This is the loss of losses.* Where are now
Your hopes of power and wealth? All turned to ashes.
False hope has barbed the sting of poverty.

Mand. Lay down, poor friends, your melancholy burthen.
Our tears are due to this cinereal urn.

Oh, most false treasure! have I followed thee
Through seas and winds? Made prosperous navigation?
Magic and mathematics have I studied,

That buried men might cheat me? And expounded
Their fate to others, ignorant of my own?
Here is a buried father. I, who wept not
My own, now mourn a stranger's. Querolus
Mourns not, to whom alone this grief is due.
Sard. Oh, cruel treasure! What was the disease
That carried thee from life? What funeral
pyre
Turned thee to ashes? Us, thy expectant heirs,
Why hast thou disinherited, oh treasure?
Whither shall we, cut off without a sesterce,
Now bend our steps?

Mand.

Sard.

Syc.

Look to the urn once more.

Read over the inscription.

Funeral relics

I cannot touch: nothing I dread so deeply.
Thou hast a timid soul, Sardanapalus.

(Reads) HERE LIES TRIERINUS, SON OF TRICIPITINUS,
DEPOSITED AND BURIED. Oh me, miserable!
My heart is in my throat. The smell of gold,

I have heard, is always sweet:+ but this is redolent
Of dire aromata; even through the mass

Of treacherous lead,§ that covers down the ashes.

Mand. So well perfumed, the dead has been much honoured.
Had I but listened to the magpie's warning,

Syc.

I had not fall'n in this calamity.

Sard. Nor I, had I obeyed the admonition

Given me this morning by a crop-tailed dog.

Mand. What admonition ?

Sard.

As I left the house,

He ran between my legs, and tripped me backward.
Mand. What had I done to thee, old Euclio,

Syc.

Mand.

Thou shouldst deride me in thy life and death?
What shall we do now?

What remains to us,

But to revenge ourselves on Euclio's son,
And make us pastime of his credulous fear?
Peep in, and mark. Take care he sees you not.

Sard. He and his men are ranged within the doors,
All armed with rods and cudgels.

Alluding to the well-known anecdote of Vespasian.-Sueton. Vesp. 23. Alluding to the sweet herbs which it was customary to lay over the ashes; and which may have been placed in the urn by Euclio, to increase the deception. § The lead was well imagined, to give probability to the apparent weight.

Keeping guard

'Gainst Evil Fortune. Now approach, and frighten them.
Say thou art she, and threaten to break in.
Ho! Querolus ?

Mand.

Sard.
Quer.

Sard.

Quer. For what?

Sard.

Who calls?

Quick! let me in.

That I may enter my old quarters.
Quer. Zeta! Pantolabus! stand by the doors,
Hence, Evil Fortune! whither the Great Master
Conveyed thee.

To draw the men aside, while through the window
We cast this funeral urn. Oh, Querolus !

Receive the treasure which old Euclio left thee.
Such wealth be ever thine, and such thy children's.
Now, all on board, lest from this sacrilege

Arise some peril to our liberties.

They make off accordingly; but Sardanapalus cannot be satisfied, as he enjoys the terror of Querolus, on receiving through his window & from the dead. He puts his ear to the door. He is astounded by sho of joy, and the jingling of gold. The broken urn has scattered its conta on the floor. He hastens back to his comrades; thinking that, if remains, he may be apprehended for a thief, without having the pleas of their company.

The Lar enters again :

Lar. The urn has yielded up its weight of gold;
Rendered true faith to its depositor;

Deluded the deluders; robbed the thieves.
The simulated death gives the son life,

Restoring what the living father hid.

Hence let men learn, that none may win or lose,

But by the will of a divinity.*

My office is absolved to Querolus ;

But now that thief and cheat, Mandrogerus,

Will I draw thither, to put forth his claim

To half the treasure, on old Euclio's letter,
Where he shall find himself in deep dilemma,
And bear the burthen of his own misdeed.

Querolus, and his friend the Arbiter, enter, discussing the circumstance of the buried treasure, the provident device of Euclio, the singular modes of abstraction and restoration. Mandrogerus enters, and after some preli minary, presents the letter.. Querolus reads it:

'Euclio bids health to his son, Querolus.

Dreading to trust a stranger, or a slave,
I send my faithful friend, Mandrogerus,
To show thee, without fraud, what I have left thee.
This being done, give him one half the treasure,
In compensation of his faith and pains.'

Quer. You were, abroad, my father's friend and comrade?
Mand. The letter shows it.

Quer.

Show me, then, the treasure
Which we are to divide.

* There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we may.

Do you deny it?

Quer. To me? an untouched treasure? Why, what treasure?
Mand. That which your father left.

Where is it, then?
Here is the Arbiter, to make partition.

Quer.
Mand. I say 'tis in your hands.

Quer.

Mand.

Quer. 'Twas in your hands, then?
Mand.

Yes, and might have staid there:

The whole: I only claim my honest share.
Quer. You stir not hence until you render it.
Mand. Why, I have rendered it.
Quer.
Mand. To-day. Here. Through the window.
Quer.

Mand. From the sacrarium.
Quer.

To whom? When? How?

Whence, then, came it?

How went it thence?

You bore it out yourself.

Mand. Out through the door.

Quer. You were to show it to me without fraud.
But this is idle talk. The thing appears not.
Where is this treasure?

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

I swear by all the gods.
I pitched it through the window.

I

have given it to thee.
'Twas in an urn.

Brave confession!

This, then, is he, oh worthy Arbiter!
Who hurled into my house that funeral urn.
Pantolabus, the fragments.-Can you read
What here is written?

I have read, and read it.
'HERE LIES TRIERINUS, SON OF TRICIPITINUS,
DEPOSITED AND BURIED.'

Not content

With failing in your duty to the living,

You have made sport and mockery of the dead;
Broken into the tomb; dug up the ashes;
Borne them abroad into the public way;

Stolen the treasure which was buried with them;
And hurled the fatal relics through the window,
To scatter on the floor, and thus pollute
The house thou first hadst plundered.

Fare thee well.

I seek no more. Fortune abandons me.

Querolus, however, will not let him go. They examine and crossexamine him; threaten to take him to the prætor; but give him the choice of the charge which they shall make against him, whether it shall be for robbery or sacrilege. He tries a defence on each charge severally, and gives up both points in despair, leaving it to them to charge him with whichever they please either the theft, which he could not commit, or the sacrilege, which he would not have committed. But he throws himself on their mercy, and only entreats to be allowed to depart. The Arbiter now intercedes for him, as having been really, however unfaithfully, the means of Querolus's wealth. And Querolus, who had been previously disposed to be generous towards him, agrees to give him maintenance, and receive him into his household.

Sycophanta and Sardanapalus then present themselves. They solicit a small participation in Querofus's bounty. They are aware, that one house

does not take three hungry idlers; but they implore a moderate donation. to speed them on another quest. Querolus replies:

Let the beaten parasite

Have compensation for his injuries.

And immediately follows a sort of epilogue, in the form of a sens consultum, fixing a tariff of compensation for torn clothes, bruises, broke bones, and all other forms of injury to which parasites are liable. The was most probably subjoined as an exposition of Querolus's last words.

In this view of the conclusion, we follow the old reading: Merceden vulnerum victus recipiat Parasitus. In convivio si fuerit veste disciu &c. Klinkhämer terminates the comedy thus:

vulnerum mercedem victus recipiat.

Pauca desiderantur.

And after some preliminary, presents the final passage as a pannus assutus. PARASITUS. In convivio si fuerit, &c.

Three of the editors of this comedy, and many other writers, har spoken of it in the highest terms of praise. Gruter and Pareus disparage it. Cannegeiter thinks that none can disparage it but those who do understand it.' The ill-humour of Gruter and Pareus appears to ha been excited chiefly from the MSS. bearing on the title, Plauti Querolu. but this was not the fault of the author, who speaks of himself as treading in Plautus's steps. The assignment of the authorship to Plautus must have been very ancient, for Servius, in his Commentary on Virgil (Æn. iii. 2. cites it as Plauti Querolus.

Danielis calls it a comedy, not less remarkable as a singular relied antiquity, than admirable from the novelty of its argument." Rittershus says, this comedy 'requires no eulogium from him, being sufficiently reco mended by its wonderful variety of argument, the gravity of its sentences and the elegance of its comic diction." Klinkhämer concurs in these estimates, and adds the commendation of exemplary propriety and modesty He expresses his surprise, that a work so well worthy to be generally read

should have been left to lurk in the libraries of the curious.

Barthius panegyrizes the simple elegance and acute sense of the col loquies, and their excellent adaptation to the several characters of the speakers;' adding, that 'the more it is read, the more its sense and elquence will be perceived.'

Klinkhämer's pains on this comedy have been worthily and successfully bestowed. We feel grateful to him, for the form in which he has presented it to us; and shall be highly gratified if our readers shall derive, from our necessarily limited exposition, any portion of the pleasure which we have received from the work itself.

M. S. 0.

L

HYPATIA;

New Foes with an Old Face.

BY THE AUTHOR OF YEAST,' AND 'THE SAINT'S TRAGEDY.'

CHAPTER V.

A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA.