etween which no
judgment, as yet, has decided the prize of superiority.

We can now trace it no farther; its progress amongst the Greeks is out
of sight. We must pass at once to the time of Augustus, when Apollo and
the Muses quitted their ancient residence in Greece, to fix their abode
in Italy. But it is vain to ask questions of Melpomene; she is
obstinately silent, and we only know, from strangers, her power amongst
the Romans. Seneca endeavours to make her speak; but the gaudy show,
with which he rather loads than adorns her, makes us think, that he took
some phantom of Melpomene for the Muse herself.

Another flight, equally rapid with that to Rome, must carry us through
thousands of years, from Rome to France. There, in the time of Lewis the
fourteenth, we see the mind of man giving birth to tragedy a second
time, as if the Greek tragedy had been utterly forgot. In the place of
Eschylus, we have our Rotrou; in Corneille, we have another Sophocles;
and in Racine, a second Euripides. Thus is Tragedy raised from her
ashes, carried to the utmost point of greatness, and so dazzling, that
she prefers herself to herself. Surprised to see herself produced again
in France, in so short a time, and nearly in the same manner as before
in Greece, she is disposed to believe that her fate is to make a short
transition from her birth to her perfection, like the goddess that
issued from the brain of Jupiter.

If we look back on the other side, to the rise of Comedy, we shall see
her hatched from the Margites, or from the Odyssey of Homer, the
imitation of her eldest sister; but we see her, under the conduct of
Aristophanes, become licentious and petulant, taking airs to herself,
which the magistrates were obliged to crush. Menander reduced her to
bounds, taught her, at once, gaiety and politeness, and enabled her to
correct vice, without shocking the offenders. Plautus, among the Romans,
to whom we must now pass, united the earlier and the later comedy, and
joined buffoonery with delicacy. Terence, who was better instructed,
received comedy from Menander, and surpassed his original, as he
endeavoured to copy it. And lastly, Moliere produced a new species of
comedy, which must be placed in a class by itself, in opposition to that
of Aristophanes, whose manner is, likewise, peculiar to himself.

But such is the weakness of the human mind, that, when we review the
successions of the drama a third time, we find genius falling from