moderns excell the ancients in all the arts of Ridicule, and assign
the reasons of this supposed excellence.

No. CXXXIII. Tuesday, February 12. 1754.

_At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudeveres sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stule, mirati; si modo ego et vos
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto_.
HOR.

"And yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear;
Gay were his jests, his numbers charm'd their ear."
Let me not say too lavishly they prais'd;
But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas'd,
If you or I with taste are haply blest,
To know a clownish from a courtly jest.
FRANCIS.

The fondness I have so frequently manifested for the ancients, has not
so far blinded my judgment, as to render me unable to discern, or
unwilling to acknowledge, the superiority of the moderns, in pieces of
Humour and Ridicule. I shall, therefore, confirm the general assertion
of Addison, part of which hath already been examined.

Comedy, Satire, and Burlesque, being the three chief branches of
ridicule, it is necessary for us to compare together the most admired
performances of the ancients and moderns, in these three kinds of
writing, to qualify us justly to censure or commend, as the beauties
or blemishes of each party may deserve.

As Aristophanes wrote to please the multitude, at a time when the
licentiousness of the Athenians was boundless, his pleasantries are
coarse and impolite, his characters extravagantly forced, and
distorted with unnatural deformity, like the monstrous caricaturas of
Callot. He is full of the grossest obscenity, indecency, and
inurbanity; and as the populace always delight to hear their superiors
abused and misrepresented, he scatters the rankest calumnies on the
wisest and worthiest personages of his country. His style is unequal,
occasioned by a frequent introduction of parodies on Sophocles and
Euripides. It is, however, certain, that he abounds in artful
allusions to the state of Athens at the time when he wrote; and,
perhaps, he is more valuable, considered as a political satirist than
a writer of comedy.

Plautus has adulterated a rich vein of genuine wit and humour, with a
mixture of the basest buffoonry. No writer seems to have been born
with a more forcible or more fertile genius for comedy. He has drawn
some characters with incomparable spirit: we are indebte