American, in contra-distinction to the habitual judgment of the fashionable world in other countries the idea that a gentleman is bound to pay, not only his debts of honor, but his tradesmen's bills also. Or, to descend to merely material considerations, have we not excellent tailors and hatters of our own? Is there a city in the world that can boast better Madeira than our own Gotham? Do we not build as good carriages and raise as good horses as the English do, and better than any of the Continental nations can? Your travelled exquisite thinks it low-toned and vulgar to boast of such matters, but we hold that it is as much more vulgar as it is less sensible to slight the good things we have, for an indiscriminate eulogy and imitation of what is foreign. Why should we turn our shirt collars up or down as the French happen to do, without any reference to the peculiarities of our climate? Why should we, who dine at four or five, go to balls at eleven, because the Europeans do so, their hour of dining being about seven, and the majority of their men not being expected at their offices by nine next morning? Far be it from us to run into the other extreme of depreciating all things and men foreign. "Clever men learn many things even from their enemies," said a clever man of old. Every nation might learn or adopt some things with advantage from foreigners; we are surely no exception. But let our adoption be with discrimination. We may make the French our patterns in dress, without making them also our patterns in propriety. Above all, do let us remember that Paris is not the only city in the world besides New York, and that there are other places where something may be learned, and whence somewhat might, without disadvantage, be borrowed.

* Aristophanes, Aves, 376. ἀλλ' ἀπ' ἐχθρῶν δῆτα πολλὰ μανθάνουσιν οἱ σοφοί.

ARISTOPHANE S.

Literary World, March 1850.

The Birds of Aristophanes, with Notes, and a Metrical Table, bg C. C. Felton, Eliot Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard College. Cambridge, Mass.: John Bartlett, 1849.

IF we have been somewhat behindhand in noticing this edition, it is simply because, not being afraid of the "prejudice" which Sydney Smith is said to have alleged as a dissuasive from the practice, we usually read a book before reviewing it. But inasmuch as one is peculiarly apt to get a prejudice for or against a classical editor by reading him, it is most fitting and proper to go over the original very carefully, and make up one's mind on all the pleasant little disputed passages before touching the editor's comments at all, and this we have done also, and it is not a work of one sitting. Truly a thankless and profitless vocation is that of the conscientious reviewer among us! He devotes more time to the composition of a short essay than many "popular" authors (of the yellowand-brown-paper school) require to turn out a volume, collates old note-books, grubs among musty quartos, corrects and re-corrects proofs that make him suspect the compositors of being in the pay of some secret society for the encouragement of profanity; and all this for no solid pudding, and a very small amount of empty praise. Indeed his reward is usually something not very dissimilar to the proverbial "monkey's allowance." Those who show their own ignorance most plentifully whenever they write, charge him with writing to show his knowledge; those with whom the number of pages in a book and the publisher's name on its title-page go a great way towards determining their opinion of its merit, think it a shame that an anonymous writer in one corner of a periodical should pronounce on the worth of an author who comes out under his own colors in a great calf or sheepbound octavo; and others again, who would probably be

startled at the paradox that no man can appreciate a dinner unless able to cook it, fall foul of him for not writing bad books himself instead of exposing the bad books of others. Verily we Verily we are sometimes tempted to sigh after the flesh-pots of monarchy, when we think how reviewers over the water gather in gold and xudos together, especially when aggravated by the remembrance of a drop of the shower that once fell upon ourselves, what time having occasion to despatch fourteen pages of manuscript across the Atlantic, we received ourselves by the next steamer in fair type, without a misprint, and with the supplementary honorarium of five guineas.

But as it is, our reviewing, whether a good or a bad action, must be its own reward; and we must console ourselves with the pleasure of helping to mention one who has taken the bold and meritorious step of introducing a new classic to our students. Professor Felton is as yet the only American editor of Aristophanes. The classical course in most of our colleges is so limited, so much made up of books rather than subjects, and there are so few among us who carry out their classical studies in after life, either as a business or a pleasure, that to attempt inserting a new name in the established schedule is a task that requires much courage, and seldom obtains much success. With any one but a college professor it is absolutely impossible; even a professor's influence is apt to be local, and confined to his own particular institution. We are therefore not a little pleased to find that Mr. Felton's first attempt on the old comedian,* has met with so much success as to encourage him to a second trial.

Of the standard Greek authors, not forming a part of our usual college course, there is none, with the exception possibly of Aristotle, whom we would rather see introduced into it than Aristophanes. Admirable per se as one of the greatest humorists the world has ever produced, he derives additional interest and value from the light he throws upon the political and social life of Athens. In this respect his comedies are to us (the illustration is an obvious one, and has been used before) very much what a file of Athenian newspapers would

*The Clouds, which has gone through two editions.

be. And yet, so various are the fortunes of great authors in different ages, he was for a long time regarded by the moderns as little more than a malignant buffoon. Many of our readers doubtless remember the notices of him in Rollin, and writers of that class and time, according to whose accounts the Clouds would be about on a level with "the Serious Family," or any other ephemeral burlesque on religion and morality; and preserved to after times only by the bad reputation of having contributed to the destruction of society. Subsequently the English classical public (a term which includes a large portion of the English literary public) very generally took up the study and defence of our author, being incited thereto not only by his hearty humor, but also by his stout conservative opinions, and the earnestness, dexterity, and general applicability of his attacks on demagogues and radicals. His sarcasms and invectives against Cleon were to them enhanced by the readiness with which they could be transferred to O'Connell. From the traducer of good men he became elevated to the champion of virtue and law. And whereas his continual and undeniable detraction of Socrates remained an awkward feature in the pleasant picture drawn of him, some of his admirers went so far as to suggest that this might be all right

that Socrates was somewhat of a humbug after all, and by no means deserving his general reputation. A good deal of innuendo to this effect may be found in Mitchell. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul with a vengeance.

Much more reasonable is the Teutonic speculation that the objects of Aristophanes' attack in the Clouds were, nominally indeed, Socrates and his disciples but really Protagoras and Prodicus, the fathers and founders of the Sophists par sang, who had then just arrived in Athens, and were notorious lions. This interesting conjecture is supported by many ingenious and probable arguments, one of which only we shall give a hint of as a specimen. One of the most striking and important scenes in the Clouds is that where the Dicæologus and Adicologus the Right Cause and the Wrong Cause

are introduced, arguing before the young man whom the Sophists wish to proselytize. The Wrong Cause gains the day, and the youth accordingly gives in his adhesion to Socrates. Now we learn from the Scholiast here, and

other authorities, that is was Protagoras who first avowedly taught how "to make the worse appear the better reason," and that from this very circumstance he acquired the nickname of Logos. Here then the allusion is evidently to him. Admitting, however, this supposition to its fullest extent, it only proves that Aristophanes, not being entirely ignorant of Socrates' character and tenets, nevertheless wilfully confounded him with the Sophists.

For our own part, at the risk of becoming obnoxious to the charge of great presumption, we must say that there never seemed to us anything so very extraordinary in this difference between the Aristophanic and the real Socrates, nor anything inconsistent with the fact of the comedian's being a good man, according to the standard of goodness in his time, and a wise man according to the standard of wisdom in any time. We might as well wonder why Sydney Smith did not appreciate the Evangelicals. What careful student of History, Literature, Politics, or Ethics, but has learned that great powers of production and of appreciation do not necessarily go together. Whether it be possible for an inferior producer or a non-producer to make a good critic (we think it is, but cannot stop now to argue the point) there can be no doubt that in every department of human knowledge very good producers have often made very bad critics. Different habits of thought or of life, social distinctions, personal enmities and friendships, mere fancy, the very fact that "non omnia possumus omnes" that all men are not all-sided or many-sided these and other causes are continually hindering men from judging accurately of each other; and the deviations of a great man's judgment are more marked than those of other men's, in proportion as its orbit is greater. Let us consider the relative positions and sentiments of the parties in this case. Aristophanes was an Athenian gentleman of ultra conservative opinions, and (as may be inferred from internal evidence, though we have little positive knowledge of his life and family) of exclusive and fastidious habits. Socrates was slovenly and eccentric in his mode of life, for which indeed we cannot commend him, inasmuch as he thereby set a bad precedent to subsequent reformers, who have often acted as though there were much godliness per se in a shocking bad hat, and a pair of boots that