•••••••

Cleon. One only hope remains. Resolve me, practised you
Within the market–place, or at the gates?[112]

Saus. Nay, at the gates, among the men who deal
In salted fish.

Cleon.–—All is accomplished:
It is the will of heaven:—bear me within.
Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!
Adieu, fair chaplet! ‘gainst my will I quit thee,
And give thy matchless sweets to other hands!
There may be knaves more fortunate than I,
But never shall the world see thief more rascally.[113]

Saus. (devoutly.) Thine be triumph, Jove Ellanian![114]

p. 269–73.

The Chorus now enters upon an address, first in praise of the equestrian order, and then proceeding to satirize individuals by name. Meanwhile Demus is undergoing a thorough purgation under the hands of the sausage–seller. He reappears “in his former splendour of the days of Miltiades and Aristides,” delivers a recantation of his former principles, and concludes the piece by confirming the appointment of the sausage–seller to Cleon’s place, and investing Cleon solemnly with the tray, and other implements of the sausage–seller.

To those who are disappointed in the specimen here given of the wit and humour of Aristophanes, we have only to suggest in defence of our author, that a large proportion of the most remarkable passages have been omitted, on account of the impossibility of rendering them intelligible, even by a prolix commentary, to those who cannot read the original; and that our description of the ‘Knights’ is but a set of fragments from a translation, which professes its inability to render its original as a whole. And we may quote, as much more applicable to this short attempt than to the work to which it is prefixed, the singularly happy and modest motto of Mr. Mitchell’s translation, applicable as it must be to all translations, but especially to those of Aristophanes.

Among the rest, he culled me out a root;
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it;
And in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil.

Comus.