that
affects sometimes the airs of a prude, but whose impudence cannot be
forgiven by the people, and whose affected modesty is despised by men of
decency. Menander, on the contrary, always shows himself a man agreeable
and witty, a companion desirable upon the stage, at table, and in gay
assemblies; an extract of all the treasures of Greece, who deserves
always to be read, and always to please. His irresistible power of
persuasion, and the reputation which he has had, of being the best
master of language of Greece, sufficiently shows the delightfulness of
his style. Upon this article of Menander, Plutarch does not know how to
make an end; he says, that he is the delight of philosophers, fatigued
with study; that they use his works as a meadow enamelled with flowers,
where a purer air gratifies the sense; that, notwithstanding the powers
of the other comick poets of Athens, Menander has always been considered
as possessing a salt peculiar to himself, drawn from the same waters
that gave birth to Venus. That, on the contrary, the salt of
Aristophanes is bitter, keen, coarse, and corrosive; that one cannot
tell whether his dexterity, which has been so much boasted, consists not
more in the characters than in the expression, for he is charged with
playing often upon words, with affecting antithetical allusions; that he
has spoiled the copies which he endeavoured to take after nature; that
artifice in his plays is wickedness, and simplicity brutishness; that
his jocularity ought to raise hisses rather than laughter; that his
amours have more impudence than gaiety; and that he has not so much
written for men of understanding, as for minds blackened with envy, and
corrupted with debauchery.

10. THE JUSTIFICATION OF ARISTOPHANES.

After such a character there seems no need of going further; and one
would think, that it would be better to bury, for ever, the memory of so
hateful a writer, that makes us so poor a recompense for the loss of
Menander, who cannot be recalled. But, without showing any mercy to the
indecent or malicious sallies of Aristophanes, any more than to Plautus,
his imitator, or, at least, the inheritor of his genius, may it not be
allowed us to do, with respect to him, what, if I mistake not,
Lucretius[27] did to Ennius, from whose muddy verses he gathered jewels,
"Enni de stercore gemmas?"

Besides, we must not believe that Plutarch, who lived more than four
ages after Menander, and more than five after