[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. and the image-in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world. Their sculptures are such as we,' in our presumption, assume to be the models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which no artist of modern times can produce forms in any degree comparable. Their paintings, according to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony; and some even3 were powerfully pathetic, so as to awaken, like tender music or tragic poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We We are accustomed to conceive the painters of the sixteenth century, as those who have brought their art to the highest perfection, probably because none of the ancient paintings have been preserved. For all the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a sympathetic connexion between each other, being no more than various expressions of one internal power, modified by different circumstances, either of an individual, or of society; and the paintings of that period would probably bear the same relation as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all succeeding ones. Of their music we know little; but the effects which it is said to have produced, whether they be attributed to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of his audience, are far more powerful than any which we experience from the music of our own times; and if, indeed, the melody of their compositions were more tender and delicate, and inspiring, than the melodies of some modern European nations, their superiority in this art must have been something wonderful, and wholly beyond conception. 1 Medwin omits we, and reads perception for presumption. " Medwin omits Pliny and. The word even is omitted by Medwin. 4 Medwin reads this for their. * In Medwin's version, pictures. 6 Medwin omits For. 7 Medwin omits and, and makes this a fresh paragraph. 8 In Medwin's version, successive. Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the comparison. Perhaps Shakespeare, from the variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be considered, on the whole,' as the greatest individual mind, of which we have specimens remaining. Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered in the fragments of the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalric sensibility of Petrarch. But, as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images, their exact fitness to the illustration, and to that to which they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in conduct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have been brought into comparison with these men,3 but for those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction." But, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which can afford no general inference, how superior was the spirit and system of their poetry to that of any other period! So that, had any other genius equal in other respects to the greatest that ever enlightened the world arisen in that age, he would have been superior to all, from this circumstance alone-that his conceptions would have assumed a more harmonious and perfect form. it is worthy of observation, that whatever the poets of that age produced is as harmonious and perfect as pos 1 Medwin omits on the whole. 3 In Medwin's version the words with these men do not appear. PROSE.-VOL. III. For 4 At this point closes the excerpt issued by Medwin under the title of The Age of Pericles. R |