ARISTOPHANES.

Ω πολιούχο Παλλὰς, ὦ τῆς ἱερωτάτης άπασῶν πολέμῳ τε καὶ ποιη ταῖς δυνάμει θ' ὑπερφορούν σης μεδέουσα χώρας, δεῦρ ̓ ἀφικοῦ λαβοῦσα τὴν ἐν στρατιαῖς τε καὶ μάχαις ἡμετέραν ξυνεργὸν

Νίκην, ἣ χορικῶν ἐστιν ἑταιρα,

τοῖς τ' ἐχθροῖσι μεθ' ἡμῶν στασιάζει.

νῦν οὖν δεῦρο φάνηθι· δεῖ γὰρ τοῖς ἀνδράσι τοῖσος παρ ση τέχνη πορίσαι σε νίτην εἴπερ ποτὲ καὶ νῦν. V. 577.

WHEELWRIGHT.

O Pallas, guardian of our state,

By whose protecting favour great

Our sacred soil is crowned; Whose warriors' and whose poets' name Gives ours a more as. piring fame

. Than all the cities round.

Come hither, and with thee convey

Our helper in each warlike fray,

Victory, who on our choirs attends,

And from each hostile stroke defends,

Now therefore to our call appear.

For to these men with all thine art

Triumphant strength thou must impart;

If e'er before, O grant it here!

fused, the actions of one being, in the spirit of Rabelais, attributed to the other; thus one horse is represented urging forward his companion.

MITCHELL.

By samphora the poet indicated the mark of the letter upon the horse's thigh. Walsh supposed the initial letter of the breeder's name to have been usually branded on the animal, as we see done in the present day upon the New Forest ponies. Mitchell refers to the Clouds, 1298, and observes, σε σαμφόρας σαν, φέρω-a horse, which, as the mark of his race, had the σαν, οι σιγμα burnt into him.” Το the reader who may be familiar with the legends of romance, there will be nothing surprising in the poet's equestrian allegory, in which he flattered the rider through his horse. He might have pleaded the dignity of the epic in

bis defo

Our ancient friend, the sausagevender, may now be seen advancing from the senate-house towards the stage, and he is rapturously welcomed by the chorus, who desire him to relate the progress he has made in his suit. He proclaims his triumph with high satisfaction. "He returns," says Mitchell," a wiser and a gladder man.' Why should he not? He has found himself possessed of those intellectual powers which laid a whole senate prostrate at his feet; and, without having read Shakspeare, he knows that there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.' Splendid visions begin, GE gorima ro Alont before his a

-handsome provisions for the young sausage-sellers-snug berths for his friends of the quarter-and for himself high place in theatre, the public banquet in the Prytaneum, and other perquisites of official greatness. As the fingers of his jolly hand spread wide, his eye dwells upon that particular one on which his prophetic soul tells him that the ring of office will soon sit, transferred from Cleon's keeping to his own." The same acute writer points out, in his new edition of the Knights, the peculiar force of the congratulation of the chorus to the sausagevender upon the safety of his return (σὡς ἐλήλυθας πάλιν); because a person labouring under an accusation like his was usually secured until "the Ecclesia had taken further cognizance of the matter."

The narrative of the sausage-vender is a very humorous satire upon the Athenian character. He begins by informing the chorus that, after following Cleon to the council, where the great agitator practised with so much skill his arts of rhetoric, the judges begin to look mustard (isas vāru) upon his antagonist, who, thereupon, invokes the deities of fraud to his assistance. Their aid is soon apparent. He pushes

aside the rope, and hastens to assure the senate that, since the commencement of the war, he had never seen cheaper anchovies; and that a single obolus would fill all the basins in the neighbourhood. For this gratifying intelligence, a crown is immediately voted to him, and every tongue roars in his commendation. While they are offering a sacrifice to the gods for this news, the sausage-vender buys up all the leeks and coriander in the market, makes a present of sauce with promiscuous generosity, and departs with the delightful assurance of having purchased a whole senate for a penny. The chorus applaud his conduct, and rejoice that Cleon has found a greater rogue than himself. This important personage now reappears on the stage. The sausagevender compares his approach to the rolling in of a great billow, that sweeps all before it. The Paphlagonian immediately renews his assurances of cordial hatred; and the sausage-vender laughs at his threats with inordinate glee, leaping and singing aloud with the note of a cuckoo.

̓Απιπυδάρισα μόθωνα, περιεκόκκυσα.

Every word being peculiarly expressive of contempt and boisterous merriment; περικοκκύζειν signifies either the triumphant and gesticulating crowing of a cock, or the note of the cuckoo. Mitchell says that cuckoo is equivalent to English goose, and the French dindon. The war of words at last grows fast and furious; and after several exchanges of pleasantry occur between the champions, not always translateable with satisfaction, they appeal to the people, and Demus accordingly comes forward, desiring them to depart from his door, and complaining that they had broken his olive-branch in the scuffle. Mitchell has an ingenious note upon this passage, which may be quoted with advantage.

What formed the principal article in this garland, the derivation of the word sufficiently indicates. The wool tastefully intermixed with fruits of various kinds, was supported on twigs of the olive or the laurel; and a garland thus composed was on two solemn festivals, bearing the names of Pyanepsia and Thargelia, paraded through the streets of Athens, to the sounds of songs; a similar garland, I presume, and not merely those carried in procession, being affixed to the gate of every fore-court in Athens. To these two festivals we must now address our attention, for the purpose of seeing why this garland is affixed to Demus's gate. The first, as its title imports (úavos, a bean; fw, to boil), was distinguished by a particular dish which then made its appearance as regularly as the Shrovetide pancake, the Mid-Lent Sunday frumenty, and the crossed Good Friday bun, do among ourselves. The dish itself was composed of beans, or rather, perhaps, a mixture of field barley and pulse (rúavos); and the archæologists give various reasons for its origin (Potter, i. 428); but the object of the suspended ειρεσιώνη, with which we are now concerned, was to act as an amulet, preserving the inmates of the house where it was hung from one of the worst of human calamities-a craving stomach, without the means of appeasing it. A far deeper subject was connected with the festival Thargelia, from whatever source the name itself is derived. The festival lasted two days, and the ceremony of the second evinces on what understanding it had been originally instituted; namely, an acknowledgment of the guilt inherent generally in human nature — a sense of Divine vengeance thereby incurred and the feeling that the guilt might be atoned for, and its punishment averted, by a vicarious offer

ing. For this latter purpose, two persons, both men according to some writers, but a male and female according to others, were provided annually by the Athenian state, and, after certain ceremonies, were offered as sacrificial victims. Whoever attends to the two principal features which characterise the Demus of the present drama an appetite which required to be fed and propitiated by his rulers at one period, and a superstitious feeling which required to be soothed and directed at another-will be at no loss to see why this garland is here appended to his gates, or why it is the first object of his solicitude at the very moment when he makes his appearance on the stage."-Knights, p. 145. Edit.

1836.

Walsh refers to the image of our Britannia on copper coin, as a remnant of the ancient custom. Olive-branches, he says, were also hung with figs, small loaves, pots of honey, oil, and wine, and suspended every year at the door of a house, as offerings to Apollo or Ceres.

People inquires of Cleon, who is injuring him; the demagogue replies, "The sausage-seller and the chorus;" and simply because of his sincere attachment and devotion to People, whose assembly he invokes to settle the rival claims. People names the Pnyx, being unable to sit in any other place. The chorus laments the choice

WALSH.

"Sweet, oh sweet, will the light of day Shine on those who are far away,

And on those who are present,
If but Cleon should now be hook'd!
Though I heard some old chaps, who
looked

Most morose and unpleasant,
Stand it out on the Law Exchange,
That, supposing this monster strange
Had been crushed in his cradle,
Two o' the usefullest instruments
Had been lost to the Attic gents,-
Namely, pestle and ladle.

I'm astonished to hear he was
Such a dunce; for they say, I'm poz,
All his schoolmasters are able
To attest that he played the bass
Oft, but stedfastly set his face

'Gainst learning the treble; Till the harpmaster got at last Wroth, and swore at him hard and fast,'Well, however the case lie, They shall take ye away from school,

of this situation; the old man, he says, is very wise at home; but as soon as he sits down on this rock,

"He gapes as one who is suspending figs."

Wheelwright thinks that in this allusion the poet intended to convey a satire upon the laborious idleness of his countrymen, who were as anxious about trifles as boys were "to catch with gaping mouths the figs, which were suspended on a thread, and swung in the air." The contention that follows is protracted and vehement,abounding in brief sallies of political wit; but the point is blunted in a translation. Some of the hits at Cleon are admirably given; thus, to describe his grasping propensity, the poet employs a metaphor from the herb-garden. τοὺς καυλοὺς

τῶν εὐθυνῶν ἐκκαυλίζων.

WHEN the loud summons of Peter the Hermit had burst upon the repose of Europe, and made every land exclaim, as with the shout of one man, "It is the will of God!" none echoed the cry with greater energy than the deep island-voice of merry England. Civil commotion ceased; the hatred between Norman and Saxon, the foreign oppressor, and the native oppressed, was suspended. Prelate and priest, noble and serf, even delicate women, and helpless children, and old men sunk into second childhood, were arming to wrest the holy sepulchre from the grasp of the infidel. They were conscious the while that they were weak; but what mattered it?-their answer was the war-cry, "It is the will of God!" The heathen had been permitted to triumph for a little, but soon they should cease to be. The stars in their courses would fight against them; the floods would gather their waters to sweep them away. The Paynims would be wasted before the coming of the Christians, like dried grass before the flame; and that hallowed spot where sin and death had been conquered, would be freed. And this deed once accomplished, it seemed as if guilt and sorrow were to be banished for ever from the world. All that had been promised of the blessed millennium was to be realised by the deliverance of Jerusalem.

With those who were animated by such high enthusiasm, there were many whose motives were of a more selfish description. Whoever had spent a long life in forbidden indulgence; whoever was writhing under the agonies of a guilty conscience, in spite of the shrines he had enriched with illgotten wealth; whoever wished to elude the penalty, without foregoing the pleasures of sin, all looked upon Jerusalem as the gate of heaven, which they vowed to take by storm. The robber-noble, who had pillaged his district till no more plunder could be gleaned from it; the landless knight, who was ambitious of becoming a territorial count; and the sensualist, whose imagination revelled among female charms, believed they would find their land of promise in Palestine, where heaven and earth combined were to be the price of victory.

While thus every motive was concentrated upon one great exploit, and every character pervaded by a certain religious aspect, feelings were kindled and deeds were wrought unexampled in the previous history of man. Valour excited to frantic daring, love that laughed at earthly obstacles, and religious zeal that rushed forward to martyrdom, became events of common occurrence; and the wild impossibilities of romance seemed to have been converted into the realities of every-day life. In the following tale, therefore, we rehearse no lying fable, although it formed the beloved theme of gleemen and minstrels. It constitutes a page of sober and authenticated historyand no mean page, since it tells the parentage of Thomas-à-Becket. In the narrative we follow the chronicle of Brompton, who writes a tale that was universally known as true, while it formed the fittest introduction to the equally wonderful life of the renowned Archbishop of Canterbury.

Gilbert Beck, or Becket, was a citizen of London. Hitherto he had lived in studied obscurity, although in comfortable circumstances; for, in conse quence of his Saxon lineage, seclusion was his best defence from Norman spoliation. But the summons to the rescue of Jerusalem, which had animated the most indifferent, found in him no careless listener. It was not indeed that he hoped, like others, to extend his pleasures or possessions, or even to win that military renown which, as a Saxon, he could not obtain in England. Pure, although mistaken motives of religion, only, had induced him to new-edge his paternal battle-axe, and furbish the rusted links of his hauberk. He had thought with sorrow of the sins of his youthful days, and longed to expiate them; and he had been taught no higher expiation than the perilling of his life among the red-cross ranks of Christendom. Let him but forego the comforts of his home, and become an armed pilgrim on the battle-fields of Palestine-let him endure without murmuring the withering heat by day, and the piercing frost by night, the burning wound, or even the bloody departure, while combating for the weal of Jerusalem-and then, had not the church assured him that all his sins would be

forgiven, and a home in paradise secured? Amidst these hopes, so perverted, and yet so elevated above those of his compeers, he joined the honoured banner of Robert of Normandy; and, attended by Richard his faithful servant, he embarked with the armament in which the English portion of the first crusade was carried, to join the main force under the leading of Godfrey of Bouillon.

It does not belong to our purpose to follow the progress of the Christian warriors during this memorable campaign, as they fought their way step by step towards the city of Jerusalem. The almost superhuman exertions they made, as well as the sufferings they endured, are matter of history with which all are acquainted. It is enough to mention that Gilbert sustained his full share, and that, whether to dare or endure, he was always to be found among the foremost. But, after all his efforts, he was not fated to realize his fondest hopes by entering within the walls of the holy city.

After a tedious march, during a sultry day, the Christian army had pitched their tents for the night, and were preparing to enjoy repose, when they were informed that a cave, hallowed in the traditions of pilgrims, lay only three miles off, in the neighbourhood of the Jordan. It had been the dwelling, it was affirmed, of John the Baptist, when he abode in the wilderness; and the altar and cross by which this oratory was adorned, had, according to the same traditions, been the work of the Baptist's hands. This was enough for some of the most devout of the crusaders, and among others for Gilbert Becket. It never entered their simple imaginations to question whether the blessed forerunner could have used a cross previous to the crucifixion-here was the cross, to prove that the Baptist had made it! Although the soldiers were already exhausted by fatigue, yet about a dozen of the English, among whom were Becket, and his faithful follower Richard, resolved to repair thither, and spend the night in devotion, for the welfare of their souls and the furtherance of their great enterprise. Flying clouds of Arabs and Turcomans had indeed been hovering upon their flanks during the day, but at last they had been dispersed, and

نوار

resolved to return with the earliest dawn, before danger could be apprehended. They repaired accordingly to the place; but scarcely had they lighted their tapers, and commenced their orisons, when they were interrupted by a sudden rush of Arabs from the deep recesses of the cavern. It had lately been turned into a haunt of the enemy, and their loud yell of triumph made the Christians start to their feet. But it was only to discover the hopelessness of flight or resistance. Every arm was mastered before a sword could be drawn. In a few moments the Englishmen were fettered, thrown upon fleet camels, and borne away into the heart of the country. After a night of rapid travelling, the Saracens arrived at the castle of their chief, and the captives were thrown into a strong dungeon to wait the award of perpetual slavery or death.

When hours of suspense had passed, the doors of the dungeon were opened, and the unfortunate prisoners were driven out to be paraded before the lord of the castle. A word of the misbeliever would decide their fate, and the mutual cruelties that had been common between crusader and Saracen left little ground for hope. Even the mildest alternative would be a life of wasting bondage far from friends and country, while the grave would be their only shelter. But although they knew all this, they stood proudly erect before their enemies, and regarded them with a look of defiance, resolved to shew these pagans how Christians could defy their worst. They were led into a hall richly paved with marble and jasper, in the centre of which a fountain threw up its cooling streams; the walls glittered with bright arms and golden ornaments; and at the head of this regal apartment, and beneath a rich crimson canopy, sate the emir, upon a thronelike pile of cushions, while guards, with drawn cimetars, were standing at his right hand and at his left. chief looked at his captives with a fixed regard, while they, in turn, scanned narrowly the aspect of him on whose word their fate was suspended. But they saw no promise of mercy in the look of confirmed hatred with which he eyed them. As there was no common language between them, the emir expressed the conditions of his favour

new praninonal cione

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