Euripides and Metastasio have both written the recitative in verses approaching to prose, and the chorus and the airs in sonorous and lyrical verses: both have divided the air into first and second parts, strophes, and antistrophes; both have disengaged the recitative from moral maxims, in order to introduce them in the chorus or the airs; and both have produced the same effect. They have, in truth, each relaxed the interest felt, by weakening the illusion but they have carried farther the moral sentiments, and more deeply impressed the mind of the hearer with them. Not ten men in Italy can recite a single stanza of the recitative of the exquisite modern Roman dramatist, while scarce. ly one is unable to chant three or four hundred of his airs. The same was the case with Euripides; all antiquity bears witness to the fact.

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The French and English tragedies are of a sort totally different; forming a mean between the dialogue and the chorus. The versification of these is neither sufficiently prosaic, nor sufficiently poetic; it can neither be sung nor spoken. The Italian recitative, as the Greek iambics formerly did, resists music properly so called: but the airs, like the ancient chorus, can only be sung, for such is the nature of lyric verse. In our formal tragedies, the moral reflections are neither reserved for the end of the scene, nor sung by the chorus: but they are mixed with the dialogue, which is thus deprived of animation and precision.

I presume not to determine which of these two styles is to be preterred; whether that of Euripides and Metastasio, or that of Corneille and Racine, of Otway or Rowe. Each has its defects and advantages. The latter possess more interest, while the Greek and the Italian are more instructive. The illusion also is better preserved in the former; it is true that the versification makes the dialogue seem unnatural, but, as this pervades the whole drama, the defect is less felt. The Greek and

Italian recitatives are nature itself: but the divisions into which they are broken, by the chorus and the airs, materially impair the probability. The action is sometimes very animated, and sometimes very languid. In fine, the Greek and Italian tragedies have recourse to music instead of excluding it, while the French and English performances solely rely on their own proper strength and effect.

For the Literary Magazine.

ROYAL CONVERSATION.

COUNT BESENVAL, who spent a long life at court, makes the following just observations on the errors and vices which are generally the lot of kings. These remarks are apposite in proportion to the despotism of the government; but they are true, though in different degrees, of all men placed in authority.

Society charms at first, and it is grateful to kings to be allowed to be familiar, while the royal favour crowns the wishes of the courtier: but there is no intimacy which is attended with more inconveniences, nor which is subject to more vicissitudes. An unfounded disadvantageous rumour may hurt a man in society, but there his judges are more considerate, as being subject to similar inconveniences, and as being in the habit of estimating the credit due to such reports; kings, on the contrary, so much separated from the rest of the world, cannot enter into this calculation; and they resign themselves absolutely to the public voice, to that of their mistresses, confessors, or their society, if they have any.

Sovereigns are men, and as such more disposed to yield to unfavourable than to good impressions. Often with them a word is sufficient to impair the reputation of a person, to put a stop to his good fortune, and even to ruin him. Let it, then, be judged under what conti

nual constraint an honest and honourable man must be placed, who enjoys the familiarity of kings, un less he constantly restricts himself to the inglorious part of applauding, excusing, or of being silent.

With kings there is no subject of conversation. We certainly are not to speak of politics to them, nor of the news of the day; neither can administration be made the topic. Many events, which happen in society, cannot be related to them; and not a word must be said to them on religion, of which they are the guardians.

Former wars, ancient history, facts which are even but little remote, sciences, belles lettres might furnish conversation, but where are the courtiers who are conversant with these points? The kings also are not numerous, to whom this strain would be intelligible. The subjects, then, for this high converse must be supplied by common-place affairs, the theatres, and the chase. Let us not persuade ourselves that we can interest kings by flattering their taste, since they rarely have any. They find so much facility in gratifying it, that it passes before they have even fully enjoyed it. In order to taste pleasures, we must combat contrarieties, surmount difficulties, and feel privations. The love of war or the chase can alone place kings in this situation; and we always see the one or the other of these form their ruling passion; the love of war has possession of those of an elevated disposition, while the chase is the pursuit when the mind is of the ordinary standard. Since the regard for kings cannot be otherwise than selfish, suspicion becomes the basis of their character; and this feeling renders intimate connections impossible. Accustomed to homage, they believe that all is due to them, and that nothing is due from them. The courtier who is most injured by them must redouble his attentions, lest his imperious master should suspect that he resents the treatment, charge him with insolence, drive him from his

presence, and thus cut him off from the hopes which his whole life has been employed to realize. Let not kings be censured; it is the very nature of their station, the cupidity and baseness of all who surround them that we ought to condemn. It is the first duty of a sovereign to maintain good order; he watches over it every moment restrains those who would disturb it, and sometimes sacrifices his own inclinations for its preservation. This sort of occupation is not favourable to grand thoughts, but it insures tranquillity, without which there is no enjoyment.

The circumstance, which has ever appeared to me the most irksome in the society of kings, is that of having no will but theirs, of sacrificing one's pleasures and affairs to the lightest of their caprices, and with a submission and a readiness which exclude from the compliance every idea of merit. When it is also considered that the restraint of the most profound respect continually affects all that is said and done, even in the freest moments, it will be admitted that the jealousy and enmity which are ever the appendages of royal favour are dearly purchased. It is a mistake to suppose that this familiarity with the monarch enables a man to solicit favours: for he must on no account presume to do this, or he runs the utmost risk of being for ever undone.

It is a great question whether it is best that kings should cultivate society, or should shut themselves up in their palaces, and never appear but when surrounded with splendour and form. If, on the one hand, society meliorates the character of kings, presents them with a view of those ties which unite men, and of the reciprocal duties which that union requires, the difference between the education of the sovereign and that of private individuals gives the latter the advantage in this intercourse; and this commerce also acquaints the subjects with the imperfections and defects

of the monarch; thus inducing an unfavourable opinion, the greatest misfortune perhaps that can befal a state. When kings, then, lay aside their grandeur, should they conceal themselves from the view of their subjects, and they should be regarded by them as those mysterious personages to whom they only owe homage? Let a wiser head than mine decide this question, with respect to courtiers. I subscribe to the opinion implied in the saying of Henry IV, Happy the country gentleman who lives on his estate, and who does not know me!

For the Literary Magazine.

WHY DID GREECE EXCEL IN THE ARTS?

AMONG all the wonders recorded in the history of human improvement, none is more striking, or has more perplexed the ingenuity of the learned, than the vast superiority once attained by the Greeks in the imitative arts. Many of their productions, which have happily with stood the destructive efforts of time and barbarism, are still unrivalled; and for all the real elegance and taste which Europe now possesses, we are indebted to the ideas which they have communicated. Rome, before her acquaintance with Greece, displayed nothing in painting, statuary, and architecture, which merited any praise; and we need not go far back to be convinced that the productions of the chisel in modern times were rude and mis-shapen, till artists began to study the science and to copy the models of the Greeks. It is certainly interesting to inquire into the causes which contributed to raise the petty states of ancient Greece to a degree of excellence in the arts, which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed; which was matter of admiration to the Romans in the most splendid æra of their republic; and which modern Europeans, after the

lapse of many centuries, are contemplating with almost despairing astonishment.

Were the ancient Greeks a peculiar species of men, or was the climate of their country singularly propitious to the exertions of genius? Neither. Since Zeuxis, Apelles, Lysippus, Phydias, and Praxiteles flourished, more than twenty centuries have elapsed: but it is remarkable that, after the disappearance of the circumstances under which they lived, the subsequent ages became ages of barrenness; and Greece has long been as barbarous as any of those nations on whom, in the days of her splendour, she conferred this degrading epithet.

We are indebted, probably, to the mild climate of Attica for the preservation of the works of the ancient Greeks, which in a more variable and corrosive atmosphere must long ago have inevitably perished: but it cannot be supposed that the people owed their inventive genius, and the correctness and sublimity of their taste, to the purity and elasticity of the air. The climate of Greece remains the same, but the glory of the Greeks is departed.

The brilliant æra of their polite arts was also that of their literature. The poets and orators of Greece associated with her painters, sculp tors, and statuaries. While her philosophers and legislators regulated the commonwealth, and her heroes bled in its defence, she was immortalized by the verses of her poets and by the tools of her artists. It is reasonable, therefore, to imagine that this common exuberance of genius must have originated in a

common source.

Neither forms of government nor of religion could alone produce the wonderful effect; and even a general view of their combined operation will scarcely impress the mind with a conviction of the truth. We must have lived in the age of Grecian glory; we must have witnessed the enthusiasm excited by Homer, and those poets whom his muse may be said to have inspired; we must

have caught the ardour and emula tion produced by popular govern ments and institutions; we must have been present at the Olympic and Isthmian games; and we must have been spectators of the pomp and splendour of their religion, which was aided by all the fascination of an elegant mythology; in order to feel a portion of that momentum by which genius of every kind was powerfully impelled to the sublimest exertions, and by which the arts were advanced to the greatest perfection.

Most of the ancient poets were born in the smiling isles of the Grecian Archipelago, which fable has embellished with its most seducing delusions, or in the vicinity of Attica; but no moral influence can be inferred from the beautiful, sublime, or picturesque circumstances of a country, on its inhabitants; for, on that principle, all countries which present the sublime and the beautiful in strong contrast, and especially islands, which, in addition to rural and romantic scenery, enjoy the prospect of Neptune's "salt wave," ought to abound in celebrated poets and artists.

The democracy of the Greeks will serve but partially to account for their superiority in the arts. The public games celebrated in Greece, and their anthropomorphic religion, probably contributed more than any other circumstance to the perfect exhibition of the human form, and to the study of ideal beauty. Their mythology represented men raised to the honours of divinity; and their artists employed the utmost stretch of their genius, in giving to those images which were worshipped in their temples a form and an appearance surpassing all human realities. Of the painter and the statuary it was required to embody the fictions of the poet, and to give grandeur and solemnity to the ceremonies of the priest. Not only the temple, the altar, and the tripod, but even the god himself, was created by the skill of the artist. We may judge, then, how

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highly his powers must have been estimated, and to what a pitch all his abilities must have been exerted, to bestow on a religion of spectacle the most striking effect. In endeavouring to exhibit gods of the most attractive forms, he was obliged attentively to study the human figure, and to combine together beauties which never perhaps were united in any one individual. Artists therefore laboured to surpass one another in this admirable department of their art. Employed in the crea tion of divinities, and in the representation of their actions, their works seemed to be the result of inspiration; perfection was their aim; and they never ceased till perfection was accomplished.

After they had excelled in the formation of gods, it was easy to execute the statues of men, and to flatter the great by giving to their figures the resemblance of particular deities. Thus, in the idolatrous systems of ancient Greece, with which all the human passions were intimately combined; in her political customs and institutions; and in the events of her history, which brought into vivid action the most noble powers of the mind; we may perhaps discover those circumstances which peculiarly fostered the arts.

Other countries have, indeed, abounded in sacred mythologies; and Egypt in particular, the cradle of Grecian science, though professing a religion which equally addressed itself to the senses, and endeavouring to create an effect on the people by visible representations, never produced artists like those of Greece. The mythology of Egypt, however, was not so propitious to true genius as that of Attica; Egypt could not have a Homer; her religion delighted more in stupendous and emblematic, than in beautiful and chaste forms; and moreover the nature of her government was not calculated, like that of the Greeks, to bring into action all the intellectual energies of her people. During the period of Grecian glory, all that was great in man, all that contri

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