stroke of
inspiration to have on the speaker's left, where Sophocles would have
sat if he had been present at a supper given to AEschylus, the sitting
figure of Melpomene, crowned with rosemary for remembrance. No allusion
was made to AEschylus during the evening, after his health had been
proposed by the chairman and drunk in silence, but a great and exquisite
surprise was reserved for him in the matter of the speeches that
followed. By prior agreement among the speakers they were all ostensibly
devoted to the examination of the _OEdipus_ and the other dramas of
Sophocles, which in his absence were very frankly dealt with. But the
unsparing criticism of their defects was made implicitly to take the
character of appreciation of the AEschylus tragedies, whose good points
were all turned to the light without open mention of them. This afforded
the aged poet an opportunity of magnanimously defending his younger
_confrere_, and he rose to the occasion, beaming, as some one said, from
head to foot and oozing self-satisfaction at every pore. He could not
put from him the compliments not ostensibly directed at him, but he
could and did take up the criticisms of the Sophoclean drama, point by
point, and refute them in the interest of literature, with a masterly
elimination of himself and his own part in it. A Roman gentleman present
remarked that he had seen nothing like it, for sincere deprecation,
since Caesar had refused the thrice-offered crown on the Lupercal; and
the effect was that intended throughout--the supreme honor of AEschylus
in the guise of a tribute to Sophocles. The note of the whole affair was
struck by the comic poet Aristophanes, whom the chairman called upon to
make the closing speech of the evening, and who merely sat up long
enough to quote the old Attic proverb, "Gentlemen, there are many ways
to kill a dog besides choking him to death with butter," and then lay
down again amid shrieks of merriment from the whole company.

There is, perhaps, a middle course between the American and Athenian
ways of recognizing achievement in the arts or interests, or of
commemorating great public events. This would probably derive from each
certain advantages, or at least the ancient might temper the modern
world to a little more restraint than it now practises in the
celebration of private worth, especially. The public events may be more
safely allowed to take care of themselves, though it is to be questioned
whether it