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VIII. "Aristophanes," says father Rapin, Aristophanes censured and "is not exact in the contrivance of his praised. fables ; his fictions are not probable; he brings real characters upon the stage too coarsely and too openly. Socrates, whom he ridicules so much in his plays, had a more delicate 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 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 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 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 tragic and comic, of serious and burlesque, are all flat; and his jocularity, 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

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venture to judge upon the fragments which remain, it appears that his pictures of civil life are pleasing, that *he makes every one speak according to his character, that every man may apply his pictures of life to himself, because he always follows nature, and feels for the personages which he brings upon the stage. To conclude, Plutarch in his comparison of these authors, says, that the Muse of Aristophanes is an abandoned prostitute, 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.

"With respect to the two Latin comic poets, Plautus is ingenious in his designs, happy in his conceptions, and fruitful of invention. He has, however, according to Horace, some low jocularities, 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, and 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 hyperboles, which would not arise by a just representation 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 commonly complex, as may be seen in his Andrea, which contains two amours. It was imputed as a fault to Terence, that, to bring more action upon the stage, he made one Latin comedy out of two Greek; but then Terence

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unravels his plot more naturally than Plautus, which Plautus did more naturally than Aristophanes; and though Cesar 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 exact sense of pure nature. Of Cecilius, since we have only a few fragments, I shall say nothing. All that we know of him is told us by Farrus, that he was happy in the choice of subjects."

Rapin omits many others for the same reason, that we have not enough of their works to qualify us for judges. While we are upon this subject, it will perhaps not displease the reader to see what that critic's opinion is of Lopes de Vega and Moliere. It will appear, that, with respect to Lopes de Vega, he is rather too profuse of praise; that in speaking of Moliere, he is too parsimonious. This piece, will, however, be of use to our design, when we shall examine to the bottom what it is that ought to make the character of comedy..

"No man has ever had a greater genius for comedy than Lopes de Vega the Spaniard. He had a fertility of wit, joined with great beauty of conception, and a wonderful readiness of composition; for he has written more than three hundred comedies. His name alone gave reputation to his pieces; for his reputation was so well established, that a work, which came from his hands, was sure to claim the approbation of the public. He had a mind too extensive to be subjected to rules, or restrained by limits. For that reason he gave himself up to his

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own genius, on which he could always depend with confidence. When he wrote, he consulted no other laws than the taste of his auditors, and regulated his manner more by the success of his work than by the rules of reason. Thus he discarded all scruples of unity, and all the superstitions of probability." This is certainly not said with a design to praise him, and must be connected with that which immediately follows. "But as for the most part, he endeavours at too much jocularity and carries ridicule to too much refinement; his conceptions are often rather happy than just, and rather wild than natural; for, by subtilizing merriment too far, it becomes too nice to be true, and its beauties lose their power of striking by being too delicate and acute.

"Among us, nobody has carried ridicule in comedy farther than Moliere. Our ancient comic writers brought no characters higher than servants, to make sport upon the theatre; but we are diverted upon the theatre of Moliere by marquises and people of quality. Others have exhibited in comedy no species of life above that of a citizen; but Moliere shows us all Paris, and the court. He is the only man amongst us, who has laid open those features of nature by which he is exactly marked, and may be accurately known. The beauties of his pictures are so natural, that they are felt by persons of the least discernment, and his power of pleasantry received half its force from his power of copying. His Misanthrope is, in my opinion, the most complete, and likewise the most singular character that has ever appeared upon the stage; but the disposition of his com

edies is always defective some way or another. This is all which we can observe in general upon comedy."

Such are the thoughts of one of the most refined judges of works of genius, from which, though they are not all oraculous, some advantages may be drawn, as they always make some approaches to truth.

Madame Dacier* having her mind full of the merit of Aristophanes, expresses herself in this manner; "No man had ever more discernment than him, in finding out the ridiculous, nor a more ingenious manner of showing it to others. His remarks are natural and easy, and, what very rarely can be found, with great copiousness he has great delicacy. To say all at once, the attic wit, of which the ancients made such boast, appears more in Aristophanes than in any other that I know of in antiquity. But what is most of all to be admired in him, is, that he is always so much master of the subject before him, that without doing any violence to himself, he finds a way to introduce naturally things which at first appeared most distant from his purpose; and even the most quick and unexpected of his desultory sållies appear the necessary consequence of the foregoing incidents. This is that art which sets the dialogues of Plato above imitation, which we must consider as so many dramatic pieces, which are equally entertaining by the action and by the dialogue. The style of Aristophanes is no less pleasing than his fancy; for, besides its clearness, its vigor, and its sweetness, there is in it a certain harmony so delightful to the ear, that there is

* Preface to Plautus. Paris, 1684.

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