in ancient poetry, a hymn in honour of Bacchus, full of transport and poetical rage.

This poetry owes its birth to Greece, and to the transports of wine; and yet art is not quite exploded, but delicately applied to guide and restrain the dithyrambic impiety, which is indulged only in pleasing flights. Horace and Aristotle tell us that the ancients gave the name of dithyrambus to those verses in which none of the common rules or measures were observed. As we have now no remains of the dithyrambus of the ancients, we cannot say exactly what this measure was.