Cycl.Ai, Ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;
It said that I should have my eyesight blinded
By you coming from Troy, yet it foretold
That you should pay the penalty for this,
By wandering long over the homeless sea."
The humour of this after-piece may not seem to English readers of the first quality, and the quibble on Nobody and Nowhere to be far beneath the level of the jeu de mots in modern burlesque. But let them not therefore look down on Ancient Classics. Rome was not built in a day. Life is short, but the art of Punning is long. Even Aristophanes came not up to the mark of Thomas Hood. The world, it must be remembered, was comparatively young when Euripides wrote his "Cyclops"—much younger when Homer told the tale of Polyphemus and Ulysses. Moreover, a bucolical monster was not a person to throw away the cream of jests upon. Probably he never quite comprehended the point of Nobody, though in after-hours, and in the tedium of blindness, disabled from hunting the lion and the bear of Mount Ætna, he must have often pondered on his unlucky encounter with a crafty Greek. Also it should be borne in mind that the real fun and frolic of the Athenians was reserved for the comic drama. There, indeed, it was as extravagant, satyrical, and even boisterous as we can imagine, or spectators could desire. Possibly Euripides, grave, taciturn, and tender in his disposition, was not the best representative of this species of drama. That there was in him some latent humour, some disposition to slide out of the tragic into the comic vein, has already been
