admire him, wish had bin rather buried and excus'd in the genial cups of an Academick nightsitting. By which laws he seems to tolerat no kind of Learning, but by unalterable decree, consisting most of practicall traditions, to the attainment whereof a Library of smaller bulk then his own Dialogues would be abundant. And there also enacts that no Poet should so much as read to any privat man, what he had writt’n, untill the Judges and Law-keepers had seen it, and al Καί τοι γε ἔδει, καθάπερ τὸν Λυκοῦργον τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, καὶ τὸν Σόλωνα τοὺς Αθηναίους, καὶ τὸν Ζάλευκον τους Θουρίους, καὶ αὐτὸν [Πλάτωνα], εἴπερ ἦσαν χρήσιμοι, πεῖσαι τινὰς τῶν Ελλήνων αὐτοῖς χρήσασθαι — ὁ δὲ Πλάτων πῶς οὐκ ἄτοπος, τριῶν Αθηναίων γενομένων νομοθετῶν, τῶν γε δὴ γνωριζόμενων, Δράκοντος, καὶ αὐτοῦ του Πλάτωνος, καὶ Σόλωνος, τῶν μὲν τοῖς νόμοις ἐμμένειν τοὺς πολίτας, τῶν δὲ του Πλάτωνος καὶ προσε xalaysλav; "(Athen. I. XI. fin.) Nam oportuit, quemadmoκαταγελᾷν "dum Lycurgus Lacedaemonios, Solo Athenienses, et Zaleucus "Thurios, ita et eum quoque [Platonem] si utiles fuissent, "quibusdam Graecorum persuasisse, ut iis uterenter. Ineptum "Platonem inde fuisse constat, quod, cum illustres apud Atheni"enses tres Legislatores fuerint, Draco, Solo, et ipse Plato, "illorum leges Cives observarint, Platonis vero nihil fecerint atque irriserint."—Elements of the Civil Law; p. 67. 4to. 3rd edit. Stanley says otherwise, and he particularizes the countries who took him for their Law-giver.-The Hist. of Philosophy; p. 170. fol. 1700. "Fed his fancie❞—is Virgil's " animum picturâ pascit inani.” -By the "genial cups of an Academick night-sitting," he alludes to the Symposiac nocturnal meetings, the festive Conversazioni, of Wits and Philosophers, the Deipnosophists, who resorted to Plato's Banquets at his retired residence among the olive shades of Academus. low'd it; But that Plato meant this Law peculiarly to that Commonwealth which he had imagin'd, and to no other, is evident. Why was 6 And there also enacts that no Poet should so much as read to auy privat man what he had writt'n, untill the Judges and Lawkeepers had seen it, and allow'd it.] The words of Plato are Μηδέ τινα τολμᾷν ᾄδειν ἀδόκιμον μοῦσαν, μὴ κρινάντων τῶν ΝΟΜΟΦΥΛΑΚΩΝ, μηδ' ἂν ἡδίων ἢ τῶν Θαμύρου τε και Ορφείων ὕμνων. "Nemo igitur audeat Musam, horum judicio non pro"batam canere, etiamsi Thamyræ Orpheique sit suavior." Platonis Philosophi Quæ exstant; VIII. 399. 8vo. 1785. Bipontine Edition. "Seene and allowed" stands as the License for Printing in the title-page to the first English Edition of Sir Thomas Smyth's valuable Tract," De Republica Anglorum. The "maner of Gouernment or policie of the Realme of England." sm. 4to. Lond. 1583.-Allowed meant approved: "Use such "speech as the Meanest should well understand, and the Wisest "best allow." Ascham; The Schoolmaster: p. 201. Upton's edit. After all that has been written upon Style, perhaps the soundest advice is comprised in this sentence.-Again in Fairefax, " he mustred all his Crew, "Reprou'd the Cowards, and allow'd the Bould." Godfrey of Bulloigne; b. 9. st. 13. fol. 1600. It may, by the way, be observed, that this version of Tasso often reads with all the ease and spirit of an original. Sometimes, it must be confessed, at the expence of fidelity. May it not be said of Fairefax, that he is a solitary example of any one gaining high and permanent reputation as a Poet, by metrical Translation alone? At least, I can call no other instance to my mind. I adduce the preceding quotations of allowed in this signification, because Johnson has not admitted that sense into his Dictionary: on the contrary, he has quoted from the Bible, "the Lord alloweth the righteous," as an authority for its meaning-" to justify, to maintain as right." he not else a Law-giver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expell'd by his own Magistrats; both for the wanton Epigrams and Dialogues which he made, and his perpetuall reading of Sophron Mimus, and Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy', "Why was he not else a Law-giver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expell'd by his own Magistrats, both for the wanton Epigrams and Dialogues which he made, and his perpetuall reading of Sophron Mimus, and Aristophanes, books of grossest infumy.] Before in his verses de Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, he had apostrophized Plato for this inconsistency: "At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus, "(Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis) But any total interdiction of Poetry by Plato has been contested. See Histoire de l'Academie des Inscriptions (tom. II. p. 169.), that the founder of the Academy was not, as is commonly thought, an enemy to all Poetry without distinction; that he expressed no more than that every poetical work should be submitted to the examination of the Magistrate; so that it might not happen in his State, as daily happens with us (says the Abbé Fraguier after Plato,) for the Laws to speak one language while Poetry speaks another. This learned Frenchman supported his opinion by a deduction of passages from this philosophical Law-giver, chiefly taken from the Dialogues de Republica and de Legibus; and his conclusion is-" que Platon n'excluoit "pas plus de sa Republique toute poesie ni toute éloquence, "qu'un prince exclueroit tout or et tout argent de ses estats, parce qu'il n'y recevroit que de l'argent et de l'or tres-epurez," The original Edition of this Speech gives-" Sophron Mimus, and Aristophanes," and all the subsequent Editions conform to this reading. Should it be printed Sophron's Mimes? and also for commending the latter of them, though he were the malicious Libeller of his chief friends, as the succeeding passage from his Apology for Smectymnuus might seem to imply " Nor yet doth he tell us what a Mime is, "whereof we have no pattern from ancient writers, except some fragments, which containe many acute and wise sentences. "And this we know in Laertius, that the Mimes of Sophron "were of such reckoning with Plato, as to take them nightly to "read on, and after make them his Pillow."-Pr. W. I. 107. Edit. 1738. There was no such Greek Writer as Mimus. At the same time the emendation I have just offered is not absolutely required. This may be a descriptive addition, i. e. a Writer of Mimes; lest Readers might mistake him for a comic Poet of this name. See Fabric. Biblioth. Grac. I. 788. Hamb. 1718; and Hofmanni Lexicon Universale; in v. SOPHRON.-I should mention that the words alluded to in Laertius are—τα Σωφρονος του μιμογράφου Βιβλια. Where there are two persons of the same name, it is customary with MILTON to designate that which he intended by some discriminative epithet. Publius Syrus for his moral sentences obtained the same appellative. Still, to have identified Sophron, the writer of the Mimes, by the Adjective Syracusan on this occasion would have been preferable to Mimus, which stands aukwardly in the way it is introduced-" Sophron Mimus, and Aristopha"nes.” And a considerable perplexity will yet remain to be unravelled. How are we to reconcile MILTON with himself? What (we have just seen) he had before called the "acute and "wise sentences of the Mimes of Sophron," in this Oration he classes with the Comedies of Aristophanes, and proceeds to stigmatize them alike "as Books of grossest infamy." I would have it considered, whether in the AREOPAGITICA he meant to refer to the Comic Writer before-mentioned, and through inadvertency wrote Mimus? Yet this solution of the difficulty will hardly be thought admissible; since in both of these passages he specifies Plato's predilection for the works of Sophron. There must be some confusion of the two Sophrons. Or, did the same to be read by the Tyrant Dionysius, who had little Sophron compose Mimes of both descriptions? I confess my inability to unriddle the enigma by the Books within my reach.Fabricius observes that Suidas has badly described them. It is, however, extremely probable, that nothing satisfactory concerning these points is to be collected from any extant writings of the Antients: for Mr. Twining informs us, that "of "the Mimes of Sophron we can acquire but a very imperfect "idea, either from what is said of them in antient Authors, or "from the fragments that are preserved in Athenæus, Demetrius, "and others. It has even been long disputed among the learned, "whether they were prose or verse; and, at last, it seems to be "settled, that they were neither; a kind of compromise com"fortable enough to the disputants on both sides; for if the "fragments are something between verse and prose, they, who "assert them to be either, are something between right and wrong." See his Translation of Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry; p. 161. 4to. 1789. And in an additional remark of the same learned and clear-sighted Critic we have perhaps the cause assigned for MILTON's contradiction of himself;-where he observes, that, supposing what is related, of the fondness of "Plato for the Mimes of Sophron, and of their having been his "model in the iμnσis πроσшπшν of his own Dialogues, to be true, "it may reasonably be inferred, that we ought by no means to "confound them with the Roman Mimes, or to apply to them, as is "too often done, all that is said of the latter by Diomedes, and other "writers of that age. Such licentious and obscene trash would "not, surely, have been found under the pillow of the moral " and reforming Plato; and that, how εni ynpaos oudw, and, as some assert, even in the hour of death. In saying this, howIever, I do not forget, that delicacy is not to be sought for even "in the strictest morality of antient times." ib. p. 162. " So that MILTON might have here fallen into the same error of confounding for indecency Sophron's Mimes with those of the Roman Stage. Tyrwhitt, in his Note on Aristotle's mention of the Mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, has not entered upon this topic. |