(M2) It is not so easy to invent, as to improve the inventions of others. The alterations Thespis made in tragedy, gave room for Æschylus to make new and more considerable of his own. He was born at Athens, in the first year of the sixtieth Olympiad. He took upon him the profession of arms, at a time when the Athenians reckoned almost as many heroes as citizens. He was at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, where he did his duty. (M3) But his disposition called him elsewhere, and put him upon entering into another course, where no less glory was to be acquired; and where he was soon without any competitors. As a superior genius, he took upon him to reform, or rather to create tragedy anew; of which he has, in consequence, been always acknowledged the inventor and father. Father Brumoi, in a dissertation which abounds with wit and good sense, explains the manner in which Æschylus conceived the true idea of tragedy from Homer’s epic poems. The poet himself used to say, that his works were the remnants of the feasts given by Homer in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Tragedy therefore took a new form under him. He gave masks(179) to his actors, adorned them with robes and trains, and made them wear buskins. Instead of a cart, he erected a theatre of a moderate elevation, and entirely changed their style; which from being merry and burlesque, as at first, became majestic and serious. Eschyle dans le chœur jetta les personages: D’un masque plus honnête habilla les visages: Sur les ais d’un théâtre en public exhaussé Fit paroître l’acteur d’un brodequin chaussé.(180) From Æschylus the chorus learnt new grace: He veil’d with decent masks the actor’s face, Taught him in buskins first to tread the stage, And rais’d a theatre to please the age. But that was only the external part or body of tragedy. Its soul, which was the most important and essential addition of Æschylus, consisted in the vivacity and spirit of the action, sustained by the dialogue of the persons of the drama introduced by him; in the artful working up of the stronger passions, especially of terror and pity, which, by alternately afflicting and agitating the soul with mournful or terrible objects, produce a grateful pleasure and delight from that very trouble and emotion; in the choice of a subject, great, noble, interesting, and contained within due bounds by the unity of time, place, and action: in short, it is the conduct and disposition of the whole piece, which, by the order and harmony of its parts, and the happy connection of its incidents and intrigues, holds the mind of the spectator in suspense till the catastrophe, and then restores him his tranquillity, and dismisses him with satisfaction.