is.--Phrynichus.--Aeschylus.
--Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.

I. From the melancholy fate of Miltiades, we are now invited to a
subject no less connected with this important period in the history of
Athens. The interval of repose which followed the battle of Marathon
allows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which the
Athenians had progressed since the tyranny of Pisistratus and his
sons.

We have remarked the more familiar acquaintance with the poems of
Homer which resulted from the labours and example of Pisistratus.
This event (for event it was), combined with other causes,--the
foundation of a public library, the erection of public buildings, and
the institution of public gardens--to create with apparent suddenness,
among a susceptible and lively population, a general cultivation of
taste. The citizens were brought together in their hours of
relaxation [6], by the urbane and social manner of life, under
porticoes and in gardens, which it was the policy of a graceful and
benignant tyrant to inculcate; and the native genius, hitherto
dormant, of the quick Ionian race, once awakened to literary and
intellectual objects, created an audience even before it found
expression in a poet. The elegant effeminacy of Hipparchus
contributed to foster the taste of the people--for the example of the
great is nowhere more potent over the multitude than in the
cultivation of the arts. Patronage may not produce poets, but it
multiplies critics. Anacreon and Simonides, introduced among the
Athenians by Hipparchus, and enjoying his friendship, no doubt added
largely to the influence which poetry began to assume. The peculiar
sweetness of those poets imbued with harmonious contagion the genius
of the first of the Athenian dramatists, whose works, alas! are lost
to us, though evidence of their character is preserved. About the
same time the Athenians must necessarily have been made more
intimately acquainted with the various wealth of the lyric poets of
Ionia and the isles. Thus it happened that their models in poetry
were of two kinds, the epic and the lyric; and, in the natural
connexion of art, it was but the next step to accomplish a species of
poetry which should attempt to unite the two. Happily, at this time,
Athens possessed a man of true genius, whose attention early
circumstances had directed to a rude and primitive order of histrionic
recitation:--Phrynichus, the poet, was a disciple of T