Undoubtedly it is past denying that Euripides at times betrays marks of
carelessness in the structure of his plots, as if writing too much in a
hurry: the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and the
evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see that he
would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or _diaskeue [Greek.]_ On
the other hand, I remember nothing in the Greek drama more worthy of a
great artist than parts in his Phoenissae. Neither is he the effeminately
tender, or merely pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to
sweep _all_ the chords of the impassioned spirit. But the whole of this
subject is in arrear: it is in fact _res integra_, almost unbroken ground.
[6] I see a possible screw loose at this point: if _you_ see it, reader,
have the goodness to hold your tongue.
[7] '_Athenian Theatre_:'--Many corrections remain to be made. Athens, in
her bloom, was about as big as Calcutta, which contained, forty years ago,
more than half a million of people; or as Naples, which (being long rated
at three hundred thousand), is now known to contain at least two hundred
thousand more. The well known census of Demetrius Phalereus gave twenty-
one thousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 4-3/4, and you have their
families. Add ten thousand, multiplied by 4-1/2, for the _Inquilini_. Then
add four hundred thousand for the slaves: total, about five hundred and
fifty thousand.
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