Never were greater honours conferred by national gratitude and pride than those which were paid by Greece to the memory of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Statues were erected to them by public edict, and their works were recorded as matters of state in the archives of the nation. This part of the history is worthy of very particular consideration. That great, wise, and high spirited free nation, who understood man’s nature, and national policy of the best kind, as well as any other people that ever existed, knew the efficacy of the stage in meliorating the morals, the manners, and the opinions of a people, and, therefore, made use of it as a great state engine. Their poets studiously interwove the public events of Greece into their dramatic poetry, and made their tragedies national concerns, which, as such, were sanctioned by law and supported out of the public treasury. Thus the glories of their heroes were registered and rewarded—the influence of their example extended—a lively ambition to excel in valour, virtue, and wisdom was disseminated by the sentiments which the genius and skill of the poets put into the mouths of their leading characters, and young men endeavoured to model themselves by those characters and sentiments.
Dramatic criticism was not left by the Greeks, as it is by the moderns, to operate at random, or yielded up to the will or the caprice of vain, ignorant, presumptuous, or corrupt pretenders. A bench of judges to the number of ten, selected for their learning, integrity, and acknowledged excellence, were appointed by law to preside at theatric representations, and to determine what was fit for the public to hear, and what not. These were sworn to decide impartially, and they were vested with an authority which extended to the infliction of summary punishment on impure, mischievous, or offensive pieces. They had the power to punish with whipping, and were authorised to bestow great rewards for merit. Thus, Sophocles was awarded a dignified and lucrative government for one of his pieces, and an unfortunate comic poet of the name of Evangelus was publicly whipped. This circulated a spirit of correctness, and a chaste and delicate taste through the people, as was evidenced in the case already mentioned, of one of the tragedies of Euripides, which was instantly censured for the introduction of a vitious sentiment in favour of riches. How unlike our playhouse critics of modern times were those Athenians. By them, no regard was paid to private solicitation, to personal partiality, or to national, party, or other prejudice. At these times it is otherwise, at least in Great Britain and America; and the sentence to be passed on the piece or the player, in common with most other popular decisions, too often turns on the great master hinge of party spirit or personal prejudice. Imbecility is bolstered up, and merit blasted by the clamours of an ignorant and corrupt few, who, with roar and ruffian impudence spread their perverted opinions, and at last pass them through the ignorant multitude with the current stamp of public decision.
It would be unpardonable to omit in this part of the history the circumstance of Dionysius, the horrible tyrant of Syracuse, having been a candidate for fame in dramatic poetry. Though utterly destitute of poetical talents, or of any means of obtaining approbation for his writings, save only that of extorting it by terror, and even by the infliction of death, he laboured under the most inveterate passion for poetic honours. By means not known, he got possession of some loose writings and memorandums of Æschylus, and from them patched up some pieces which he vainly endeavoured to pass for his own: but the people were not to be deceived. With a view to extend his fame he despatched his brother Theodorus to Olympia, with orders to repeat there in public, some verses in his name, in competition with some other poets for the poetical prize: the people, however, had too much taste to endure them, and rewarded his muse with groans and hisses. At Athens, however, he had better success; for he obtained the prize there for a composition which he sent in his name, but which was chiefly written by Antiphon, the son of Sophocles, whom he put to death for declining to praise some of his verses. Conscious, as he must have been, that the prize, though awarded to his name, did not belong to himself, he was more overjoyed at obtaining it than at all the victories he had ever obtained in the field of blood. And absurd as it may appear, he had so obstinately set his heart upon being considered a great poet, that he had recourse to the most mean as well as cruel expedients to accomplish it. For this purpose, he endeavoured to suborn a poet who lived under his patronage. The man, whose name was Philoxenus, had lost the favour of the king, and was imprisoned by him for the seduction of one of his female singers. Having written some verses, the tyrant bethought him of establishing their reputation by getting Philoxenus to express publicly his approbation of them, and for that purpose ordered him from his prison: but the poet, too proud and virtuous to purchase his liberty by the sacrifice of truth, refused; in consequence of which, Dionysius ordered him to the quarries to work as a slave. Some time afterwards, being released, he was asked at a public feast, his opinion of some of the king’s verses; upon which, knowing that the inquirers were the tyrant’s agents, he answered, by exclaiming aloud, “Lead me back to the quarries!” His answer had such an effect upon Dionysius that he forgave Philoxenus, and restored him to his favour.
[ BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.]
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.
The illustrious lord Verulam, detailing in one of his essays the various motives to envy in the human bosom, says, “men of birth are noted to be envious towards new men—for their distance is altered.” His lordship might with safety have extended the proposition to those whom either wealth, or casualty unconnected with high descent or personal merit, have raised to worldly power and prosperity. Men who have been lifted to the summits of society by the accumulation of money, still more than those who stand there in right of the decayed merit of their ancestry look down with scorn upon their fellow-beings who toil below, and too often view with jealousy and repugnance, the endeavours of those who aspire to that eminence, of which they themselves are so vain and ostentatious. Elevation from an humble condition to conspicuity and rank, bespeaks superior personal merit; and to many of those who figure in, what is called, high life, it is to be feared that the bare mention of personal merit, would look like an indirect reproach.
Not only in that class, however, but in most others of society, there are multitudes who can boast of very different sentiments—men of real worth and discernment, who do not disdain to contemplate the exertions of a powerful mind in its aspirations to dignity, nor turn with contempt from the man whom nature has enriched, though it should have been his lot to come into the world under the depression of a needy or obscure parentage.—Persons of liberal hearts, and luminous minds well know that in the moral world there are natural laws, which like those of gravitation in the physical, oppose the elevation of all whom chance has thrown down to the bottom of life, rendering it difficult or rather indeed utterly impracticable for them to rise, but by means of the most gigantic powers; and therefore consider those who emerge to the top by the fair exercise of their natural talents, as the only valuable levellers—the real and substantial asserters of the equality of men.
No apology therefore can be expected, for offering to the public a short sketch of the life of John Hodgkinson—a man, who, though dropped, at his birth, a darkling, into the world, contrived by the exercise of his personal endowments, without aid, friend, influence, or advantage, save those which nature in her bounty vouchsafed him, to mount to the highest rank in his profession—a profession to excel in which, requires more rich endowments of mind and person jointly, than any of those to which men have recourse for the acquisition of fame or fortune.
There may be some to whom the history of such a man, and the equitable adjudication of applause to such talents as he possessed will not be very palatable. Feeble men, ever jealous, ever envious, sicken at the praise of greatness, and pride will elevate its supercilious brow in disdain, at the eulogy of the lowly born. But the former may set their hearts at rest (if such hearts can have rest) when they are told that in the present instance truth will qualify the praise so richly deserved, with some alloy of censure not less so: and the latter, who affect to despise the stage while they draw from it delight and instruction, will perhaps forgive the man’s endowments in consideration of his calling, and think the sin of his talents atoned by the penance of being a player.
The paternal name of this extraordinary actor was Meadowcroft;—but this he relinquished on a certain necessity that will be mentioned hereafter, taking in its stead, that of his mother’s family, which he continued to retain long after that necessity had ceased to exist, and bore to the day of his death. At the time of his birth his father was an humble husbandman, and lived not far from Manchester; and very near to the mansion-house of —— Harrison, esquire. From this, he moved into the city where he set up a public house well known to several persons now in America, one of whom recollects to have seen young John figuring there in capacity of waiter, or as it is commonly called in England, pot-boy. His father dying, the widow married another husband—and John was put out to an apprenticeship, in some inferior department of the silk trade. Having, from his infancy, disclosed manifestations of that exquisite voice and fine taste for music, which afterwards acquired him such fame as a singer, he was put to sing with the boys in one of the churches of Manchester, where he very soon distinguished himself not only for the power and compass of one of the sweetest countertenor voices in the world, but for a taste and accurate execution uncommon to his age and untutored condition.