deceive the multitude as to the nature of his calling :-e. g. M. Scribe. It is said, that not one of the numerous productions bearing his name, was the produce of that gentleman's unaided efforts. He receives all new pieces, seizes the first idea, changes the plan, developes the plot, and almost recomposes the dialogue, This is done with such tact, wit, and humour, that no one has the courage to reclaim his own. The thing is then published in the joint names of M. Scribe and the original schemer, the profit is divided, the honour is exclusively M. Scribe's. No one better understands the art of adaptation for the conceptions of others; no one is less desirous of literary fame; no one better knows the caprices of that public for which he works; no one more scientifically tickles their palate and their vanity; and no one puts more money into his pocket. This Joint Stock Association of Scribe and Co. have produced a prodigious number of little pieces and vaudevilles of the most interesting character, and which reflect the greatest possible credit on the head of the firm. M. Scribe has already made the fortune of the Gymnase, revived the Opéra Comique, and succeeded in producing a real pantomime in place of the eternal entrechats' at the Académie de la Musique. It is to be regretted that talents of so extraordinary a character have been only applied hitherto to vaudevilles and operas, which, though seen once with pleasure, fatigue on a second represen tation, and can never be read. M. Scribe might, had he so chosen, have depicted nature in detail; but he has preferred light, shewy, ephemeral sketches. His method must now be too confirmed to be altered; though, if it were possible, he would add considerably to his fame-a consummation about which he seems to be most careless and unconcerned. His Valérie is not equal to his Somnambule, Mariâge de Raison, &c. But with all his faults, M. Scribe is decidedly the first comic writer whom France possesses. The censorship was an extinguisher to genius. M. Scribe survived its poisonous influence, but many died under the full infliction of the plague. It is impossible in this country to conceive its galling tyranny. Six individuals formed the conclave du Théâtre. They cut and carved and ruined the pieces submitted to their inspection, without the slightest feeling of mercy. Their shrewdness in scenting out allusions against government and governors was so surprising as to surprise the very governors themselves, and to be equalled by no individual on record save the too sensitive and far-visioned Dogberry :-they were probably the personages typified by the long-sighted gentleman of the Fairy Tale, These These bourreaux, however, proscribed Tibere,' set their condemnatory seal on Pinto, and attempted to strangle La Démence de Charles VII.' at its birth. They forbade all subjects which the French history is capable of furnishing-save those contained in its apocryphal portion. It was high treason to say that Hugh Capet was an usurper, which, to our weak comprehensions, seems the perfection of political sophistry. This disgraceful persecution by the censorship, commenced under Napoleon, was adopted by the milder régime' of legitimacy, which even refined upon the system, by hiring needy wretches to witness theatrical representations, and report whether sedition lurked in the actors' dresses and in the scenic decorations of the stage? as though the former had been "Guy Fawkeses" in disguise, and that stage the fatal cellar where the grand gunpowder explosion was to take place, and to blow to atoms Aristocracy-Monarchy-Bourbonism-and France! To give one instance of the 'Star Chamber' Proceedings of the oligarchical censorship, the following fact will suffice: In the MS. of a play (where the stage-director ordered the scenic representation of a Village market-place') the following note was inserted in red ink-" Granted, provided there be no church painted therein!" As a set off to this, however, we have the chaste Susannah -unencumbered by base habiliments or dress-figuring in a melodrame; whilst at the opera, we have Adam and Eve cum cæteris, and in puris naturalibus ;—we have a Patriarch singing forth the Ten Commandments, in a piece where the Almighty is a principal character. Can anything be more licentious, infamous, or disgusting? Yet these were the happy fruits of a liberal, a wise, and a well-informed Censorship!-Is it, we ask, to be re-established in France? ART. IV. Die Dorier. Vier Bücher von Karl Otfried Müller. The Dorians by C. O. Müller. 2 vols. IT may be said that the principal German books on subjects appertaining to ancient history, which have been published of late years, are Niebuhr's Roman History, Boeckh's Public Economy of Athens, Creuzer's Mythology, Wachsmuth's Antiquities of Greece, and Müller's works on the Dorians and Etruscans. Of these the three first are alone accessible to an English reader ; the latter, indeed, only through a French translation: while of the Müller's Dorians. the others, no detailed account, still less any translation, has yet appeared; an omission which, as far as one is concerned, we shall attempt to supply in the present article. It was Otfried Müller was a pupil of Boeckh, the celebrated professor of Berlin, a man distinguished for his intimate acquaintance with all the different departments of ancient learning, and who has probably done more, by his instruction and writings, for promoting the knowledge of Grecian history and antiquities, than any other man living. While a student at Berlin, Müller wrote a treatise on the island of Ægina, embracing a great variety of subjects, and shewing a wonderful extent of reading and familiarity with ancient authors for so young a man. published in the year 1817, under the title of Eginetica; and is composed in that singular dialect which is produced by ancient Latin being engrafted on modern German. His next work was on a more confined, though, perhaps, more difficult subject, viz. the interpretation of the famous architectural inscription, containing a report of the unfinished state of the temple of Minerva Polias on the Acropolis of Athens. This book, of which a large part has been repeated by Mr. Rose, in his collection of Inscriptions (p. 145. sqq.), and which has now been rather superseded by the labours of Mr. Boeckh, was entitled Minervæ Poliadis Sacra. In the same year the author put forth the first volume of a larger work on the "History of Greek Tribes and Cities;" containing a number of learned and ingenious dissertations on many different subjects of early Grecian history, not very closely connected with each other; but which he comprehended under the title of "Orchomenus and the Minyans.' It contains an ample account of the country and primitive inhabitants of Boeotia, as well as of their religious and heroic mythology; and traces the Minyans in their successive settlements in Thessaly, Lemnos, Laconia, Thera, &c. There is likewise a valuable dissertation on the Geography of Boeotia, as well as a new map of the N. E. part of Greece. Of this series, the work placed at the head of our article, forms the second and third volumes: and it is of these that we propose to give an account, omitting the former volume, which, from its miscellaneous nature and its want of connexion with the succeeding work, does not so well suit our present purpose. The work on the Dorians is divided into four books. The first, after a general introduction on the tribes which inhabited the north-eastern frontiers of Greece, contains a history of the Doric race from the earliest times, to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. In giving the history of a whole race or tribe, tribe, the author does not, of course, enter minutely into the separate history of each state or city of that tribe: for instance, he does not give a particular account of the share which Sparta took in the Persian war; but he is occupied chiefly in ascertaining the migrations of the Dorians, their territorial conquests, their relations to other races, and the political measures which were common to the whole race. The second book enters upon the wide and misty regions of mythology; in which the author expatiates with evident delight. His knowledge of the subject is no less exact than extensive; and he has succeeded in throwing a light on the early history and condition of the Dorians which few who have formed their notions of such inquiries from the works of Bryant and his followers would easily believe. We do not, however, mean to assert that Mr. Müller's differ from every mythological discussion that was ever written, in being free from fanciful combinations and groundless analogies. His chief positions are, that Apollo was originally and exclusively a god of the Doric race; that his worship was by them, and by them only, together with the kindred worship of Diana, introduced into the religion of Greece; and that Hercules was, in like manner, the national hero of the Dorians, being the fabulous ancestor of their noble families, the Heraclidæ; and, after the conquest of the Peloponnese, mixed up and incorporated with the mythology of an Argive hero, to whose attributes and exploits his own bore a resemblance. The third book is, perhaps, the most interesting in the whole work, being dedicated to an account of the political institutions of the different states of Doric origin. Under this head are discussed the different gradations of rank, such as bondsmen, subjects, freemen, &c.; the public assemblies, magistrates, the public economy, civil and criminal laws, and military institutions of all the Doric states. The contents of the fourth and last book are of a more miscellaneous kind. It treats of the architecture, dress, food, education, and domestic institutions generally; of the music, dancing, and dramatic literature of various Doric states, chiefly the Spartans; and the whole concludes with a character of the Dorians in general, and the several Doric states in particular. An Appendix follows, with a very valuable article on the ancient geography of the Peloponnese; a dissertation on the Hрaxλĩaι or epic poems on the adventures of Hercules, with a collection of the fragments extant: chronological tables from the Doric invasion to the end of the eighty-seventh olympiad (429 B. C.), and a discussion on the Doric dialect, and its various modifica tions. There is moreover a map of the Peloponnese at the time of the Peloponnesian war; prepared, with the greatest care and learning, from ancient and modern authorities. The reader must already see that the present article would swell to a most disproportionate size, and that there would be a mutiny among the Foreign Reviewers, if we were to endeavour to go regularly through the work before us. We are therefore compelled to follow the rules of the poet rather than the painter; to attempt a sketch of those among Mr. Müller's opinions and discussions, which appear most prominent and worthy of notice, and explain the principal merits and defects of his style of reasoning and inquiry. The introduction contains a brief account of the nations which, in the earliest times, dwelt upon the northern frontiers of Greece. These were the Illyrians, the Macedonians, a branch of the Illyrian nation, the Thessalians, probably of the same national stock, the Phrygians on the Macedonian coast, the Thracians, the ancient Hellenes, the Achæans and Ionians, which three races had probably a national affinity; the Minyans, and the fabulous nation of Hylleans. The author makes some interesting remarks on the language and religion of several of these tribes; which, as he remarks, are the most ancient records of history. He is likewise of opinion that the existence of the Pelasgi, both in Greece and Italy, is the only way of accounting for the resemblance between the Latin and Greek languages. The way being thus cleared, we are next introduced to the Dorians in the earliest settlements to which our historical memorials enable us to trace them, viz. Hestiæotis in Thessaly. The precise extent of their possessions in this quarter cannot, of course, be ascertained, nor probably did they long remain unaltered. Generally, however, it may be said, This position having been attacked in a German Review of the Dorier, the author has since published a separate treatise on the Macedonians, in which he enters at length into the early history of that nation. In a line from the 'Hora of Hesiod (Gaisf. frag. 88.) εἱὲ δύω, Μάγνητα Μακεδόνα θ ἱππιοχάρμην, Mr. Müller, p. 4. proposes Μάκεδνόν θ' ἱππιο Xúquny. We see no objection to the common reading, believing that the being the first syllable of the foot, may be pronounced long. Mr. Gaisford reads Manndova. See Index in v., and Blomfield ad Callim. Hymn. Del. 167, Addend. At any rate Mr. Müller's alteration is inadmissible: for Constantinus, who quotes the verses, says, Maxidovía xwę u ὠνομάσθη ἀπὸ Μακεδόνος, not Μακεδνον. In the inscription and oracle in Pausanias, cited by the Bishop of London, the Paris MS. has Maxsdovias and Maxsdóvss, i. 13. 3. and vii. 8. 9. ed. Bekker. Dorus, Xuthus, and Æolus were called the sons of Hellen; and Xuthus was fabled to have had two sons, Achæus and Ion. The person who invented this genealogy, whether the author of the 'Hora, or some earlier poet, must therefore have supposed that the Ionians and Achæans were kindred races. See Müller's Mythologie, p. 179. Bura, too, the Achæan city, was said to have been founded by Bura, a daughter of Ion. Pausan, vii. 25. 8. Bekker. they |