onsists 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 tragick and comick, 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 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 comick 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, 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 Andria, 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 naturally than Plautus, which Plautus did more naturally than
Aristophanes; and though Caesar calls Terence but one half of Menander,
because, though he had softn