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He had no sooner reclined than there came in à number of revellers for some one who had gone out had left the door open-and took their places on the vacant couches, and everything became full of confusion; and no order being observed, every one was obliged to drink a great quantity of wine. Eryximachus, and Phædrus, and some others, said Aristodemus, went home to bed; that, for his part, he went to sleep on his couch, and slept long and soundly-the nights were then long-until the cock crew in the morning. When he awoke he found that some were still fast asleep, and others had gone home, and that Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates had alone stood it out, and were still drinking out of a great goblet. which they passed round and round. Socrates was disputing between them. The beginning of their discussion Aristodemus said that he did not recollect, because he was asleep; but it was terminated by Socrates forcing them to confess, that the same person is able to compose both tragedy and comedy, and that the foundations of the tragic and comic arts were essentially the same. They, rather convicted than convinced, went to sleep. Aristophanes first awoke, and then, it being broad daylight, Agathon. Socrates, having put them to sleep, went away, Aristodemus following him, and coming to the Lyceum he washed himself, as he would have done anywhere else, and after having spent the day there in his accustomed manner, went home in the evening.

A DISCOURSE ON THE MANNERS

OF THE ANCIENTS

RELATIVE TO THE SUBJECT OF LOVE.

[In Shelley's letter to Godwin referred to at page 156 of the present volume, he says of the Symposium, "I have occupied myself in translating this, and it has excited me to attempt an Essay upon the cause of some differences in sentiment between the Ancients and Moderns, with respect to the subject of the dialogue." Mrs. Shelley affixed to this Fragment the title Essay on the Literature, the Arts, and the Manners of the Athenians, recording, however, in a note that Shelley named it as it is headed in the present edition, and that it "was intended to be a commentary" on the Symposium, but "breaks off at the moment when the main subject is about to be discussed." Referring to this and the Preface to the Banquet, Mrs. Shelley makes the observations already cited at page 42 as to "small portions of these and other Essays" having been "published by Captain Medwin in a newspaper." Under the title of The Age of Pericles: With Critical Notices of the Sculpture in the Florence Gallery, Medwin published in The Shelley Papers an excerpt from this Fragment (beginning at the beginning and going down to extravagant fiction, page 241), and the seven Notes on Sculpture indicated in the present volume (see pages 47 et seq.). The portion of this Fragment appeared first with the Niobe Note in The Athenæum for the 15th of September, 1832; and in the issue of the 29th of the same month will be found the Reflection on Love, which also is an excerpt from this Discourse. I have collated these excerpts of Medwin's with the authoritative version of Mrs. Shelley here given, and have not failed to note any variations of the slightest consequence.-H. B. F.]

A DISCOURSE ON THE MANNERS

OF THE ANCIENTS

RELATIVE TO THE SUBJECT OF LOVE.

A FRAGMENT.

THE period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubtedly, whether considered in itself, or with reference to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world. What was the combination of moral and political circumstances which produced so unparalleled a progress during that period in literature and the arts;—why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check, and became retrograde, are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language-a type of the understandings' of which it was the creation

1 Medwin makes this word singular.

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