means for "gratifying this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader;" for, thanks to some scholiast or painstaking collector of the curiosities of literature, there exists a brief life of Euripides containing some account of his personal appearance. He is said to have worn a bushy beard, and to have had freckles on his face. This, indeed, is not much; yet it is somewhat for us to learn—a scrap redeemed from the wallet that Time bears on his back. On the same authority we may fairly assume, that when a beardless youth, and perhaps unfreckled, he was noted for fair visage, and that he was "a gentleman born." He was a torch-bearer at the festival of Apollo of Zoster, a village on the coast of Attica.[1] Now none but handsome and well-born youth were chosen for that office. It is to be hoped that many of our readers are acquainted with Charles Lamb's righteous indignation at the conduct of the "wretched Malone," the Shakespearian editor and commentator, in covering with white paint the portrait-bust of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, "which, in rude but lively fashion, depicted him to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wear—the only
- ↑ The festival was held at Delphi, and probably, therefore, Euripides was conveyed thither in the galley (paralus) which annually carried offerings to Apollo's shrine. The young men, clad in Theraic garments, danced round the altar. May not this visit to Delphi have been the germ of the poet's beautiful drama, "Ion"? In any case the report of it shows that no ignobility of birth was attached to the name of Euripides by those who circulated it; and among them was Theophrastus, who indeed wrote long afterwards, but yet weighed his facts.
