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Now let us raise in a different strain
The praise of the goddess, the giver of grain;
Imploring her favor

With other behavior,

In measures more sober, submissive, and graver.

SEMI-CHORUS

Ceres, holy patroness,
Condescend to mark and bless,
With benevolent regard,

Both the Chorus and the Bard;
Grant them for the present day

Many things to sing and say,
Follies intermixed with sense;

Folly, but without offense.

Grant them with the present play
To bear the prize of verse away.

SEMI-CHORUS

Now call again, and with a different measure,
The power of mirth and pleasure;

The florid, active Bacchus, bright and gay,
To journey forth and join us on the way.

SEMI-CHORUS

O Bacchus, attend! the customary patron of every lively lay; Go forth without delay

Thy wonted annual way,

To meet the ceremonious holy matron:
Her grave procession gracing,

Thine airy footsteps tracing

With unlaborious, light, celestial motion:

And here at thy devotion
Behold thy faithful choir

In pitiful attire:

All overworn and ragged,
This jerkin old and jagged,
These buskins torn and burst,
Though sufferers in the fray,
May serve us at the worst

To sport throughout the day;
And then within the shades
I spy some lovely maids
With whom we romped and reveled,
Dismantled and disheveled,

With their bosoms open,—
With whom we might be coping.
Xan.-Well, I was always hearty,

Bac.

Disposed to mirth and ease:
I'm ready to join the party.
And I will if you please.

A PARODY OF EURIPIDES'S LYRIC VERSE

H

From The Frogs'

ALCYONS ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim

Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room

Silver notes of the whistling loom,

Where the light-footed dolphin skips

Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,

Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,

Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!
I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,

But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man 11-50

THE PROLOGUES OF EURIPIDES

From The Frogs'

[The point of the following selection lies in the monotony of both narra tive style and metre in Euripides's prologues, and especially his regular cæsura after the fifth syllable of a line. The burlesque tag used by Aris tophanes to demonstrate this effect could not be applied in the same way to any of the fourteen extant plays of Sophocles and Eschylus.]

Eschylus-And by Jove, I'll not stop to cut up your verses word by word, but if the gods are propitious I'll spoil

all your prologues with a little flask of smellingsalts.

Euripides-With a flask of smelling-salts?

Esch. With a single one. For you build your verses so that anything will fit into the metre, a leathern sack,

or eider-down, or smelling-salts.

Eur. So, you'll show me, will you?

Esch.-I will that.

Dionysus- Pronounce.

Eur. [declaiming]—

Esch

I'll show you.

Ægyptus, as broad-bruited fame reports,
With fifty children voyaging the main
To Argos came, and

lost his smelling-salts.

Dion.--What the mischief have the smelling-salts got to do with it? Recite another prologue to him and let me see.

Eur.

Esch.

Dionysus, thyrsus-armed and faun-skin-clad,
Amid the torchlights on Parnassus's slope
Dancing and prancing

-lost his smelling-salts.

Dion. Caught out again by the smelling-salts.

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Here's a prologue that he can't fit 'em to.

No lot of mortal man is wholly blest:

The high-born youth hath lacked the means of life,
The lowly lout hath

Esch.

-lost his smelling-salts.

Dion.- Euripides

Eur.-
Dion.-

Well, what?

Best take in sail.

These smelling-salts, methinks, will blow a gale.

Eur.- What do I care? I'll fix him next time.

Dion. Well, recite another, and steer clear of the smelling-salts. Eur.

Esch.

Cadmus departing from the town of Tyre,

Son of Agenor

-lost his smelling-salts.

Dion. My dear fellow, buy those smelling-salts, or there won't be a rag left of all your prologues.

Eur.- What? I buy 'em of him?

Dion. If you'll be advised by me.

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Dion. There they are again, you see. Do let him have 'em,

my good Æschylus.

nickel.

Eur.- Never. I've not run out yet.

You can replace 'em for a

Esch.

Eneus from broad fields

-lost his smelling-salts.

Eur.-Let me say the whole verse, won't you?

Esch.

Eneus from broad fields reaped a mighty crop
And offering first-fruits.

-lost his smelling-salts.

Dion. While sacrificing? Who filched them ?
Eur.-Oh, never mind him. Let him try it on this verse:

Zeus, as the word of sooth declared of old

Dion. It's no use, he'll say Zeus lost his smelling-salts. For those smelling-salts fit your prologues like a kid glove. But go on and turn your attention to his lyrics.

788

HE

ARISTOTLE

(B. C. 384-322)

BY THOMAS DAVIDSON

Stagirite," called by Eusebius "Nature's private secretary," and by Dante "the master of those that know,"the greatest thinker of the ancient world, and the most influential of all time, was born of Greek parents at Stagira, in the mountains of Macedonia, in B. C. 384. Of his mother, Phæstis, almost nothing is known. His father, Nicomachus, belonged to a medical family, and acted as private physician to Amyntas, grandfather of Alexander the Great; whence it is probable that Aristotle's boyhood was passed at or near the Macedonian court. Losing both his parents while a mere boy, he was taken charge of by a relative, Proxenus Atarneus, and sent, at the age of seventeen, to Athens to study. Here he entered the school of Plato, where he remained twenty years, as pupil and as teacher. During this time he made the acquaintance of the leading contemporary thinkers, read omnivo rously, amassed an amount of knowledge that seems almost fabu lous, schooled himself in systematic thought, and (being well off collected a library, perhaps the first considerable private library in the world. Having toward the end felt obliged to assume an independent attitude in thought, he was not at the death of Plato (347) appointed his successor in the Academy, as might have been expected. Not wishing at that time to set up a rival school, he retired to the court of a former fellow-pupil, Hermias, then king of Assos and Atarneus, whom he greatly respected, and whose adopted daughter, Pythias, he later married. Here he remained, pursuing his studies, for three years; and left only when his patron was treacherously murdered by the Persians.

Having retired to Mitylene, he soon afterward received an invitation from Philip of Macedonia to undertake the education of his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. Aristotle willingly obeyed this summons; and retiring with his royal pupil to Mieza, a town southwest of Pella, imparted his instruction in the Nymphæum, which he had arranged in imitation of Plato's garden school. Alex ander remained with him three years, and was then called by hi father to assume important State duties. Whether Aristotle's instruction continued after that is uncertain; but the two men remained fast friends, and there can be no doubt that much of the nobility. self-control, largeness of purpose, and enthusiasm for culture, which

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