collected, all further inquiry backward would be but the
loss of so much time and trouble. The scope of human knowledge is
extended at too heavy a price when the industry which might be more
usefully applied, is exercised in hunting down origins into the
obscurity of times so extremely distant. Where the greatest pains have
been lavished on that sort of research, little knowledge has been
gained; and the most diligent inquirers have been compelled either to
confess that they were baffled, or rather than own their disappointment,
to substitute fable for fact, and pass the fictions of imagination for
historical truths.

It is in the records of Greece the dramatic art first presents itself in
the consistent shape and with the circumstantial detail of authentic
history. There, plays were first moulded into regular form, and divided
into acts. Yet the people of that country knew so little of its having
previously existed in any shape, in any other country, that the
different states contested with each other, the honour of having
invented it; each asserting its claim with a warmth that demonstrates
the high sense they entertained of its importance: and surely what such
a people highly valued is entitled to the respect of all other nations.
Of the drama, therefore, it might perhaps be enough to say that it was
nursed in the same cradle with Eloquence, Philosophy, and Freedom, and
that it was so favourite a child of their common parents, that they
contended, each for an exclusive right to it. The credit of having first
given simplicity, rational form, and consequent interest to theatrical
representations has, by the universal concurrence of the learned, been
awarded to Attica, whose genius and munificence erected to the drama
that vast monument the temple of Bacchus, the ruins of which are yet
discernible and admired by all travellers of taste and erudition.

The origin of tragedy is a subject of curious contemplation. A rich
planter of Attica, finding, one day, a goat devouring his grapes, killed
it, and invited the peasantry to come and feast upon it. He gave them
abundance of wine to drink, intoxicated with which they daubed their
faces with the lees, ornamented their heads with chaplets made of the
vine branches, and then danced, singing songs in chorus to Bacchus all
the while round the animal destined for their banquet. A feast so very
agreeable was not likely to go unrepeated; and it was soon reduced to a
custom which