have laughed, rarely to have even smiled, and to have worn habitually a sorrowful visage. If it were so, Euripides was such a man as the vivacious Gratiano disliked, and even suspected:—
"Why should a man whose blood is warm within
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish?"
And Cæsar perhaps might have thought him dangerous, though we have no reason for supposing Euripides "lean and hungry," as Cassius was, but, on the contrary, as will appear, a well-favoured, though a grave and silent man. Perhaps Euripides's horoscope may have resembled that of the good knight of Norwich: "I was born," says Sir Thomas Browne, "in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company."
The 'Spectator' remarks that "a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author." There are
things said at the Mermaid, his butt of sack, his 'Tribe of Ben'), describes himself in these lines:—
"I, that spend half my nights and all my days
Here in a cell to get a dark pale face,
To come forth worth the ivy and the bays," &c.
Did we know as little of the English as we do of the Greek poet, here would be ground enough for a legend of a "grotto."
