The Lectures, from which the following selection has been made for the purposes of this Work, are upon the Dramatic Art and Literature of the Ancients and Moderns. They were originally delivered to a mixed auditory at Vienna, in the year 1808, and published in 1809, with a second edition in 1816. Although the Author has not since their first delivery made any alteration with a view of bringing them up to the standard of discoveries subsequently made in the field of the Ancient Drama by professed philologists, (to which discoveries indeed these very Lectures contributed some impulse,) and therefore some of his statements require to be modified, as the reader will see in the original portion of the Work now in his hands, yet so far as the Translator of these pages is aware, this popular and perspicuous history and critique has not been superseded by any work of similar plan and extent.

In this Edition the First and Second Lectures have been added, almost entire, to the Selection, and the whole translation has been carefully revised.

It is well known that about three and a half centuries ago the study of ancient literature was revived by the diffusion of the Greek language (the Latin never became extinct): the classical authors were brought to light and rendered universally accessible by the art of printing; the monuments of ancient genius were diligently disinterred.