_and pedantry, and ridicules the frivolity of courts, the vane ity of citizens, and even the affectation of virtues, it mat ters little that there is a difference between the subjects in the delineation of which the two poets have employed their powers ; it matters little that one brought public life and the whole nation on the stage, while the other merely described incidents of private life, the interior arrange- ments of families, and the nonsensicality of individual characters; this difference in the materials of comedy arises from the difference of time, place, and state of civ- ilization. But in both Aristophanes and Moliére realities always constitute the substance of the picture. The man- ners and ideas of their times, the vices and follies of their fellow-citizens—in a word, the nature and life of man— are always the stimulus and nutriment of their poetic vein. Comedy thus takes its origin in the world which surrounds the poet, and is connected, much more closely than tragedy, with external and real facts.
The Greeks, whose mind and civilization followed so regular a course in their development, did not combine the two kinds of composition, and the distinction which sep- arates them in nature was maintained without effort in art. Simplicity prevailed among this people; society was not abandoned by them to a state of conflict and incoher- ence; and their destiny did not pass away in protracted ob- security, in the midst of contrasts, and a prey to dark and deep uneasiness. ‘They grew and shone in their land just as the sun rose and pursued its course through the skies which overshadowed them. National perils, intestine dis- cord, and civil wars agitated the life of a man in those days, without disturbing his imagination, and without op- posing or deranging the natural and easy course of his thoughts. The reflex influence of this general harmony
