g. in the Symposium) half in
jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.' We observe that they
entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that
the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element
of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and
countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed
by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have
disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater
refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac
poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt
from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of
wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the
days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators,
than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the
nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a
representation of ordinary French life.
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