again.

CALLIDEMUS. By Jupiter, I believe not.

SPEUSIPPUS. I have omitted the whole of the absurd dialogue between
Vulcan and Strength, at the beginning.

CALLIDEMUS. That may be, on the whole, an improvement. The play will
then open with that grand soliloquy of Prometheus, when he is chained to
the rock.

"Oh! ye eternal heavens! ye rushing winds! Ye fountains of great
streams! Ye ocean waves, That in ten thousand sparkling dimples wreathe
Your azure smiles! All-generating earth! All-seeing sun! On you, on you,
I call." (See Aeschylus; Prometheus, 88.)

Well, I allow that will be striking; I did not think you capable of that
idea. Why do you laugh?

SPEUSIPPUS. Do you seriously suppose that one who has studied the plays
of that great man, Euripides, would ever begin a tragedy in such a
ranting style?

CALLIDEMUS. What, does not your play open with the speech of Prometheus?

SPEUSIPPUS. No doubt.

CALLIDEMUS. Then what, in the name of Bacchus, do you make him say?

SPEUSIPPUS. You shall hear; and, if it be not in the very style of
Euripides, call me a fool.

CALLIDEMUS. That is a liberty which I shall venture to take, whether it
be or no. But go on.

SPEUSIPPUS. Prometheus begins thus:--

"Coelus begat Saturn and Briareus
Cottus and Creius and Iapetus,
Gyges and Hyperion, Phoebe, Tethys,
Thea and Rhea and Mnemosyne.
Then Saturn wedded Rhea, and begat
Pluto and Neptune, Jupiter and Juno."

CALLIDEMUS. Very beautiful, and very natural; and, as you say, very like
Euripides.

SPEUSIPPUS. You are sneering. Really, father, you do not understand
these things. You had not those advantages in your youth--

CALLIDEMUS. Which I have been fool enough to let you have. No; in my
early days, lying had not been dignified into a science, nor politics
degraded into a trade. I wrestled, and read Homer's battles, instead of
dressing my hair, and reciting lectures in verse out of Euripides. But
I have some notion of what a play should be; I have seen Phrynichus, and
lived with Aeschylus. I saw the representation of the Persians.

SPEUSIPPUS. A wretched play; it may amuse the fools who row the
triremes; but it is utterly unworthy to be read by any man of taste.

CALLIDEMUS. If you had seen it acted;--the whole theatre frantic with
joy, stamping, shouting, laughing, crying. There was Cynaegeirus, the
brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the
stumps against