rt of blending all the different kinds of writing so equally together.
After having studied all that is left us of Grecian learning, if we have
not read Aristophanes, we cannot yet know all the charms and beauties of
that language."

9. PLUTARCH'S SENTIMENTS UPON ARISTOPHANES AND MENANDER.

This is a pompous eulogium; but let us suspend our opinion, and hear
that of Plutarch, who, being an ancient, well deserves our attention, at
least, after we have heard the moderns before him. This is then the sum
of his judgment concerning Aristophanes and Menander. To Menander he
gives the preference, without allowing much competition. He objects to
Aristophanes, that he carries all his thoughts beyond nature; that he
writes rather to the crowd than to men of character; that he affects a
style obscure and licentious; tragical, pompous, and mean, sometimes
serious, and sometimes ludicrous, even to puerility; that he makes none
of his personages speak according to any distinct character, so that in
his scenes the son cannot be known from the father, the citizen from the
boor, the hero from the shopkeeper, or the divine from the serving-man.
Whereas, the diction of Menander, which is always uniform and pure, is
very justly adapted to different characters, rising, when it is
necessary, to vigorous and sprightly comedy, yet without transgressing
the proper limits, or losing sight of nature, in which Menander, says
Plutarch, has attained a perfection to which no other writer has
arrived. For, what man, besides himself, has ever found the art of
making a diction equally suitable to women and children, to old and
young, to divinities and heroes? Now Menander has found this happy
secret, in the equality and flexibility of his diction, which, though
always the same, is, nevertheless, different upon different occasions;
like a current of clear water, (to keep closely to the thoughts of
Plutarch,) which running through banks differently turned, complies with
all their turns backward and forward, without changing any thing of its
nature or its purity. Plutarch mentions it, as a part of the merit of
Menander, that he began very young, and was stopped only by old age, at
a time when he would have produced the greatest wonders, if death had
not prevented him. This, joined to a reflection, which he makes as he
returns to Aristophanes, shows that Aristophanes continued a long time
to display his powers: for his poetry, says Plutarch, is a strumpet