er to be _Death_; in the English, _Life_. What
Death?--What Life? That sort of death or of life locked up and frozen
into everlasting slumber, which we see in sculpture; that sort of
life, of tumult, of agitation, of tendency to something beyond, which
we see in painting. The picturesque, in short, domineers over English
tragedy; the sculpturesque, or the statuesque, over the Grecian.

The moralists, such as Theogins, the miscellaneous or didactic poets,
such as Hesiod, are all alike below any notice in a sketch like this.
The Epigrammatists, or writers of monumental inscriptions, &c.,
remain; and they, next after the dramatic poets, present the most
interesting field by far in the Greek literature; but these are too
various to be treated otherwise than _viritim_ and in detail.

There remains the prose literature; and, with the exception of those
critical writers who have written on rhetoric (such as Hermogenes,
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius Phalerius, &c. &c., some of whom
are the best writers extant, on the mere art of constructing
sentences, but could not interest the general reader), the prose
writers may be thus distributed: 1st, the orators; 2nd, the
historians; 3rd, the philosophers; 4th, the literateurs (such as
Plutarch, Lucian, &c.).

As to the philosophers, of course there are only two who can present
any general interest--Plato and Aristotle; for Xenophon is no more a
philosophic writer than our own Addison. Now, in this department, it
is evident that the matter altogether transcends the manner. No man
will wish to study a profound philosopher, but for some previous
interest in his doctrines; and, if by any means a man has obtained
this, he may pursue this study sufficiently through translations. It
is true that neither Sydenham nor Taylor has done justice to Plato,
for example, as respects the colloquial graces of his style; but, when
the object is purely to pursue a certain course of principles and
inferences, the student cannot complain much that he has lost the
dramatic beauties of the dialogue, or the luxuriance of the style.
These he was not then seeking, by the supposition--what he _did_ seek,
is still left; whereas in poetry, if the golden apparel is lost, if
the music has melted away from the thoughts, all, in fact, is lost.
Old Hobbes, or Ogilbie, is no more Homer than the score of Mozart's
_Don Giovanni_ is Mozart's _Don Giovanni_.

If, however, Grecian philosophy presents no absolute