duced the senators not in great offices, but as private men; this was called Togata, from Toga. The last species was named Tabernaria, from the tunick, or the common dress of the people, or rather from the mean houses which were painted on the scene. There is no need of mentioning the farces, which took their name and original from Atella, an ancient town of Campania in Italy, because they differed from the low comedy only by greater licentiousness; nor of those which were called Palliates, from the Greek, a cloak, in which the Greek characters were dressed upon the Roman stage, because that habit only distinguished the nation, not the dignity or character, like those which have been mentioned before. To say truth, these are but trifling distinctions; for, as we shall show in the following pages, comedy may be more usefully and judiciously distinguished, by the general nature of its subjects. As to the Romans, whether they had, or had not, reason for these names, they have left us so little upon the subject which is come down to us, that we need not trouble ourselves with a distinction which affords us no solid satisfaction. Plautus and Terence, the only authors of whom we are in possession, give us a fuller notion of the real nature of their comedy, with respect at least to their own times, than can be received from names and terms, from which we have no real exemplification..

whom we can

VII. Not to go too far out of our way, let us return to Aristophanes, the only poet in now find the Greek comedy. He is the single writer, whom the violence of time has in some degree spared,

The Greek co

medy is reduced only to Aristophanes.

after having buried in darkness, and almost in forgetfulness, so many great men, of whom we have nothing but the names and a few fragments, and such slight memorials as are scarcely sufficient to defend them against the enemies of the honour of antiquity; yet these memorials are like the last glimmer of the setting sun, which scarce affords us a weak and fading light: yet from this glimmer we must endeavour to collect rays of sufficient strength to form a picture of the Greek comedy approaching as near as possible to the truth.

Of the personal character of Aristophanes little is known; what account we can give of it must therefore be had from his comedies. It can scarcely be said with certainty of what country he was: the invectives of his enemies so often called in question his qualification as a citizen, that they have made it doubtful. Some said, he was of Rhodes, others of Egena, a little island in the neighbourhood, and all agreed that he was a stranger. As to himself, he said that he was the son of Philip, and born in the Cydathenian quarter; but he confessed that some of his fortune was in Egena, which was probably the original seat of his family. He was, however, formally declared a citizen of Athens, upon evidence, whether good or bad, upon a decisive judgment, and this for having made his judges merry by an application of a saying of Telemachus*, of which this is the sense: "I am, as my "mother tells me, the son of Philip; for my own "part, I know little of the matter, for what child "knows his own father?" This piece of merriment

*Homer, Odyssey.

did him as much good, as Archias received from the oration of Cicero*, who said that that poet was a Roman citizen. An honour which, if he had not inherited by birth, he deserved for his genius.

Aristophanes flourished in the age of the great men of Greece, particularly of Socrates and Euripides, both of whom he outlived. He made a great figure during the whole Peloponnesian war, not merely as a comick poet by whom the people were diverted, but as the censor of the government, as a man kept in pay by the state to reform it, and almost to act the part of the arbitrator of the publick. A particular account of his comedies will best let us into his personal character as a poet, and into the nature of his genius, which is what we are most interested to know. It will, however, not be amiss to prepossess our readers a little by the judgments that had been passed upon him by the criticks of our own time, without forgetting one of the ancients that deserves great respect. VIII. "Aristophanes," says father Rapin, "is not exact in the contrivance "of his fables; his fictions are not "bable; he brings real characters upon the stage "too coarsely and too openly. Socrates, whom he "ridicules so much in his plays, had a more deli"cate turn of burlesque than himself, and had his "merriment without his impudence. It is true, "that Aristophanes wrote amidst the confusion and "licentiousness of the old comedy, and he was well

* Orat. pro Archia Poeta.

pro

Aristophanes censured and

praised.

+ In the 85th year of the Olympiad, 437 before our Æra, and 317 of the foundation of Rome.

acquainted with the humour of the Athenians, to "whom uncommon merit always gave disgust, and "therefore he made the eminent men of his time "the subject of his merriment. But the too great "desire which he had to delight the people by

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exposing worthy characters upon the stage, made "him at the same time an unworthy man; and the "turn of his genius to ridicule was disfigured and "corrupted by the indelicacy and outrageousness “of his manners. After all, his pleasantry consists

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chiefly in new-coined puffy language. The dish "of twenty-six syllables, which he gives in his last "scene of his Female Orators, would please few "tastes in our days. His language is sometimes "obscure, perplexed and vulgar, and his frequent play with words, his oppositions of contradictory terms, his mixture of tragick and comick, of "serious and burlesque, are all flat; and his jocu"larity, if you examine it to the bottom, is all false. "Menander is diverting in a more elegant manner; "his style is pure, clear, elevated, and natural ; "he persuades like an orator, and instructs like a "philosopher; and if we may venture to judge

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upon the fragments which remain, it appears "that his pictures of civil life are pleasing, that "he makes every one speak according to his cha"racter, that every man may apply his pictures "of life to himself, because he always follows "nature, and feels for the personages which he 66 brings upon the stage. To conclude, Plutarch, "in his comparison of these authors, says, that "the Muse of Aristophanes is an abandoned pro"stitute, and that of Menander a modest woman."

It is evident that this whole character is taken from Plutarch. Let us now go on with this remark of father Rapin, since we have already spoken of the Latin comedy, of which he gives us a description.

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"With respect to the two Latin comick poets, "Plautus is ingenious in his designs, happy in his conceptions, and fruitful of invention. He has, however, according to Horace, some low jocu"larities, and those smart sayings, which made the “vulgar laugh, made him be pitied by men of "higher taste. It is true, that some of his jests

are extremely good, but others likewise are very "bad. To this every man is exposed, who is too "much determined to make sallies of merriment;

they endeavour to raise that laughter by hyper"boles, which would not arise by a just represen"tation of things. Plautus is not quite so regular "as Terence in the scheme of his designs, or in the "distribution of his acts, but he is more simple "in his plot; for the fables of Terence are com"monly complex, as may be seen in his Andrea, "which contains two amours. It was imputed "as a fault to Terence, that, to bring more ac"tion upon the stage, he made one Latin co“medy out of two Greek; but then Terence un"ravels his plot more naturally than Plautus, "which Plautus did more naturally than Aris"tophanes; and though Caesar calls Terence but "one half of Menander, because, though he had "softness and delicacy, there was in him some "want of sprightliness and strength; yet he has “written in a manner so natural and so judicious, "that, though he was then only a copy, he is now an original. No author has ever had a more