as I faid, Horace appears no fuch enemy to the old comic wit, as, without the particular reafon affigned, to have fo feverely condemned it. The difficulty, is to account for Cicero's fo peculiar admiration of it, and that a tafte, otherwife fo exact, as his, fhould delight in the coarse humour of Plautus, and the old comedy. The cafe, I believe, was this: Cicero had imbibed a strong relish of the frank and libertine wit of the old comedy, as best fuited to the genius of popular eloquence; which, though it demands to be tempered with fome urbanity, yet never attains its end fo effectually, as when let down and accommodated, in some certain degree, to the general taste and manners of the people. This Cicero in effect owns, when he tells us, the main end of jefting at the bar [De Orat. ccxl.] is, not to acquire the credit of confuminate humour, but to carry the cause, ut proficiamus aliquid: that is, to make an impression on the people; which is generally, we know, better done by a coarser joke, than by the elegance of refined raillery. And that this was the real ground of Cicero's preference of the old comedy to the new, may be concluded, not only from the nature of the thing, and his own example (for he was ever reckoned intemperate in his jefts, which by no means answer to the elegance of his character) but is certainly collected from what what Quinctilian, in his account of it, expressly obferves of the old comedy, Nefcio an ulla poëfis (poft Homerum) aut fimilior fit oratoribus, aut ad oratores faciendos aptior. The reason, doubtless, was, that firength, and prompt and eloquent freedom, Vires et facundiffima libertas, which he had before observed, so peculiarly belonged to it. And this, I think, will go fome way towards clearing an embarraffing circumftance in the history of the Roman learning, which I know not if any writer hath yet taken notice of. It is, that though Menander and the authors of the new comedy were afterwards admired, as the only mafters of the comic drama, yet this does not appear to have been seen, or, at least, so fully acknowledged, by the Roman writers, till after the Auguftan age; notwithstanding that the Roman tafte was, from that time, vifibly declining. The reason, I doubt not, was, that the popular eloquence, which continued, in a good degree of vigour, to that time, participating more of the freedom of the old comic banter, and rejecting, as improper to its end, the refinements of the new, infenfibly depraved the public tafte; which, by degrees only, and not till a studied and cautious declamation had, by the neceffary influence of abfolute power, fucceeded to the liberty of their old oratory, was fully reconciled to the delicacy and ftrict decorum of Menander's wit. Even the case of Terence, which, at first fight, might seem to bear hard against it, confirms this account. This poet, ftruck with the fupreme elegance of Menander's manner, and attempting too foon, before the public tafte was fufficiently formed for it, to bring it on the ftage, had occafion for all the credit, his noble patrons could give him, to fupport himself against the popular clamour. What was the object of that clamour, we learn from a curious paffage in one of his prologues, where his adversary is made to object, Quas-fecit-fabulas Tenui effe oratione et fcriptura levi. Prol. ad Phorm. The fenfe of which is not, as his commentators have idly thought, that his ftyle was low and trifling, for this could never be pretended, but that his dialogue was infipid, and his characters, and, in general, his whole compofition, without that comic heightening, which their vitiated taftes required. This further appears from those cominon verses of Cæfar, where, characterizing the genius of Terence's plays, as devoid of this comic fpirit, he calls them lenia fcripta: LENIBUS atque utinam SCRIPTIS adjuncta foret vis COMICA: words, which are the cleareft comment on the lines in queftion. But But this famous judgment of Cæfar deferves to be fcrutinized more narrowly. For it may be faid that by vis comica I fuppofe him to mean the comic drollery of the old and middle comedy; whereas it is more probable he meant the elegant, but high, humour of the beft writers. of the new, particularly of Menander; why elfe doth he call Terence, "Dimidiate Menander ?" There is the more force in this objection, because the elegant but high humour, here mentioned, is of the trueft merit in comedy; and because Menander, of whom the antients fpeak fo honourably, and whom we only know by their encomiums, may be reafonably thought to have. excelled in it. What occurs in answer to it, is this: 1. The antients are generally allowed to have had very little of what we now understand by comic humour. Lucian is the firft, indeed the only one, who hath properly left us any confiderable fpecimens of it. And he is almoft modern with regard to the writers under confideration. But, 2. That Menander and the writers of the new comedy did not excel in it, is probable for these reasons. 1. The moft judicious critic of antiquity, when he is purpofely confidering the excellencies of the Greek comedians, and, what is more, more, expofing the comparative deficiencies of the Roman, fays not a word of it. He thinks," indeed, that Terence's, which yet he pronounces be to most elegant, is but the faintest shadow of the Greek, comedy. But then his reafon is, quod fermo ipfe Romanus non recipere videatur illam folis conceffam Atticis venerem. [L. x. 1.] It seems then as if the main defect, which this critic obferved in Terence's comedy, was a want of that inexplicable grace of language, which fo peculiarly belonged to the Greeks; a grace of so subtle a nature, that even they could only catch it in one dialect-quando eam ne Græci quidem in alio genere linguæ non obtinuerint. [Ib.] 2. Some of Terence's plays may be almost said to be direct tranflations from Menander. And the comic humour, fuppofed in the objection, being of the trueft tafte, no reason can be imagined why the poet fhould fo induftriously avoid to transfufe this laft and highest grace into his comedy. Efpecially fince the popular cry against him proceeded from hence, that he was wanting in comic pleasantry; a want, which, by a ftricter attention to this virtue of his great original, fuppofing Menander to have been poffeffed of it, he might fo eafily have fupplied. And, left it fhould be thought he omitted to do this, as not conceiving any thing of this virtue, or as not approving it, we find in him, but rarely indeed, fome |