Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet (Adelphi, Prolog. 15-19.) In both of these passages he evidently waives the question; leaving the decision of it in the first case to the judgment of his hearers, and in the second case intimating that, even if it were true, it was a matter of which he ought to feel proud rather than ashamed. Terence was evidently too good a courtier to deny flatly an imputation which was to the credit of his literary friends. They were no doubt flattered by the supposition of their having a share in the compositions of Terence, and he did not care to vindicate his own originality at the expense even of their vanity. A compliment of this kind would cost him nothing, and would be very acceptable to them. Nor perhaps did he consider Lavinius entitled to any explanation on such a point; and so he declined to admit or to deny the charge which had been brought against him. On every ground, then, we may reject this story which gives to Laelius or Africanus the credit of the authorship of the best parts of the comedies of Terence. His plays are so even and consistent throughout, individually and with one another, that we might well defy any critic to show where Terence left off and his friends began. Throughout his plays there is the same neatness of language, the same attention to metre, the same quiet tone of good-natured humour and practical knowledge of the world. This must have proceeded from one and the same author, and that author none other than Terence himself. The last accusation which Terence notices is that his plays were deficient in strength, "tenui oratione et scriptura levi" (Phorm. Prolog. 5); the complaint made in the famous epigram ascribed to Caesar, which sums up so accurately the judgment of antiquity that it may be appropriately quoted here:— "Tu quoque tu in summis, O dimidiate Menander, Cum Graecis, neque in hac despectus parte jaceres. Compare the note on the Phormio, Prolog. 5. On this subject I would refer to the admirable remarks of the writer in the Dictionary of Biography on the position of Terence in Comedy, who fairly shows that this "vis comica" could hardly be expected in the majority of Terence's plays, which are more properly" sentimental comedies," and that he may be classed with those who have excelled in manner rather than in matter, with Massinger, Racine, and Alfieri, rather than with Aristophanes, Shakespeare, or Molière. What Greek poets are alluded to by Caesar we cannot definitely say. As far as fragments of Menander and his class have descended to us, I should be inclined to say that Terence is not deficient in humour by their side, and the wit of Plautus was certainly native, fresh from the baths and the forum. Caesar's reading may have embraced Aristophanes, who found no antitype among the Romans. At all events we may well be content with the elegance and purity of our poet's diction, and with the genuine wit which appears in a dry subdued form in almost every page of his works. This question is well stated by an able writer in the Quarterly Review,' who has given a discriminating sketch of the merits of Terence in the following words: "What is to us repugnant in the plots of Terence-the want of variety, the constant iteration of the same or similar incidents; the lost or stolen maiden in slavery, who turns out to be the free-born daughter of an Athenian father; the two fathers, the harsh and the mild, the rustic or the citizen; the two sons; the clever knavish slave, as necessary as the Spanish Gracioso-all this Terence has in common with Menander. So, too, all that is repulsive in manners and in morals, the looseness of converse between the sexes, the cry to Juno Lucina upon the stage, is mere translation. But with all these common faults, and with the language so much less clear and refined, the versification so much more rude and inharmonious than the iambics of the Greek Comedy, what lover of classical literature, what lover of genuine poetry, who, with the slightest taste for wit and elegance, does not dwell with delight on the comedy of Terence? To the initiate all this is so familiar as to bear no illustration; the uninitiate must be left to themselves, to their unenvied obtuseness as to some of the most exquisite touches of true human feeling, to the fine play of comic. fancy. The tradition of the popularity of Terence since the revival of letters (and long before, as we have said, his plays were the stolen 2 The writer has expressed himself too strongly here. This might be true of Plautus, but not of Terence. His plays are in general more pure than most of our own classical comedies. See note on Eunuchus iii. 5. 36. or hardly permitted enjoyment of churchmen and monks) has been kept up in one of our great public schools; and who ever heard such passages as the description of the funeral in the 'Andria,' with the orphaned girl throwing herself back on her lover's bosom, 'flens quam familiariter!' The Davus and the Geta, the Gnatho, and the Thraso, and the Phormio, are the types and parents of the flatterers, and Graciosos and Scapins, which have shaken the European scene with laughter for centuries; and themselves are but the antitypes and, it was generally allowed, degenerate offspring of Menander and his school. As an illustration of that Comedy, which, without ceasing to be comic, almost melts into the pathetic, read the first act of 'Heautontimorumenos' (a play not of the four usually acted at Westminster),— the poor father sternly punishing himself for what he considers his unnatural harshness to his son, and refrain, if you can, at once from the quiet smile, and almost from the tear '.' Terence, in common with his friends and enemies, with Caecilius and Lavinius (compare the Second Prolog. to the Hecyra with Phormio, Prolog. 9, 10), owed much of his success in the first instance to the excellence of his managers, especially of Ambivius, who claims the chief credit of the ultimate success of the plays of Caecilius, and apparently did Terence the same service in the case of the 'Hecyra.' These managers had a direct interest in the plays which they represented (see note on Hecyra, Second Prolog. 49), and would use their greatest efforts to make them attractive. They had no doubt difficulties of the same kind to struggle with as managers of theatres have been liable to from the days of Thespis. Every change in the popular humour had to be watched, met, and, if necessary, battled against and conquered. The "glory of the boxers," the "suspense of the rope-dancer," the rush of crowds from the country, and, above all the rest, a rumour flying round that a show of gladiators was going to be given," must have driven many and many a good play besides the Hecyra' from the rude. boards of the Roman amphitheatre. These things were to Ambivius, Atilius, and Minuthius, what the whale and giant were to Molière, as rivals of his 'L'Etourdi' and 'Dépit Amoreux",' and what the O. P. riots and conflagrations have been to modern English managers, or the 66 3 Quarterly Review, vol. xcviii. pp. 95, 96. Augustus W. von Schlegel has some remarks on Plautus and Terence in his work on Dramatic Art and Literature, Lecture xiv. He takes, however, a superficial view. On the early struggles of Molière see the excellent Essay of Mr. C. K. Watson in the Cambridge Essays' for 1855. eyry of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't," to the stage of Shakespeare. The characters which appear in the plays of Terence are in the main borrowed from the ordinary repertory of the New Comedy. These characters are well described in Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (Lect. xiv.); but without any particular reference to their treatment by Terence. In the Classical Museum, vol. vii., there is a good article on Ritschl's Plautus, containing among other useful matter an interesting general parallel between Plautus and Terence; and a discussion of the characters of their plays-in which, however, there is little novelty. It is true that, generally speaking, the characters of the New Comedy passed on to Plautus and Terence, just as from them they descended to Ariosto, (who endeavoured in his versi sdruccioli to imitate the iambic trimeter,) Aretino, and Metastasio; but if we examine them carefully we shall find the widest difference of treatment. I have in the notes on these plays taken many occasions of remarking upon the originality of some of Terence's characters. I may refer the reader to the treatment of the characters of the braggadocio and the parasite in the 'Eunuchus,' of Phormio, of Parmeno in the 'Hecyra,' as compared with the slaves in the other plays. Indeed every slave that appears in Terence has his distinctive marks. Davus, in the 'Andria,' is impudent and crafty, never at a loss in any perplexity, and comes off finally triumphant. Syrus in the Heautontimorumenos' resembles him in general character, only that he is even more crafty, and carries out his plots with greater skill and impunity. His namesake in the 'Adelphi' is perhaps one of the most amusing specimens of his tribe in Terence's plays. His unblushing effrontery in lying on every necessary occasion, and the impudence with which he satirizes Demea to his face, give him a distinct character. The Parmeno of the 'Eunuchus' is a plotter by nature, but not by intention. He is alarmed when Phaedria adopts and acts upon his scheme; and his timidity becomes simple despair when at the end of the play Pythias retaliates on him with a dreadful story of the punishment of his young master. His namesake in the 'Hecyra' is simply a sententious busybody, of no use whatever in the action of the play, and introduced merely for the sake of the information which he can communicate respecting his master. Geta, in the 'Phormio,' is also a subordinate character; and his only merit is that he is zealous for his pupils, and utterly regardless of his duty to his old master. The part usually played by the slave, of deceiving the elders, belongs in this play to Phormio. A similar analysis might be extended to every character in Terence. No two are precisely alike. How different is the Pamphilus of the 'Andria' from his namesake of the 'Hecyra!' what a marked contrast between Bacchis of the 'Heautontimorumenos' and Bacchis of the 'Hecyra;' between the two pairs of old men in the 'Heautontimorumenos' and the Adelphi;' between Sostrata and Nausistrata, Pythias and Mysis; between Thais and others of her class! A close study of Terence will enable any reader to amplify these remarks to any extent, and to verify for himself what I can here state only briefly, that both in the grouping and in the treatment of his characters Terence is an original as compared with Plautus; -a comparison too lengthy to be instituted here, even if it were the proper place for it. Whether he copied Menander closely we cannot say ; but from the hints that we can glean from scattered fragments of the Greek comedians, I for my part am inclined to conclude that he was in a great measure original even when compared with Menander. Every edition of Terence that I have seen has some curious information on the nomenclature of the characters of Terence. Names had, no doubt, as they now have, their etymology, and certain general observations respecting them may hold good; as, for example, the common derivation of the names of slaves, male and female, from the countries from which slaves were generally obtained; the names that were in vogue to distinguish courtezans from women of good position. But we can only laugh at the commentator, however ancient and respectable, who tells us that Simo was a name given to an acrimonious and suspicious old gentleman, because "Simi fere sunt iracundi," or that another old gentleman, Chremes, derives his name from xpéμTтeσ0α, enixe exspuere, for "old men are often troubled with an inveterate cough," while curiously enough the same name is given in another play to a young man; why, commentators wisely decline to say. Such investigations are to be paralleled only by the pertinacity of the old commentators on Horace in giving to every Lydia and Chloe apostrophized by the poet a local habitation and a history. We have no reason to suppose that Terence or any other comic poet went so far in the esoteric application of their nomenclature. The Drama has always had its regular repertory of names as well as of dresses; and we may as well endeavour to find a moral in the Guys and Amelias of the modern novel as in a Pamphilus, a Menedemus, or a Simo. I have therefore allowed these speculations to rest in the dust in which I found them; and I hope they |