XXIV 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



son for the variety observable in the works of 

 this literary patriarch. His access to the mani- 

 fold stores amassed by Grecian genius had made 

 him intellectually rich, and he was in ;i hurry to 

 pour out, before the astonished gaze of his con- 

 temporaries, a full display of his opulence. But 

 his successors, less actuated by the impatient 

 desire to exhibit a new acquisition, had leisure 

 to pause, to discriminate, and to attach them- 

 selves, with a judicious preference, to the kind 

 of composition best suited to their natural 

 powers. Thus, while some attempted tragedy, 

 and some compiled annals, the comic drama, 

 alluring by the prospect of gain as well as by its 

 adaptation to the bent of their minds, was the 

 province on which the most celebrated among 

 the immediate followers of Ennius reaped their 

 laurels. PLAUTUS * and TERKNCK have at least 

 this in common, that they both aimed at imme- 

 diate popularity, and by cultivating the same 

 branch of the poetical art ; but they seem to have 

 availed themselves of almost every facility for 

 differing which the existing scope of comic 

 poetry afforded. The difference between them 

 lies not so much in their choice of a model ; since 

 though Plautus to a certain extent followed 

 Epicharmus, he for the most part resorted for 

 his materials, as steadily as Terence himself, to 

 the new comedy of the later Attics ; but it lies 

 in the tone and temper of their minds, and in 

 those properties of sentiment and style, which 

 reveal the original qualifications of a dramatist 

 through the most slavish transcription of fable 

 and manners. In reading Plautus we are pro- 

 voked to wish that one, who was imbued with so 

 large a share of the Aristophanic spirit, in its 

 grosser attributes, had made the old comedy, in 

 all its extent, his exemplar rather than the new, 

 and had thus provided a more proper vent for 

 the coarse humour, the buffoonery, and even the 

 poetry, that were within him. But in Terence, 

 whether or not he equalled the selectest graces 

 of Menander, we find an elegance worthy of 

 Athens in the best of those days when she had 

 learned to substitute a scrupulous refinement for 

 more noble and commanding beauties. Even of 

 Plautus the language is pure and flowing; not, 

 indeed, controlled by much deference to the 

 laws of metrical harmony, but full of pith and 

 sprightliness, bearing the stamp of colloquial 

 vivacity, and suitable to the general briskness 

 of his scenes. Yet we miss all symptoms of 

 deference, in the tone of his dialogue, to the 

 taste of the more polished classes of society. 

 The plan and denouement of his plots are care- 



* Plautu* Sied, B. C. 184 Terence, B. C. 195-159. 



lessly contrived. Gaiety, surprise, plays on 

 words, puns, low jokes, reprobate manners, 

 caricature, rather than character and true 

 liumour, have been aimed at and achieved by 

 Plautus. 



Terence is as much above him in regularity 

 and dramatic art, as in elegance and harmony. 

 He laid his plans with more solicitude, and hit 

 the essence of human character with a finer per- 

 ception. But the charm, the glory of Terence, 

 is his style. He seems to have weighed each 

 particular word in the balance of an unerring 

 judgment. Hence he was, and is, exquisitely 

 delightful to every cultivated mind. As a mere 

 comic writer, his fault lay in pitching his style 

 too high. There was not sufficient breadth and 

 Ijrotesqueness for the appetite of the million. He 

 was deficient in coarse jocularity, and so the 

 people left him, in the midst of some of his best 

 pieces, for the tricks of a rope-dancer! fcfuch 

 was the temper of the Roman populace, who 

 liked to laugh with their mouths wide open, and 

 who, by enforcing a compliance with their 

 sovereign will, produced the ruin of the genuine 

 drama. 



We pause, fora moment, at the era of Terence, 

 to mark the rapid improvement of the language 

 spoken and understood in Rome. At the end 

 of five centuries unadorned by literary efforts, it 

 had been rough, unfixed, and inharmonious : at 

 the end of fifty years, since the commencement 

 of its literature, it was graceful in its idioms, 

 settled in its principles, arid pleasing to the ear. 

 Sprung from the same Pelasgian source with the 

 Greek, but mixed to a larger extent with bar- 

 barous additions, and retarded in its progress by 

 the habits of Italian life, the Latin tongue, when 

 Livius Andronicus wrote, was still a crude and 

 rugged element- With Ennius appeared the 

 first traces of amelioration. Plautus advanced 

 some steps. But Terence outstrode all compe- 

 titors, and reached the goal. We cannot men- 

 tion a Latin author who excels him. Yet thia 

 boast of Roman letters, this model of composition 

 in the Roman language, was a foreigner and a 

 slave ! 



It was not until half a century later that true 

 Romans came into the field with a blaze of splen- 

 dour, that has never forsaken their names. 

 Something, however, had been accomplished by 

 them before the brilliant days of Cicero, Caesar, 

 and Lucretius. LUCILIUS * had moulded the 

 careless effusions, half-humorous, halt-sarcastic, 

 of the Ennian school, into the first regular form 

 of Roman satire; that form, in which the origi- 



* B . C. 148103. 



