AMYMONE.

BY means of Adams and Potter, and their German successors, there is no difficulty in getting at the external forms of ancient Greek and Roman life. But without a much deeper acquaintance with the spirit of the ancient world than such classical digesters and compilers can ever give, the information they impart is little more than the names of things. Unless sparingly and judiciously applied by a novelist, these names are very likely to encumber the fiction with a dry and barren accumulation of terms, that, suggesting no idea to an ordinary reader,

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create impatience instead of interest. Even where a first-hand know- ledge is possessed of the subject, the treatment of a classical story by a modern writer is beset by difficulties. The pedant ostentatiously and avowedly makes the story subservient to the lore: the persons and scenes are not so much designed to excite interest by action or emotion as to exhibit manners. The fashions of the time, the mode of taking meals, interchanging civilities, or finding one's way about a house, are paramount to incidents and passion. Even in a writer with whom imagination predominates over learning, some little display of knowledge is apt to peep out ; and if this be too slight to seem worthy of censure, it indirectly produces a mischievous effect. Ease and spontaneity are destroyed. Instead of pouring forth the narrative naturally as it arises in the mind, an idea of the proof of everything prevails. Either by assurance in the text, or by foot references, or by an appendix of notes, a guarantee is provided for the reader, to satisfy him that he is not en- trapped into the admiration of something without authority.

Where the brilliant school attempt a classical romance, the severe sim- plicity and purity (in the sense of unmixed) of the ancients is lost in a blaze of rhetorical ornament and philosophical abstraction. Yet the rhetorical style is perhaps the best that can be chosen. Do what we may, we cannot attain antique naturalness ; and a little gorgeousness is better than a learned or literal attempt at nature. Some rhetorical novel- ists have not, indeed, been very successful in Greek or Roman fiction; but the two best classical romances we have fallen in with were of thit class—Pericles and The Fawn of Serlorius. The author of Amymone belongs to the rhetorical school, and is one of its extremest disciples. The style is ever glowing and gorgeous ; the ideas are too superfine for common use ; the conduct and incidents such as are only met with on the stage, and not very often there. In addition to a total want of simplicity and repose, there is added an inventorial style of painting ancient manners, amounting to little more than the husk, and often to no more than words spelt in the modern pedantic manner, neither Greek nor English. It will therefore be readily under- stood that this romance of the time of Pericles, Aspasia, Cleon, and all the Athenian celebrities of the day, is rather an unnatural and melo- dramatic production, whether we look to the behaviour and conduct of human beings in any age, or as modified by the opinions and manners of ancient Athens. But there is invention and fancy in Amymone, with touches of feminine nature in the conception of the maternal love which the otherwise affectionless heroine exhibits for her child, and in the hope- less passion of the young maiden Chrysanthe for Phidias, (though recorded history is violated throughout). The tenderness and womanly character of the fundamental sentiment renders the execution less stilted than in the other parts.

The chief character of the work is Amymone; for although Pericles and Aspasia, with their friends, are selected as types of goodness, and as il- lustrating the juste-milieu of opposition to the received opinions of society, Amymone more distinctly illustrates the evils caused by bad prejudices and laws, and more prominently occupies the attention of the reader. She is the daughter of a slave by an Athenian citizen, and consequently wanting in creditable social status : Methion her husband, whom she takes as a last resource, is an alien by the half-blood, and in a similar predicament to herself. Amymone is one of those theatrical Siddonian characters who are inaccessible to softer emotions, but devoured by pride and ambition. To procure the full rights of citizenship and a conspicuous position, she falls or rather jumps into a trap of Cleon, and drags her husband with her. The plan of the demagogue is for Methion and Amymone to murder their patron, an Athenian of the old school, and forge a will in their own favour. By this means, Cleon calculates on getting them both for poli- tical tools, and probably making Amymone his paramour. How he plots and contrives to make Methion his fool and his purse—how he attempts Amymone, and gets knocked down for his pains—how he manages, in a Way too coarse to seem like management, the factions against Pericles

and Aspasia, and the scenes which contrast these rather foul doings, or serve to exhibit Miss Lynn's idea of ancient manners—may be read is the work; as well as the way in which she marks the misery which Amymone brings on herself, not by remorse, but the difficulties of her false position. At the same time, she does not exhibit very clearly the mischief of bad social institutions ; unless it be the obvious moral that we are not to attempt by crime to remedy their evil operation.

It is impossible to open the book in any place where action or dialogue is exhibited, without falling upon the fault we have spoken of—the "doing it in King Cambyses' vein." It is less, perhaps, where emotion is the greatest; but it is ever present, even with death,—as in this scene of the murder of Crethon.

" ' To thy health, my patron ! to thy prosperity and thy blessing in the gods 1' cried Amymone, as she touched the cup with her lip. Then suddenly she shrieked; more loudly than she, so strong-nerved, surely ought to have done ! It was for a snake, a small, quietly gliding but deadly snake, that crept among the fruit upon the table.

" Old Crethon started up; and while he was busied with the reptile, the lady stole her white hand to the goblet: for a moment it lingered there, hovering ever the bubbling wine, then hastily it was withdrawn. Its work was done. " cannot tell from whence it came,' said Crethon, as he returned to his place without a feature discomposed, proud of his self-control, his fine old Hellenic calmness. It was a pretty messenger of death; but none the less deadly for all its beauty. Come, drink another draught of wine, fair girl, and compose thy nerves. Thou art not as a man, calm or strong: " A haughty smile gleamed from Amymone 's still face. Again she raised the bowl to her lips; but this time no wine flowed over them.

" To thee, she then said; drink thou now from my lips' impress.'

" ' Ah, that is kind!' returned Crethon; and he drained the cap. " And then he remained long silent.

" Amymone sat, her eyes bent upon the old man, one band pressing her bosom; pressing that grim image closer on her heart; stifling, with its forms of death, the loud pulsing which stirred her very robe. He, the aged noble, lay back upon the cbuch dosing heavily; and Methion looked alternately from each to each, won- dering what strong emotions agitated him in a scene so tranquil; wondering what strange fate approached, whose shadow fell black and cold over them in that summer tide.

"Suddenly Crethon raised his eyes with a wild glazed stare. Their looks were fixed; cold though dark; and no image of the enter world was mirrored in them. He uttered a shuddering groan, and clasped his hands upon his heart. "'Help, help!' he cried, in a faint voice. ' Death has stricken me ! Take me away I take me away ! oh, gods!—Not thou! not than!' he added, covering his eyes as Amymone approached.

" But she did not heed him. She came near to him, and leaned over him. Her breath was on his cheeks; her hand was clasped in his; her eyes looked fall upon his brow, and their gaze burnt fiercely into his brain. He writhed in an agony unspeakable. Thy looks kill me,' he groaned; 'thy breath poisons me. Help! help ! tear her from me I she has slain me ! " At his cries the slaves rushed into the room, distracted and uncertain. Amy- mone, who seemed anxious only to serve him, gave up her cares, though with a humble drooping sorrow; and the brave old man was borne, still shuddering as at some loathsome spectre, tenderly to his chamber.

In description the stilted style is as visible as in more dramatic scenes perhaps more so. Miss Lynn succeeds better in discussion : the thoughts are often just, the style is more appropriate. The following is an example, from a critical disquisition by Phidias and his pupils.

" Much, not all,' returned Pheidias calmly: mechanical knowledge gives ar- tistic skill, but not that inward soul which alone makes art of value. I well know that the execution, the technic management of detail, the faithful represent- ation of the outward form of nature, all these are necessary for the perfect artist. Yet more than these are wanting. If nature be faithfully represented, still she must be idealized, or rather understood with the spirit not only with the eye: if the parts are perfect in detail, still the forming idea of the whole must be the chietest thought; if the lines and physical development form a model, such as the Doryphoros of our Polycleitos, still the intention, ethic or intellectual, of which that form is the embodiment, must be the most prominent expression. And these, Alcamenes, proceed not from a quick eye, a steady hand, a subtile percep- tion; but from a soul-felt participation in the divine, with which sense has no- thing to do, excepting as a medium not a cause. Many on the other hand know what is beautiful, but cannot bring it out in sensuous shapes; many may have had visions of thy Amazon as she leans there against her horse, wounded, falling,' dead, and have pictured to themselves thy brave Athenian, standing so victori- ously over her, his muscles yet turgid but relaxing, his brow stained with sweat and blood, still bent at if in strife, with the glow of conquest just passing over it, mingled with a manly pity for the slain maid: many may have thought, but Al- camenes only has produced this thought.'

"'Is not.this a contradiction to thyself?' cried Alcamenes suddenly.

"'Scarcely: if thou wilt hear me out. Tarn to Callimachos: his works are beautiful, his designs graceful, their execution perfect; and yet he lacks the true vivifier of these dead marbles. His ideas for all their beauty want grandeur; he is more solicitous for the details than for the spirit of his subject, and looks more to their artistic finish than to their ethical idea. He fails by carrying the prin- ciple of physical beauty as mach too far as the old masters did that of religious intention. To them the natural resemblance mattered little; provided only that the attributes and characteristics of their gods were abundant, and the pions wor- shiper had sufficient tokens why to worship: They were symbolic not expres- sive representations; and their works survive their spirit. Callimachos cares only for beauty of the parts, rejecting a high intellectual or moral intention; I would embody both, if it were given me to do so; as thou in thy metope, Alea- MOWS, and thou, Agoracreitos, in thy sketch of Aphrodite.'

" Which of the two sketches dost thou prefer?' asked the jealous .Alcamenes, vainly endeavouring to look indifferent. "'Host thou ask, wishing for the truth, or only for flattery ? ' " Surely for the truth!' he answered, rather scornfully.

" In truth, then, the Aphrodite of Agoracreitos seems to me the most expres- sive, though thine may be the most chaste. It has more intensity of love and loveliness; more of conscious voluptuousness; while thine is scarcely more cha- racteristic of Aphrodite than of Thetis. It is a fair graceful woman drying her wet tresses; but it is not the Aphrodite who wore the cestus ! '