he says,
"That they, and others, who wrote in the same way, reprehended the
faults of particular persons with excessive liberty." These are,
probably, the poets of the greatest reputation, though they were not the
first, and we know the names of many others[12]. Among these three we
may be sure that Aristophanes had the greatest character, since not only
the king of Persia[13] expressed a high esteem of him to the Grecian
ambassadours, as of a man extremely useful to his country, and Plato[14]
rated him so high, as to say that the Graces resided in his bosom; but,
likewise, because he is the only writer of whom any comedies have made
their way down to us, through the confusion of times. There are not,
indeed, any proofs that he was the inventor of comedy, properly so
called, especially, since he had not only predecessors who wrote in the
same kind, but it is, at least, a sign that he had contributed more than
any other to bring comedy to the perfection in which he left it. We
shall, therefore, not inquire farther, whether regular comedy was the
work of a single mind, which seems yet to be unsettled, or of several
contemporaries, such as these which Horace quotes. We must distinguish
three forms which comedy wore, in consequence of the genius of the
writers, or of the laws of the magistrates, and the change of the
government of many into that of few.
5. THE OLD, MIDDLE, AND NEW COMEDY.
That comedy[15], which Horace calls the ancient, and which, according to
his account, was after Eschylus, retained something of its original
state, and of the licentiousness which it practised, while it was yet
without regularity, and uttered loose jokes and abuse upon the
passers-by from the cart of Thespis. Though it was now properly modelled,
as might have been worthy of a great theatre, and a numerous audience,
and deserved the name of a regular comedy, it was not yet much nearer to
decency.
It was a representation of real actions, and exhibited the dress, the
motions, and the air, as far as could be done in a mask, of any one who
was thought proper to be sacrificed to publick scorn. In a city so free,
or, to say better, so licentious as Athens was, at that time, nobody was
spared, not even the chief magistrate, nor the very judges, by whose
voice comedies were allowed or prohibited. The insolence of those
performances reached to open impiety, and sport was made equally with
men and gods[16]. These are the features by which the
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