John Colin Dunlop

“ These were the darling amusements of all, and chief occupations of many Romans; and those who could take pleasure in such spectacles, must have lost all that tenderness of inward feeling, and all that exquisite sympathy for suffering, without which none can perceive the force and beauty of a tragic drama. The extension, too, of the military power, and the increasing wealth and splendour of the Roman republic, accustomed its citizens to triumphal and gaudy processions. ”

“ The mysterious origin of Rome, veiled in the wonders of mythological fable—the stupendous increase of its power, rendered yet more gigantic by the mists of antiquity—its undaunted heroes, who seem to us like the genii of some greater world—its wide dominion, extended over the whole civilized globe—and, finally, its portentous fall, which forms, as it were, the separation between ancient and modern times, have rendered its civil and military history a subject of prevailing interest to all enlightened nations. ”

“ While France was delighted with the productions of Racine, Corneille, and Moliere, the modern Italians, as if their ancestors’ poverty of dramatic genius still adhered to them, though so rich and abundant in every other department of literature, scarcely possessed a tolerable play of their own invention, and till the time of Goldoni were amused only with the most slavish imitations of the Latin comedies, the buffooneries of harlequin, or tragedies of accumulated and unmitigated horrors, which excite neither the interest of terror nor of pity. ”

“ Lycophron immersed himself in such a sea of fabulous learning, that he became nearly unintelligible, and all of them were marked with the blemishes of affectation and obscurity, into which learned poets are most apt to fall. Among the pleiad of Alexandrian poets, none had so many of the faults and beauties of the school to which he belonged as Callimachus. He was conspicuous for his profound knowledge of the ancient traditions of Greece, for his poetic art and elegant versification, but he was also noted for deficiency of invention and original genius ”

“ Pity was never to be felt by a Roman, but when it came in the shape of clemency towards a vanquished foe, and tears were never to dim the eyes of those whose chief pride consisted in acting with energy and enduring with firmness. This self-command, which their principles required of them,—this control of every manifestation of suffering in themselves, and contempt for the expression of it in others, tended to exclude tragedy almost entirely from the range of their literature. ”

“ We delight, on the contrary, to linger on every scene, almost on every sentence, of Terence. Sometimes there are chasms in Plautus’s fables, and the incidents do not properly adhere—in Terence, all the links of the action depend on each other. Plautus has more variety in his exhibition of characters and manners, but his pictures are often overcharged, while those of Terence are never more highly coloured than becomes the modesty of nature. ”

“ All the inferior passions which form the range of comedy are so nicely observed, and accurately expressed, that we nowhere find a truer or more lively representation of human nature. He seems to have formed in his mind such a perfect idea both of his high and low characters, that they never for a moment forget their age or situation, whether they are to speak in the easy indifferent tone of polished society, or with the natural expression of passion. ”

“ When the battles of Rome have been accurately described, and all her political intrigues minutely developed—when so much inquiry and thought have been bestowed, not only on the wars, conquests, and civil institutions of the Romans, but on their most trivial customs, it is wonderful that so little has been done to exhibit the intellectual exertions of the fancy and the reason, of their most refined and exalted spirits. ”

“ There would be the same dignified misfortune displayed in nobler and imposing attitudes—the same observance of the unities—the same dramatic phrensy, remorse, and love, proceeding from the vengeance of the gods, and exhibited in the fate of Ajax, Orestes, and Phædra—the same struggle against that predominant destiny, which was exalted even above the gods of Olympus, and by which the ill-fated race of Atreus was agitated and pursued. The Latin, like the Greek tragedies, must have excited something of the same feeling as the Laocoon or Niobe in sculpture ”

“ The Latin muse had been nurtured amid the festivities of rural superstition; and the impure mixture of licentious jollity had so corrupted her nature, that it long partook of her rustic origin. Even so late as the time of Horace, the tragic drama continued to be unsuccessful, in consequence of the illiberal education of the Roman youth; who, while the Greeks were taught to open all the mind to glory, were so cramped in their genius by the love of gain, and by the early infusion of sordid principles, that they were unable to project a great design, or conduct it to perfection. ”

“ The beauties of style and language, I suppose, must be considered as but secondary excellences in the drama. Were they primary merits, Terence would deserve to be placed at the head of all comic poets who have written for the stage, on account of the consummate elegance and purity of his diction. It is a singular circumstance, and without example in the literary history of any other country, that the language should have received its highest perfection, in point of elegance and grace, combined with the most perfect simplicity, from the pen of a foreigner and a slave. ”

“ Lions and elephants tore each other in pieces before their eyes; and they beheld, with emotions only of delight, crowds of hireling gladiators wasting their energy, valour, and life, on the guilty arena of a Circus. Gladiatorial combats were first exhibited by Decius and Marcus Brutus, at the funeral of their father, about the commencement of the Punic wars. The number of such entertainments increased with the luxury of the times; and those who courted popular favour found no readier way to gain it than by magnificence and novelty in this species of expense. ”

“ Plautus, who was of bolder genius, varies the place of action, when the variation suits his great purpose of merriment and jest.
But though Terence has perhaps too rigidly observed the unities of time and place, in none of his dramas, with a single exception, has that of plot been adhered to. The simplicity and exact unity of fable in the Greek comedies would have been insipid to a people not thoroughly instructed in the genuine beauties of the drama. Such plays were of too thin contexture to satisfy the somewhat gross and lumpish taste of a Roman audience. ”

“ This species of conceit was rejected by the good taste of subsequent Latin poets, even in the most degraded periods of literature; and I know no parallel to it, except in some passages of Sidney’s Arcadia. Nothing can be a greater mistake, than to suppose that false taste and jingle are peculiar to the latter ages of poetry, and that the early bards of a country are free from concetti.
On the whole, the works of Ennius are rather pleasing and interesting, as the early blossoms of that poetry which afterwards opened to such perfection, than estimable from their own intrinsic beauty. ”

“ It is noble, indeed, in itself, and its productions are glorious, without any relative considerations. An ingenious literary performance has its intrinsic merits, and would delight an enthusiastic scholar, or contemplative philosopher, in perfect solitude, even though he himself were the only reader, and the work the production of a Being of a different order from himself. But what renders literature chiefly interesting, is the influence which it exercises on the dignity and happiness of human nature, by improving the character, and enlarging the capacity, of our species. ”

“ It was impossible that those alterations of visage, which are hidden by a mask, could have been distinctly perceived by one-tenth of the 40,000 spectators of a Roman play. The feelings portrayed in the ancient drama were neither so tender nor versatile as those in modern plays, and the actors did not require the same flexibility of features—there were fewer flashes of joy in sorrow, fewer gleams of benignity in hatred. ”

“ It is in this that Lucan and Voltaire have erred; and neither the soaring genius of the one, nor brilliancy of the other, could raise their themes, splendid as they were, from the dust, or steep the mind in those reveries in which we indulge on subjects where there is no visible or known bound to credulity and imaginings. Still the Annals of Ennius, as a national work, were highly gratifying to a proud ambitious people, and, in consequence, continued long popular at Rome. They were highly relished in the age of Horace and Virgil ”

“ It is obvious to remark, that though masks might do very well for a Satyr and Cyclops, who have no resemblance to human features, they are totally unsuitable for a flatterer, a miser, or the like characters, which abound in our own species, in whom the expression of countenance is more agreeable even than the action, and forms a considerable part of the histrionic art. Could we suppose that a vizard represented ever so naturally the general humour of a character, it can never be assimilated with the variety of passions incident to each person, in the whole course of a play. ”

“ If not perfectly dithyrambic, the numbers of the Atis of Catullus are, however, strongly expressive of distraction and enthusiasm. The violent bursts of passion are admirably aided by the irresistible torrent of words, and by the cadence of a measure powerfully denoting mental agony and remorse. In this production, now unexampled in every sense of the word, Catullus is no longer the light agreeable poet, who counted the kisses of his mistress, and called on the Cupids to lament her sparrow. ”

“ It was a courtezan who received the dying mother of the Andrian, and, while expiring herself, affectionately intrusted the orphan to the generous protection of Pamphilus. It is a courtezan who, in the Eunuchus, discovers the family of the young Pamphila, and, in the Hecyra, brings about the understanding essential to the happiness of all. From their mode of life, and not interposing much beyond their domestic circle, the manners of modest women were not generally painted with any great taste by the ancients; but Terence may perhaps be considered as an exception. ”

“ For all this it may not be easy completely to account; but various causes may be assigned for the want of originality in Roman tragedy, and indeed in the whole Roman drama. The nation was deficient in that milder humanity of which there are so many beautiful instances in Grecian history. From the austere patriotism of Brutus sacrificing every personal feeling to the love of country,—from the frugality of Cincinnatus, and parsimony of the Censor, it fell with frightful rapidity into a state of luxury and corruption without example. ”

“ The French epigrams of Regnier, and his contemporaries Motin and Berthelot, are nearly as gross as those of Catullus; but at the close of the Roman republic, literature was far advanced; and if it be true, that as a nation grows corrupted its language becomes pure, the words and expressions of the Romans, in these last days of liberty, should have been sufficiently chaste. The obscenities of Catullus, however, it must be admitted, are oftener the sport of satire, than the ebullitions of a voluptuous imagination. ”

“ In each plot there is sufficient action, movement, and spirit. The incidents never flag, but rapidly accelerate the catastrophe. Yet, if we regard his plays in the mass, there is a considerable, and perhaps too great, uniformity in their fables. They hinge, for the most part, on the love of some dissolute youth for a courtezan, his employment of a slave to defraud a father of a sum sufficient to supply his expensive pleasures, and the final discovery that his mistress is a free-born citizen. ”

“ Had he prosecuted his intention, he would have found the notion he entertained fully confirmed by the history both of dramatic and romantic fiction; he would have perceived the incapacity of the most active and fertile imagination greatly to diversify the common characters and incidents of life, which, on a superficial view, one might suppose to be susceptible of infinite combinations; he would have found, that while Plautus and Terence servilely copied from the Greek dramatists, even Ariosto scarcely diverged in his comedies from the paths of Plautus. ”

“ On the whole, Moliere has succeeded best in rendering the passion of avarice hateful: Plautus and Goldoni have only made it ridiculous. The profound and poetical avarice of Jaques possesses something plaintive in its tone, which almost excites our sympathy, and never our laughter; he is represented as a worshipper of gold, somewhat as an old Persian might be of the sun, and he does not raise our contempt by the absurdities of domestic economy. But Harpagon is thoroughly detestable, and is in fact detested by his neighbours, domestics, and children. ”

“ Among all the Latin writers, indeed, from Ennius to Ausonius, we meet with nothing so simple, so full of grace and delicacy—in fine, nothing that can be compared to the comedies of Terence for elegance of dialogue—presenting a constant flow of easy, genteel, unaffected discourse, which never subsides into vulgarity or grossness, and never rises higher than the ordinary level of polite conversation. ”

“ But, at Rome, the pursuit of literature was neither a native nor predominant taste among the people. The Roman territory was always a foreign soil for letters, which were not the produce of national genius, but were naturalized by the assiduous culture of a few individuals reared in the schools of Greece. Indeed, the early Roman authors, particularly the dramatic, who, of all others, best illustrate the prevalent ideas and sentiments of a nation, were mere translators from the Greek. ”