Hear what he says of him.
‘But whatever period may have given birth to the tragedies of Seneca, they are beyond description bombastical and frigid, unnatural in character and action—revolting, from their violation of every propriety—and so destitute of every thing like theatrical effect—that I am inclined to believe they were never destined to leave the rhetorical schools for the stage. Every tragical common-place is spun out to the very last; all is phrase; and even the most common remark is delivered in stilted language. The most complete poverty of sentiment is dressed out with wit and acuteness. There is even a display of fancy in them, or at least a phantom of it; for they contain an example of the misapplication of every mental faculty. The author or authors have found out the secret of being diffuse, even to wearisomeness; and at the same time so epigrammatically laconic, as to be often obscure and unintelligible. Their characters are neither ideal nor actual beings, but gigantic puppets, who are at one time put in motion by the string of an unnatural heroism, and, at another, by that of passions equally unnatural, which no guilt nor enormity can appal.’—‘Yet not merely learned men, without a feeling for art, have judged favourably of them, nay preferred them to the Greek tragedies, but even poets have accounted them deserving of their study and imitation. The influence of Seneca on Corneille’s idea of tragedy cannot be mistaken: Racine, too, in his Phædra, has condescended to borrow a good deal from him; and, among other things, nearly the whole of the declaration of love, of all which we have an enumeration in Brumoy.’
The distaste of our learned critic to Euripides is sanctioned, no doubt, by the ridicule of Aristophanes, from whom he gives a whole scene, in which a buffoon comes to the tragic poet, to beg his rags, his alms-basket, and his water-pitcher, in allusion to the homeliness of costume, and the outward signs of distress which are sometimes exhibited in his tragedies. Aristophanes, of course, is an immense favourite with Schlegel—though it requires all his ingenuity to gloss over and allegorize his extravagance and indecency.
‘The plays of Peace, the Acharnæ and Lysistrata, will be found to recommend peace. In the Clouds, he laughs at the metaphysics of the sophists; in the Wasps, at the rage of the Athenians for hearing and determining lawsuits. The subject of the Frogs is the decline of the tragic art; and Plutus is an allegory on the unjust distribution of wealth. The Birds are, of all his pieces, the one of which the aim is the least apparent; and it is on that very account one of the most diverting.’ p. 213.
The comedies of Aristophanes, we confess, put the archaism of our taste, and the soundness of our classic faith to a most severe test. The great difficulty is not so much to understand their meaning, as to comprehend their species—to know to what possible class to assign them—of what nondescript productions of nature or art they are to be considered as anomalies. According to Schlegel, who might be styled the Œdipus of criticism, they are the perfection of the old comedy. There is much virtue, we are aware, in that appellation: But to us, we confess, they appear to be neither comedies, nor farces, nor satires—but monstrous allegorical pantomimes—enormous practical jokes—far-fetched puns, represented by ponderous machinery, which staggers the imagination at its first appearance, and breaks down before it has answered its purpose. They show, in a more striking point of view than any thing else, the extreme subtlety of understanding of the ancients, and their appetite for the gross, the material, and the sensible. Compared with Aristophanes, Rabelais himself is plain and literal. For example—
‘Peace begins in the most spirited and lively manner. The tranquilly-disposed Trygæus rides on a dunghill beetle to heaven, in the manner of Bellerophon: War, a desolating giant, with Tumult his companion, in place of all the other gods, inhabits Olympus, and pounds the cities in a great mortar, making use of the celebrated generals as pestles; Peace lies bound in a deep well, and is dragged up by a rope, through the united efforts of all the Greek states,’ &c.
Again—
‘It is said of a man addicted to unintelligible reveries, that he is up in the clouds:—accordingly Socrates, in the play of the Clouds, is actually let down in a basket at his first appearance.’
The comic machinery in Aristophanes, is, for the most part, a parody on the Greek mythology, and his wit a travestie on Euripides. Whatever we may think of his talent in this way, the art itself of making sense into nonsense, and of letting down the sublime into the ludicrous, in general is rather a cheap one, and implies much more a want of feeling than an excess of wit.
The account which is given of the old, the middle, and the new comedy, is very learned and dogmatical. The different styles and authors rise in value with the critic, in proportion as he knows nothing of them. He likes that, which some old commentator has praised, better than what he has read himself; and that still better, which neither he himself, nor any one else, has read. Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus, Menander, Sophron, and the Sicilian Epicharmus, whose works are lost, are prodigiously great men; and the author, ‘tries conclusions infinite’ respecting their different possible merits. On the contrary, Terence is only half a Menander, and Plautus a coarse buffoon. In spite, however, of this fastidiousness, he cannot deny the elegant humanity of the one, nor the strong native humour of the other. The style of these writers, particularly that of Terence, is admirable for a certain conversational ease, and correct simplicity, exactly in the mid-way between carelessness and affectation. But M. Schlegel has a mode of doing away this merit, by observing, that