SPEUSIPPUS. I thought of several plots;--Oedipus,--Eteocles and Polynices,--the war of Troy,--the murder of Agamemnon. CALLIDEMUS. And what have you chosen? SPEUSIPPUS. You know there is a law which permits any modern poet to retouch a play of Aeschylus, and bring it forward as his own composition. And, as there is an absurd prejudice, among the vulgar, in favour of his extravagant pieces, I have selected one of them, and altered it. CALLIDEMUS. Which of them? SPEUSIPPUS. Oh! that mass of barbarous absurdities, the Prometheus. But I have framed it anew upon the model of Euripides. By Bacchus, I shall make Sophocles and Agathon look about them. You would not know the play 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.