exercise of their office, the actors, who had this dress, gave its name to the comedy. This is the same with that called Trabeata*, from Trabea, the dress of the consuls in peace, and the generals in triumph. The second species introduced the senators not in great offices, but as private men; this was called Toges from Togata. The last species was named Tabernaria, from the tunic, 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 shew 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. * Suet. de Claris Grammat. says, that C. Gelissus, librarian to Augustus, was the author of it. The Greek Comedy is reduced only to Aristophanes. VII. Not to go too far out of our way, let us return to Aristophanes, the only poet in whom we can now find the Greek comedy. He is the single writer, whom the violence of time has in some degree spared, 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 tó 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 origi nal 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 did him as much good, as Archias received from the oration of Cicerot, 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 comic 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 public. 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 critics of our own time, without forgetting one of the ancients that deserves great respect. " is not Aristophanes censured and praised. VIII. "Aristophanes," says father Rapin, "exact in the contrivance of his fables; his fictions are "not probable; he brings real characters upon the "stage too coarsely and too openly. Socrates, whom he • Homer, Odyssey. + Orat. pro Archia Poeta. In the 85th year of the Olympiad, 437 before our æra, and 317 of the foundation of Rome. "ridicules so much in his plays, had a more delicate "turn of burlesque than himself, and had his merri"ment 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 un"common 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 66 66 “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 Ora"tors, would please few tastes in our days. His lan 66 guage 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 na"tural; he persuades like an orator, and instructs "like a philosopher; and if we may venture to 66 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. 66 "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, Plau"tus is ingenious in his designs, happy in his concep❝tions, and fruitful of invention. He has, however, 66 66 66 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, 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 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 unravels his plot more na66 turally than Plautus, which Plautus did more naturally than Aristophanes; and though Cæsar 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 66 66 |