ARNOLD, a celebrated scholar and editor, was a native of Utrecht, where he was born January 1, 1684. Having studied belles-lettres under Grewius and Burmann, and law under Cornelius Van Eck, he succeeded Professor Burmann in 1716, and continued to hold his professorship till his death in 1748, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His earliest work was a dissertation entitled Disputatio philologico-historica de Projecto urbis, in 4to, and its intrinsic merit caused it to be reprinted at Frankfort, in 1752, by Professor Uhl, accompanied with a life of his learned author. His next work, entitled Disputatio de officio praefectorum praetorio, was published in 1707; and ten years afterwards he gave to the world his edition of Silius Italicus, in seventeen books, 4to. In order to render this edition as perfect as possible, nothing was omitted; and many historical subjects were engraved for the purpose of elucidating the text, to which his own copious and learned annotations greatly contributed. But his splendid edition of Livy, Lugd. Batav. 1738 and 1746, 7 tom., with a life of that eminent historian, is that on which his fame as a scholar chiefly rests. The preface to this work is replete with erudition, and gives a particular account of all the literary men who have at different periods commented on the works of Livy. His edition is based on that of Gronovius; but he made many important alterations on the authority of manuscripts which it is probable Gronovius had either never seen, or not taken the pains to consult. Upon the whole, this edition of Livy is one of the most elaborate, interesting and instructive, ever given to the world.

DRAMAT

A DRAMA (we adopt Dr Johnson's definition, with some little extension) is a poem or fictitious composition in dialogue, in which the action is not related, but represented.

A disposition to this fascinating amusement, considered in its rudest state, seems to be inherent in human nature. It is the earliest sport of children to take upon themselves some fictitious character, and sustain it to the best of their skill, by such appropriate gesture and language as their youthful fancies suggest, and such dress and decoration as circumstances place within their reach. The infancy of nations is as prone to this pastime as that of individuals. When the horde emerges out of a nearly brutal state, so far as to have holidays, public sports, and general rejoicings, the pageant of their imaginary deities, or of their fabulous ancestors, is usually introduced as the most pleasing and interesting part of the show. But however general the predisposition to the assumption of fictitious character may be, there is an immeasurable distance betwixt the rude games in which it first displays itself, and that polished amusement which is numbered among the fine arts, which poetry, music, and painting have vied to adorn, and to whose service genius has devoted her most sublime efforts; whilst philosophy has stooped from her loftier task, to regulate the progress of the action, and give probability to the representation and personification of the scene.

The history of Greece—of that wonderful country, whose Outline days of glory have left such a never-dying blaze of radiance behind them—the history of Greece affords us the means of correctly tracing the polished and regulated drama, the subject of severe rule, and the vehicle for ex- pressing the noblest poetry, from amusements as rude in their outline as the mimic sports of children or of savages. The history of the Grecian stage is that of the dramatic art in general. They transferred the drama, with their other literature, to the victorious Romans, with whom it rather existed as a foreign than flourished as a native art. Like the other fine arts, the stage sunk under the decay of the empire, and its fall was accelerated by the introduction of the Christian religion. In the middle ages dramatic representation revived, in the shape of the homely Mysteries and Moralities of our forefathers. The revival of letters threw light upon the scenic art, by making us acquainted with the pitch of perfection to which it had been carried by the genius of Greece. With this period commences the history of the modern stage, properly so called. Some general observations on the drama, and its present state in Britain, will form a natural conclusion to the article.

The account which we have of the origin of Grecian theatrical representations, describes them as the fantastic orgies of shepherds and peasants, who solemnized the rites of Bacchus by the sacrifice of a goat, by tumultuous dances, and by a sort of masquerade, in which the actors were disguised like the ancient Morris-dancers of England, or the Guisers of Scotland, who have not as yet totally disused similar revels. Instead of masks, their faces were stained with the lees of wine, and the songs and jests corresponded in coarseness to the character of the satyrs and fawns, which they were supposed to assume in honour of their patron Bacchus. Music, however, always formed a part of this rude festivity, and to this was sometimes added the recitations of an individual performer, who, possessed of more voice or talent than his companions, was able to entertain an audience for a few minutes by his own individual exertions.

Out of such rude materials, Thespis is supposed to have been the first who framed something like an approach to a more regular entertainment. The actors under this, the first of theatrical managers, instead of running about wild among the audience, were exalted upon a cart, or upon a scaffold formed of boards laid upon trestles. In these improvements Thespis is supposed to have had the aid of one Susarion, whose efforts were more particularly directed to the comic drama. But their fortunes have been unequal, for whilst the name of Thespis is still united with every thing dramatic, that of Susarion has fallen into oblivion, and is only known to antiquaries.

The drama in Greece, as afterwards in Britain, had scarcely begun to develop itself from barbarism, ere, with the most rapid strides, it advanced towards perfection. Thespis and Susarion flourished about four hundred and forty or fifty years before the Christian era. The battle of Marathon was fought in the year 490 before Christ; and it was upon Æschylus, one of the Athenian generals on that memorable occasion, that Greece conferred the honoured title of the Father of Tragedy. We must necessarily judge of his efforts by that which he did, not by that which he left undone; and if some of his regulations may sound strange in modern ears, it is but just to compare the state in which he found the drama, with that in which he left it.

Æschylus was the first, who, availing himself of the invention of a stage by Thespis, introduced upon the boards a plurality of actors at the same time, and converted into action and dialogue, accompanied or relieved at intervals by the musical performance of the chorus, the dull monologue of the Thespian orator. It was Æschylus, also, who introduced the deceptions of scenery, stationary indeed, and therefore very different from the decorations of our stage, but still giving a reality to the whole performance, which could not fail to afford pleasure to those who beheld for the first time an effort to surround the player, while invested with his theatrical character, with scenery which might add to the illusions of the representations. But this was not all. A theatre, at first of wood, but afterwards of stone, circumscribed, whilst it accommodated, the spectators, and reduced a casual and disorderly mob to the quality and civilization of a regular and attentive audience.

The most remarkable effect of the tragedy of Æschylus was the introduction of the chorus in a new character, which continued long to give a peculiar tone to the Grecian drama, and to make a striking difference betwixt that original theatre and those which have since arisen in modern nations.

The chorus who sung hymns in favour of Bacchus, the musical part, in short, of the entertainment, remained in the days of Thespis, as it had been in the rude village gambols which he had improved, the principal part of the dramatic entertainment. The intervention of monologue, or recitation, was merely a relief to the musicians and a variety to the audience. Æschylus, whilst he assigned a part of superior consequence to the actor in his improved dialogue, new-modelled the chorus, which custom still enjoined as a necessary and indispensable branch of the performance. They were no longer a body of vocal musicians, whose strains were as independent of what was spoken by the personages of the drama, as those of our modern orchestra when performing betwixt the acts. The chorus assumed from this time a different and complicated character, which forms a marked peculiarity in the Grecian drama, distinguishing it from the theatrical compositions of modern Europe.

The chorus, according to this new model, was composed of a certain set of persons, priests, captive virgins, matrons, or others, usually of a solemn and sacred character, the contemporaries of the heroes who appeared on the stage, who remained upon the scene to celebrate in hymns set to music the events which had befallen the active persons of the drama; to afford them alternately their advice or their sympathy; and, at least, to moralize, in lyrical poetry, on the feelings to which their history and adventures, their passions and sufferings, gave rise. The chorus might be considered as, in some degree, the representatives of the audience, or rather of the public, on whose great stage those events happen in reality which are presented in the mimicry of the drama. In the strains of the chorus, the actual audience had those feelings suggested to them as if by reflection in a mirror, which the events of the scene ought to produce in their own bosom; they had at once before them the action of the piece, and the effect of that action upon a chosen band of persons, who, like themselves, were passive spectators, whose dignified strains pointed out the moral reflections to which the subject naturally gave rise. The chorus were led or directed by a single person of their number, termed the coryphaeus, who frequently spoke or sang alone. They were occasionally divided into two bands, who addressed and replied to each other. But they always preserved the character proper to them, of spectators, rather than agents in the drama.

The number of the chorus varied at different periods, often extending to fifty persons, and sometimes restricted to half that number; but it is evident that the presence of so many persons on the scene, officiating as no part of the dramatis persona, but rather as contemporary spectators, involved many inconveniences and inconsistencies. That which the hero, however agitated by passion, must naturally have suppressed within his own breast, or uttered in soliloquy, was thus necessarily committed to the