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The first appearance of the Chorus must have been a critical point for the success of a play. The audience had been brought into good humour by their favorite musical performer, by whom all the preceding songs were probably executed; for the dialogue on the stage passes solely between Peisthetairus and Euelpides, and the Hoopoe, who is supposed to sing, does not appear. The Chorus now appears, and in the original, forty lines follow, in which Peisthetairus and Euelpides act as showmen to the exhibition of 24 figures, dressed in imitation of the plumage of as many different kinds of birds,

While the Birds are bustling about in their new coop of the orchestra, Euelpides contemplates them with surprise, which soon changes to alarm.

The language of the Birds consists almost wholly of short syllables, the effect of which it is impossible to imitate in English. Some accents, which are added, may serve to mark the attempt: they are added also to two spondaic lines, of which the imitation is more practicable.

The King Hoopoe now gives some orders in a pacific spirit, directing that all warlike weapons be removed and hung up at the back of the chimney as before. He then calls upon Peisthetairus to communicate to the assembled commonalty the propositions which had been before discussed in private conference between themselves. Peisthetairus however sees his advantage and insists upon the previous conclusion of a formal treaty of peace: this is done, and the Chorus swear to it (relapsing for a moment into their real character) “as they hope to win the prize by an unanimous vote.” But if they should fail they imprecate upon themselves the penalty of (gaining the prize notwithstanding but) “gaining it only by a casting vote.”—Peace is proclaimed, the armament is dissolved by proclamation, and the Chorus recommenced singing.

It should seem that the success of this play must have been a subject of more than usual anxiety both to the Poet himself, and to the Choregus

and his friends: we may conceive it to have been intended as a sedative to the mind of the commonalty, excited, as they were at the time, almost to madness by the suspicion of a conspiracy against the religion and laws of the country; a suspicion originating in a profane outrage secretly perpetrated, to a great extent, in mere insolence and wantonness, by some young men of family. In the opinion however of the Athenian people, the offence was viewed in a very serious light, as the result of an extensive secret combination, (on the part of persons bound and engaged to each other by their common participation in the guilt of sacrilege), preparatory to other attempts still more criminal and dangerous. In this state of things, and while the popular fury and jealousy upon religious subjects was at its height, the Poet ventured to produce

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this play; in which it will be seen, that the burlesque of the national Mythology, is carried higher and continued longer, than in any of his other existing plays.—The confident hopes expressed by the Chorus were not realized; the first prize was assigned to a play the title of which the Comastæ or Drunken Rioters, seems to imply that its chief interest must have been derived from direct allusions to the outrage abovementioned, and to the individuals suspected to have been engaged in it.

But we must return to the Herald dismissing the troops.

The long series of Anapæstic lines which follows, holds the place of the debates which occur in other comedies, and which are conducted in Anapæstic verse. Peisthetairus could not properly have been matched with an opponent or antagonist; the uniformity of his speech is however relieved by the interruptions and comments of Euelpides, who acts an under part to him, much in the same style as a Merry Andrew to a Mountebank.

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If the Reader should be inclined to pass over the next hundred lines, I should feel no wish to detain him. The subject of them has been pretty nearly anticipated, and the whole play is in fact too long.

The Actors having left the stage the Parabasis ought to follow.—It is here preface in a singular way by a complimentary song from the Chorus, addressed to the favorite female Musician.

The sudden passion for science among the Athenians, and the ridicule of it among the comic poets has been already noticed.

Much might be said on the subject of the most splendid passage of the Parabasis, and of the philosophic system of which it presents the traces: but this would lead to considerations very remote from the imitation of actual life, and manners and character; which, as constituting the most singular excellence of the author, it has been the object of the translator to illustrate.

Of the Parabasis before us, the merits are well known, and perhaps no passage in Aristophanes has been oftener quoted with admiration. To bring the most sublime subjects within the verge of Comedy, and to treat of them with humour and fancy, without falling into vulgarity or offending the principles of good taste, seems a task which no poet whom we know of, could have accomplished: Though if we were possessed of the works of Epicharmus, it is possible, that we might see other specimens of the same style.

We see here a comic imitation of the Tragic Choruses of Phrynichus, a poet older than Æschylus, of whom Aristophanes always speaks with respect, as an improver of music and poetry,—arts which in the judgment of the antients were deemed inseparable; or if disjoined essentially defective and imperfect.

This second sample of the style of Phrynichus may serve to give us a more distinct idea of it. It seems to have been one of essential grandeur and harmony, but trespassing occasionally into the regions of nonsense.

The exclusive functions of the Chorus being now at an end; the persons of the Drama appear again upon the stage. Peisthetairus and Euelpides, having been both in the meanwhile equipped with a sumptuous pair of wings.—They are supposed to have been entertained behind the scenes, with a royal collation in the palace of the Hoopoe.—Peisthetairus is accordingly in extreme good humour; and being now in the height of his advancement, recollects that it will be right to behave to his former comrade with the hearty familiarity of an old acquaintance; he accordingly begins, with a ludicrous simile on his appearance (a species of raillery common among the Athenians, but which was considered as the lowest species of jocularity). He takes his friend's retort in perfect good humour, and Euelpides is admitted as a third person, to

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In the passage which follows the author ridicules the rage for vulgar realities (a corruption of the theatric art, essentially destructive of all illusion, as we have witnessed at home, with real water, real horses, real elephants) The stage of Athens it should seem had been degraded by a real sacrifice, the paltriness of such a spectacle, is marked by the magnificent exhortation of the Chorus, contrasted with the meanness of the execution which they anticipate.

Peisthetairus, who can do every thing better than every body else, undertakes to perform the sacrifice. This is sufficiently in character. By making him the chief operator, a greater comic effect is given to the series of interruptions which disturb him; until in despair he determines to transfer the sacrifice elsewhere.—In this way the Poet avoids the vulgar reality which he had before ridiculed.

Enter a Poet, very ragged and shabby with a very mellifluous submissive mendicatory demeanour. Peisthetairus, the essential man of business and activity, entertaining a supreme contempt for his profession and person, is at no great pains to conceal it; but recollecting at the same time, that it is adviseable to secure the suffrages of the literary world, and that the character of a patron is creditable to a great man, he patronizes him accordingly, not at his own expense, but by bestowing upon him certain articles of apparel put in requisition for that purpose. This first act of confiscation is directed against the property of the church; the scholiast informs us, that he begins by stripping the Priest.

Enter a Soothsayer with a great air of arrogance and self-importance. He comes on the authority of a book of Oracles (which he pretends to possess, but which he never produces), in virtue of which he lays claim to certain sacrificial perquisites and fees. Peisthetairus encounters him with a different version composed upon the spot; in virtue of which he dismisses the Soothsayer with a good lashing.

Meton the Astronomer appears, encumbered with a load of mathematical instruments, which are disposed about his person. He advances with short steps, a straight back, and his chin in the air, modifying, by what he conceives to be a tone of condescending familiarity, a manner of habitual self-importance.

A Commissioner from Athens advances with an air of importance and ascendancy; like other consequential persons sent on a foreign mission, he wishes it to be understood, that he considers it a sort of banishment.

Enter a Hawker with copies of new laws relating to the colony, which he has brought out with him, for sale.—Like all itinerant venders of literature, he is trying to attract purchasers by reciting and bawling out select passages from the papers in his hand. The sale of them is his only object; and he is quite unconscious that the specimen which he recites is applicable to an incident which has just occurred. He enters on the opposite side with the monotonous chaunt of the vender of a last dying speech, confronting Peisthetairus, who is returning after having driven out the Commissioner.

It is to be feared that without having it pointed out to him, the Reader will hardly be aware, that in some of the following lines an attempt is made, to imitate the effect of the spondaic passages in the original.

The first lines of the Epirrema are descriptive of the cruel madness of the times.—See Note to p. 24.—Diagoras was a Poet, a foreigner resident at Athens, (being suspected of Atheism, and consequently of being an accomplice in the imaginary plot,) he was proscribed and a price set upon his head; it seems also that in other instances which are alluded to, assassination was encouraged by public rewards.

The history of a similar period.—The times of Titus Oates's plot (admirably described by Roger North in his Examen) may serve to illustrate the lines 13 and 14, the community in both instances remaining subject to a reign of terror, under obscure wretches whose sole instrument of dominion was perjury; as it was necessary for those Sovereign Witnesses to extort respectable subsidiary evidence in support of their main system of perjury, threats and imprisonment were the means employed in both instances, as appears by the narrative of Andocides.

In the following Scene, a foot messenger arrives at full speed from the new city, apparently in a state of great exhaustion. He communicates his important intelligence to Peisthetairus, in a single gasp of breath. “Your fortification's finished!” The report, which he makes of the building of a new Babylon, by the nation of the Birds, as it considerably exceeds, even, that licence of assuming impossibilities,

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The interest which we take in the development of moral truth, and in the illustration of human character, is so much stronger, than that which we attach to mere matter of fact, that, where the two are combined (that is to say, where a supposed fact is made the foundation of a new and striking illustration of character) our attention is, generally speaking, wholly directed to the latter, and we are inclined to take the fact for granted; as we allow the scrawl, which a mathematician draws, to stand for a circle or square; our whole attention being absorbed in the acquisition of a general and a permanent truth. It is, we believe, an established axiom in the art of lying, that almost any thing may be made credible of almost any person; provided that the imaginary facts are accompanied by a just representation of the behaviour of the person, such as it might be supposed to be under the alledged circumstances: and this will be more strikingly the case, if some trait of his character, not generally observed, but likely to be immediately recognized, is exhibited for the first time. It has been observed elsewhere, of the Aristophanic, or ancient comedy, that it is essentially a grave, humorous, impossible Great Lie, related with an accurate mimicry of the language and manners of the persons introduced. As the humour of a Narrative Lie is more easily comprehended than that of a dramatic one, we may venture to examine the drama, such as it would have appeared, if it had been helped out, in some degree, by a narrative comment; if, like the explanatory Heroic Prologue in Henry the Fifth, the ancient comedy had made use of a buffoonish prologue, explanatory and preparatory to the different scenes. We might suppose Aristophanes or his Prolocutor on this occasion to have said: “Gentlemen, the information, which I apprehend you will shortly receive of the progress of the new buildings at Nephelococcugia, may perhaps strike you as extraordinary. I should not be surprised, if, to some amongst you, it should appear little short of being absolutely incredible; but I would not have you rely entirely upon your own judgment. There is Peisthetairus, who has every means of information, and of whose abilities you can have no doubt: you will see him as much astonished as any amongst you; and you will see him so, for the first, and only time. But, will he disbelieve the fact? Far from it. Like the judicious amongst yourselves, he will not entertain the least doubt of it; on the contrary, unless I am very much mistaken in his character, you will be able to detect evident symptoms of jealousy and uneasiness, at the idea of such an object having been accomplished, independently of his direction and superintendance; and indeed, not without reason; for, you will see, that both the chorus and the messenger

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Poor Iris, in her rage, unwittingly makes use of the same sort of phrase with which a young girl at Athens would repel, or affect to repel, improper familiarities. Peisthetairus,

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The Athenian Father—“I shall inform my Father”—may be considered as equivalent to the Irish Brother.—The menace in one case would imply a duel, in the other a law suit.

It has been already observed in reference to the Chorus of the Acharnæ (p. 58), that when his Chorus's have ceased to contribute to the progressive action of the Drama, the Poet has sometimes relieved himself, from the embarassment which they created, by turning into ridicule the essential character and attributes of the Chorus itself.

In that Comedy, as in the present, the hostility of the Chorus had given spirit and animation to some of the earlier scenes, but, from the moment when their hostility ceased, they had remained a mere superfluous appendage;—nothing being left for them to be done, and scarcely any thing to be said; they could barely contrive to make their existence manifest from time to time by interposing with the expression of their acquiescence and approbation. The Poet then, having no further use for them, amuses his audience at their expense.—The character of Chorus's (except when they happen to be in a violent passion) being habitually obsequious and conformable,— their obsequiousness is represented as connected with the display of Dicœopolis's good cheer, the sight of which confirms their favorable opinion of his political principles, and induces them to pass over his selfish treatment of the poor countryman with an apologetical observation.

But with respect to the chorus now before us, (that of the Birds), there is another point of the choral character (arising out of the very condition of their existence as a chorus) which must not be overlooked.—All Chorusses are essentially poetic and imaginative, the votaries of ideal harmony and beauty.—Under this point of view, the following passage places them in amusing contrast with the practical active bustling spirit of Peisthetairus.—The Chorus begin chaunting their namby pamby anticipations of future splendour and happiness. Peisthetairus, in the first instance, favouring them with a sort of gruff acquiescence.—But as they proceed he loses all patience, contriving however to relieve himself, and give a vent to his ill humour, by scolding the servant.—The obsequious character of the Chorus now displays itself; They affect to sympathize with his impatience; expressing their own displeasure, in a style suited to their choral character, that is to say, pedantic and formal.—Peisthetairus utterly disgusted with them, evades their sympathy, by relapsing into comparative good humour.—The Chorus then betake themselves to their usual practice of exhorting and advising.—This is more than he can endure—instead of taking any notice of them, he flies into a pretended rage against his servant; and is running off the stage to beat him, when he is encountered by the first specimen of the new colonists.

This explanation must not be regarded as fanciful or superfluous.—We should in that case be compelled to adopt a conclusion, in which the admirers of Aristophanes would not readily acquiesce, namely, that the Poet had (in a play already of unusual length) inserted a passage of 24 lines destitute of poetical merit, without any comic intention and wholly unamusing as a dramatic exhibition.

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Peisthetairus says little in the following scene, but is not the less amusing, from his restless fidget and ill disguised impatience and disgust.

As a practical comment upon the anticipations of the Chorus, and as a sample of the kind of population likely to resort to a new colony; the first arrival is that of a young reprobate, who wishes his father out of the way; and, who conceives that the laws of the Birds will permit him to hasten that desirable conclusion. Peisthetairus receives and attends to him, without being betrayed into any expression of moral indignation, which would be inconsistent with his character, as a perfect politician. He merely states, as a matter of fact, some difficulties arising out of a point of law, professes a wish to serve him, as a hearty partizan, well disposed to the cause of the new colony; and finally, in an easy way, recalls to his recollection, one of the precepts of his Catechism; and, at the same time points out to him, a mode of life suited to his situation and tastes. The young man, who is more of a wild, desperate, than a confirmed villain, is struck with the suggestion, expresses a resolution to adopt it, and departs.

Cinesias, a lame dithyrambic poet and musician, arrives in the hopes of being able to provide himself with wings, which will enable him too look after his concerns among the clouds, the great emporium for business with all persons, who are embarked in the dithyrambic line. Peisthetairus amuses himself with affronting and laughing at him, but he persists in his purpose, and professes his determination to continue worrying and persevering, till it is accomplished.

The reader who refers to the original will perceive that the interruptions, with which Peisthetairus breaks in upon Cinesias's recitation or song, are omitted in the translation. To the Athenian audience, the original must have been familiar, and probably sufficiently hackneyed, to make them feel amusement at hearing it accompanied with burlesque interruptions: But as only one other fragment, of dithyrambic poetry has been preserved to modern times, and neither of them has appeared in our language, it seemed more adviseable to present it to the English reader in an unbroken form.

Peisthetairus is represented in the following scene, as a perfect master of his art; amusing himself in angling and playing with a stupid impudent young scoundrel;

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The song with which the Sycophant enters, is said by the scholiast to be from Alcæus; it should seem more consonant to his character, to suppose it to be some modern parody or adaptation from one of the comedies of the time.

Fabulous notions, respecting the unknown portions of the world, seem to have been nearly the same (or at least of the same character) in the time of Aristophanes as in the days of Sir John Mandeville.

The marvels of these regions, known only to the Birds, are naturally expatiated upon by a Chorus of Birds, when released from the business of the stage and placed in immediate communication with the audience. But it will be seen, that by a strange coincidence those wonderful and remote objects have an unaccountable analogy to things and persons at Athens; as in the following instance of the enormous Tree, which by the botanists was considered as belonging to the Sycophantic genus; but which was vulgarly called a Cleonymus, whereas at Athens there happened to be a person precisely of the same name, “Cleonymus,” equally distinguished for his size; and having the same peculiarity of being classed among the Sycophants. And what is more singular; as the Athenian Cleonymus had lost his shield in battle, it so happened, that his vegetable counterpart was a deciduous tree, with leaves of a scutiform or shield-like shape, which it was also in the habit of losing.

The antistrophe is a romantic and mysterious description of a junketing public house, which seems to have been in vogue; but from which it was not safe to return to town after dusk. Orestes, an heroic name, was also the name or the nickname of a noted robber (see Acharnæ p. 67). It was reckoned extremely dangerous to meet a demigod after sunset.

The Scene which follows may be considered as a short abstract of the mode in which clandestine political information is received, attended to, and dismissed. The Informant presents himself with an extraordinary display of precaution and apprehension; he is received, with eagerness and cordiality; attended to, with great earnestness, interrupted only by some little ill-humour on the part of the man of business,

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Under the same form of a description of the Wonders of the Terra Incognita, we have here again one of those pieces of personal satire peculiar to the ancient Comedy.— It is directed against Socrates and his school, including by name his friend Chœrephon.

The uncleanly habits imputed to them (“Where Baths and washing are forbidden”) will have been seen already alluded to in p. 72, (“Unwash'd and slovenly like so many Socrates's”)—But it is difficult to conceive what is the imputation conveyed, or alluded to, by describing them as engaged in the evocation of Spirits.