It was from these public games, popular festivals, and great poetical exhibitions, which had such a mighty and important influence on the whole public life of the Greeks, and which served to knit so strongly the bonds of the Hellenic confederacy, that, by means of the odes, specifically designed for such occasions, the theatre, and the whole dramatic art of the Greeks, derived their origin. This poetry, which is less generally intelligible to other nations and times than the Homeric poems, because it enters more deeply into the individual life of the Greeks, does not display less invention, sublimity, and depth of art, from that ideal beauty which pervades its whole character, and from its lofty tone of feeling. Even the Doric odes of Pindar, amid their milder beauties, rise often to the tragic grandeur of the succeeding poets, or to the comprehensive and epic fulness of the old Mæonian bard. No nation has as yet been able to equal the charm and amenity of Homer, the elevation of Æschylus, and the noble beauty of Sophocles; and perhaps it is wrong even to aspire to their excellence, for true beauty and true sublimity can never be acquired in the path of imitation. Euripides, who lived in the times when rhetoric was predominant, is ranked with the great poets we have named by such critics only, as are unable to comprehend and appreciate the whole elevation of Grecian intellect, and to discern its peculiar and characteristic depth. It is worthy of remark, as it serves to show the general propensity of Grecian intellect for the boldest contrasts, that these loftiest productions of tragedy, and which have retained that character of unrivalled excellence through all succeeding ages, were accompanied by the old popular comedy which, while its inventive fancy dealt in the boldest fictions of mythology, and in the humorous exhibitions of the Gods, made it its peculiar business to fasten on all the follies of ordinary life, and to exhibit them to public ridicule without the least reserve.