XAN. Aeschylus chafes at this, I fancy.

AEAC. Well, He lowered his brows, upglaring like a bull.

XAN. And who's to be the judge?

AEAC. There came the rub. Skilled men were hard to find: for with the Athenians Aeschylus, somehow, did not hit it off.

XAN. Too many burglars, I expect, he thought.

AEAC. And all the rest, he said, were trash and nonsense To judge poetic wits. So then at last They chose your lord, an expert in the art.

But go we in: for when our lords are bent On urgent business, that means blows for us.

CHOR. O surely with terrible wrath will the thunder-voiced monarch be filled, When he sees his opponent beside him, the tonguester, the artifice-skilled, Stand, whetting his tusks for the fight! O surely, his eyes rolling-fell Will with terrible madness be fraught!

O then will be charging of plume-waving words with their wild-floating mane, And then will be whirling of splinters, and phrases smoothed down with the plane, When the man would the grand-stepping maxims, the language gigantic, repel Of the hero-creator of thought.

There will his s.h.a.ggy-born crest upbristle for anger and woe, Horribly frowning and growling, his fury will launch at the foe Huge-clamped ma.s.ses of words, with exertion t.i.tanic up-tearing Great ship-timber planks for the fray.

But here will the tongue be at work, uncoiling, word-testing refining, Sophist-creator of phrases, dissecting, detracting, maligning, Shaking the envious bits, and with subtle a.n.a.lysis paring The lung's large labour away.

EURIPIDES. Don't talk to me; I won't give up the chair, I say I am better in the art than he.

DIO. You hear him, Aeschylus: why don't you speak?

EUR. He'll do the grand at first, the juggling trick He used to play in all his tragedies.

DIO. Come, my fine fellow, pray don't talk too big.

EUR. I know the man, I've scanned him through and through, A savage-creating stubborn-pulling fellow, Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech, Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.

AESCHYLUS. Hah! sayest thou so, child of the garden quean!

And this to ME, thou chattery-babble-collector, Thou pauper-creating rags-and-patches-st.i.tcher?

Thou shalt abye it dearly!

DIO. Pray, be still; Nor heat thy soul to fury, Aeschylus.

AESCH. Not till I've made you see the sort of man This cripple-maker is who crows so loudly.

DIO. Bring out a ewe, a black-fleeced ewe, my boys: Here's a typhoon about to burst upon us.

AESCH. Thou picker-up of Cretan monodies, Foisting thy tales of incest on the stage- DIO. Forbear, forbear, most honoured Aeschylus; And you, my poor Euripides, begone If you are wise, out of this pitiless hail, Lest with some heady word he crack your scull And batter out your brain-less Telephus.

And not with pa.s.sion. Aeschylus, but calmly Test and be tested. 'Tis not meet for poets To scold each other, like two baking-girls.

But you go roaring like an oak on fire.

EUR. I'm ready, I!

I don't draw back one bit.

I'll lash or, if he will, let him lash first The talk, the lays, the sinews of a play: Aye and my Peleus, aye and Aeolus, And Meleager, aye and Telephus.

DIO. And what do you propose? Speak, Aeschylus.

AESCH. I could have wished to meet him otherwhere.

We fight not here on equal terms.

DIO. Why not?

AESCH. My poetry survived me: his died with him: He's got it here, all handy to recite.

Howbeit, if so you wish it, so we'll have it.

DIO. O bring me fire, and bring me frankincense.

I'll pray, or e'er the clash of wits begin, To judge the strife with high poetic skill.

Meanwhile (to the Chorus) invoke the Muses with a song.

CHOR. O Muses, the daughters divine of Zeus, the immaculate Nine, Who gaze from your mansions serene on intellects subtle and keen, When down to the tournament lists, in bright-polished wit they descend, With wrestling and turnings and twists in the battle of words to contend, O come and behold what the two antagonist poets can do, Whose mouths are the swiftest to teach grand language and filings of speech: For now of their wits is the sternest encounter commencing in earnest.

DIO. Ye two, put up your prayers before ye start.

AESCH. Demeter, mistress, nourisher of my soul, O make me worthy of thy mystic rites!

DIO. (To Eur.) Now put on incense, you.

EUR. Excuse me, no; My vows are paid to other G.o.ds than these.

DIO. What, a new coinage of your own?

EUR. Precisely.

DIO. Pray then to them, those private G.o.ds of yours.

EUR. Ether, my pasture, volubly-rolling tongue, Intelligent wit and critic nostrils keen, O well and neatly may I trounce his plays!

CHOR. We also are yearning from these to be learning Some stately measure, some majestic grand Movement telling of conflicts nigh.

Now for battle arrayed they stand, Tongues embittered, and anger high.

Each has got a venturesome will, Each an eager and nimble mind; One will wield, with artistic skill, Clearcut phrases, and wit refined; Then the other, with words defiant, Stern and strong, like an angry giant Laying on with uprooted trees, Soon will scatter a world of these Superscholastic subtleties.

DIO. Now then, commence your arguments, and mind you both display True wit, not metaphors, nor things which any fool could say.

EUR. As for myself, good people all, I'll tell you by-and-by My own poetic worth and claims; but first of all I'll try To show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly fools Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus's schools.

He'd bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, 'twould be Achilles, say, or Niobe-the face you could not see- An empty show of tragic woe, who uttered not one thing.

DIO. Tis true.

EUR. Then in the Chorus came, and rattled off a string Of four continuous lyric odes: the mourner never stirred.

DIO. I liked it too. I sometimes think that I those mutes preferred To all your chatterers now-a-days.

EUR. Because, if you must know, You were an a.s.s.

DIO. An a.s.s, no doubt: what made him do it though?

EUR. That was his quackery, don't you see, to set the audience guessing When Niobe would speak; meanwhile, the drama was progressing.

DIO. The rascal, how he took me in! 'Twas shameful, was it not? (To Aesch.) What makes you stamp and fidget so?

EUR. He's catching it so hot.

So when he had humbugged thus awhile, and now his wretched play Was halfway through, a dozen words, great wild-bull words, he'd say, Fierce Bugaboos, with bristling crests, and s.h.a.ggy eyebrows too, Which not a soul could understand.

AESCH. O heavens!

DIO. Be quiet, do.

EUR. But not one single word was clear.

DIO. St! don't your teeth be gnashing.

EUR. 'Twas all Scamanders, moated camps, and griffin-eagles flashing In burnished copper on the shields, chivalric-precipice-high Expressions, hard to comprehend.

DIO. Aye, by the Powers, and I Full many a sleepless night have spent in anxious thought, because I'd find the tawny c.o.c.k-horse out, what sort of bird it was!

AESCH. It was a sign, you stupid dolt, engraved the ships upon.

DIO. Eryxis I supposed it was, Philoxenus's son.

EUR. Now really should a c.o.c.k be brought into a tragic play?

AESCH. You enemy of G.o.ds and men, what was your practice, pray?

EUR. No c.o.c.k-horse in my plays, by Zeus, no goat-stag there you'll see, Such figures as are blazoned forth in Median tapestry.