays are realized metaphors or embodied con-
ceits. And the same concrete vividness of imagination is displayed
in single scenes and episodes. The Better and the Worse Reason
plead the causes of the old and new education in person. Cleon and
Brasidas are the pestles with which War proposes to bray Greece in
a mortar; the triremes of Athens in council assembled declare that
they will rot in the docks sooner than yield their virginity to musty,
fusty Hyperbolus. The fair cities of Greece stand about waiting for
the recovery of Peace from her Well, with dreadful black eyes, poor
things; Armisticia and Harvest-Home tread the stage in the flesh,
and Nincompoop and Defraudation are among the gods.
The special metaphor or conceit of each play attracts appropriate
words and images, and creates a distinct atmosphere of its own. In
the 'Knights' the air fairly reeks with the smell of leather and the
tanyard. The 'Birds' transport us to a world of trillings and pip-
ings, and beaks and feathers. There is a buzzing and a humming
and a stinging throughout the 'Wasps. ' The 'Clouds' drip with
mist, and are dim with aërial vaporous effects.
Aristophanes was the original inventor of Bob Acres's style of
oath the so-called referential or sentimental swearing. Dicæopolis
invokes Ecbatana when Shamartabas struts upon the stage. Socrates
in the Clouds' swears by the everlasting vapors. King Hoopoe's
favorite oath is "Odds nets and birdlime. " And the vein of humor
that lies in over-ingenious, elaborate, and sustained metaphor was
first worked in these comedies. All these excellences are summed
up in the incomparable wealth and flexibility of his vocabulary. He
has a Shakespearean mastery of the technicalities of every art and
mystery, an appalling command of billingsgate and of the language
of the cuisine, and would tire Falstaff and Prince Hal with base com-
parisons. And not content with the existing resources of the Greek
vocabulary, he coins grotesque or beautiful compounds, — exquisite
epithets like "Botruodōré» (bestower of the vine), "heliomanes"
(drunk-with-sunlight), "myriad-flagoned phrases," untranslatable "port-
manteaus" like "plouthugieia" (health-and-wealthfulness), and Gar-
gantuan agglomerations of syllables like the portentous olla podrida at
the end of the 'Ecclesiazusæ. '
The great comic writer, as the example of Molière proves, need
not be a poet.
But the mere overflow of careless poetic power which


## p. 768 (#182) ############################################

768
ARISTOPHANES
is manifested by Aristophanes would have sufficed to set up any
ordinary tragedian or lyrist. In plastic mastery of language only two
Greek writers can vie with him, - Plato and Homer. In the easy grace
and native harmony of his verse he outsings all the tragedians, even
that Eschylus whom he praised as the man who had written the
most exquisite songs of any poet of the time. In his blank verse he
easily strikes every note, from that of the urbane, unaffected, collo-
quial Attic, to parody of high or subtle tragic diction hardly distin-
guishable from its model. He can adapt his metres to the expression
of every shade of feeling. He has short, snapping, fiery trochees, like
sparks from their own holm oak, to represent the choler of the
Acharnians; eager, joyous glyconics to bundle up a sycophant and
hustle him off the stage, or for the young knights of Athens cele-
brating Phormio's sea fights, and chanting, horse-taming Poseidon,
Pallas, guardian of the State, and Victory, companion of the dance;
the quickstep march of the trochaic tetrameter to tell how the Attic
wasps, true children of the soil, charged the Persians at Marathon;
and above all-the chosen vehicle of his wildest conceits, his most
audacious fancies, and his strongest appeals to the better judgment
of the citizens- the anapæstic tetrameter, that "resonant and trium-
phant» metre of which even Mr. Swinburne's anapæsts can repro-
duce only a faint and far-off echo.
But he has more than the opulent diction and the singing voice
of the poet. He has the key to fairy-land, a feeling for nature which
we thought romantic and modern, and in his lyrics the native wood-
notes wild of his own Mousa lochmaia' (the muse of the coppice).
The chorus of the Mystæ in the Frogs,' the rustic idyl of the
'Peace,' the songs of the girls in the 'Lysistrata,' the call of the
nightingale, the hymns of the Clouds,' the speech of the "Just
Reason," and the grand chorus of birds, reveal Aristophanes as not
only the first comic writer of Greece, but as one of the very greatest
of her poets.
<
Among the many editions of Aristophanes, those most useful to
the student and the general reader are doubtless the text edited by
Bergk (2 vols. , 1867), and the translations of the five most famous
plays by John Hookham Frere, to be found in his complete works.
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