SPECIMENS OF LATIN COMEDY. 81 



introducing such a personage, the audience before whom it was ex- 

 hibited saw nothing strange, but, on the contrary, every thing fit and 

 appropriate in bringing the household god on the stage to relate the 

 history of the pot of gold deposited under his protege, the hearth, 

 for so many successive generations. 



There have been few comedians who have not done their utmost to 

 satirize the character of the Miser : and still fewer, who have equalled 

 their great master Plautus, in the strength and truth of their deli- 

 neations. Moliere's Avare, and Fielding's Miser, are well known, 

 and those of our readers who are/ acquainted with them and with 

 the original of Plautus, will not be surprised at our awarding to him 

 a far higher meed of praise, and lamenting, although his Euclio is 

 rather a caricature than a character, that the imperfection of the 

 play, prevents our seeing what became of him at last, or how he suc- 

 ceeded in disembrangling himself from the predicament in which the 

 dramatist so artfully involved him. But with this deficiency the play 

 is still amusing, and the personages well sustained. 



The principal character is old Euclio, whose every anxiety and 

 thought is centered in the preservation of the pot of gold, which his 

 Lar Familiaris had disclosed to him in reward for his piety, after it 

 had lain concealed for many generations ; and, like the Miser in 

 Horace,t who lives in perpetual penury for fear of dying poor, he is 

 never free from apprehension that he will be found out to possess the 

 gold, to which he himself seems to consider his right as rather ques- 

 tionable. Accordingly, he is brought on the stage driving out of the 

 house his old maid servant, one of those anomalous, half-equal, semi- 

 serving, officiously kind, impudently civil, crabbedly obliging beings, 

 continually squabbling with her master, neither of them courageous 

 enough to part with the other : so apprehensive is he of her prying 

 and inquisitive disposition that he will not have her near him while 

 he assures himself of the safety of the golden aula ; and afterwards 

 to keep up her idea of his poverty gives her directions to observe the 

 closest economy. He then leaves home, quite in character, to attend 

 a public distribution of money to the poor. Megadorus now pro- 

 poses to marry his daughter, which immediately excites Euclio' s 

 suspicions that he has made some discovery about his concealed 

 riches ; but when he declares his willingness to take her without a 

 dowry, his spirit is somewhat appeased, and he at once agrees to the 

 match. Whereupon the delighted Megadorus, in his superabundant 

 generosity, sends provisions to Euclio's house, " all means and appli- 

 ances to boot," pots, kettles, and cooks for the preparation of the 

 marriage feast ; the old miser, however, instead of being gratified at 

 this kind assistance turned them all out headlong, retaining in his 

 possession the dainties they had brought. At length so alarmed was 

 he at this unexpected invasion of culinary besiegers and at the sus- 

 picious appearance of every thing around, that he determined on 

 hiding this precious XE^TUOV in a grove consecrated to Sylvanus. 



* Sat. I. 1.98, ad usque 



Supremum tempus, he se penuria victfts 

 Opprimeret, metuebat. 



M. M. No. 85. G 



