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. The Old, Middle, and New Comedy. V. That comedy,* 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 public 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. These are the features by which the greatest part of the compositions of Aristophanes will be known. In which it may be particularly observed, that not the least appearance of praise will be found, | and therefore certainly no trace of flattery or servility. This licentiousness of the poets, to which in some sort Socrates fell a sacrifice, at last was restrained by a law. For the government, which was before shared by all the inhabitants, was now confined to a settled number of citizens. It was ordered that no man's name should be mentioned on the stage; but poetical malignity was not long in finding the secret of defeating the purpose of the law, and of making ample compensation for the restraint laid upon authors, by the necessity of inventing false names. They set themselves to work upon known and real characters, so that they had now the advantage of giving a more exquisite gratification to the vanity of poets, and the mal This history of the three ages of comedy, and their different characters, is taken in part from the valuable fragments of Platonius. + It will be shown how and in what sense this was llowed. | ice of spectators. One had the refined pleasure of setting others to guess, and the other that of guessing right by naming the masks. When pictures are so like that the name is not wanted, nobody inscribes it. The consequence of the law, therefore, was nothing more than to make that done with delicacy, which was done grossly before; and the art, which was expected would be confined within the limits of duty, was only partly transgressed with more ingenuity. Of this Aristophanes, who was comprehended in this law, gives us good examples in some of his poems. Such was that which was afterwards called the middle comedy. The new comedy, or that which followed, was again an excellent refinement, prescribed by the magistrates, who, as they had before forbid the use of real names, forbade afterwards real subjects, and the train of choruses* too much given to abuse; so that the poets saw themselves reduced to the necessity of bringing imaginary names and subjects upon the stage, which at once purified and enriched the theatre; for comedy from that time was no longer a fury armed with torches, but a pleasing and innocent mirror of human life. Chacun peint avec art dans ce nouveau miroir The comedy of Menander and Terence is, in propriety of speech, the fine comedy. I do not repeat all this after so many writers, but just to recall it to memory, and to add to what they have said, something which they have omitted, a singular effect of public edicts appearing in the successive progress of the art. A naked history of poets and of poetry, such as has been often given, is a mere body without soul, unless it be enlivened with an account of the birth, progress, and perfection of the art, and of the causes by which they were produced. The Latin Comedy. VI. To omit nothing essential which concerns this part, we shall say a word of the Latin comedy. When the arts passed from Greece to Rome, comedy took its turn among the rest: but the Romans applied themselves only to the new species, without chorus or personal abuse; though perhaps they might have played some translations of the old or the middle comedy, for Pliny gives an account of one which was represented in his own time. But the Roman co * Perhaps the chorus was forbid in the middle age of the comedy. Platonius seems to say so. + Despreaux Art. Poct. chant S. medy, which was modelled upon the last species of the Greek, hath nevertheless its different ages, according as its authors were rough or polished. The pieces of Livius Andronicus, more ancient and less refined than those of the writers who learned the art from him, may be said to compose the first age, or the old Roman comedy and tragedy. To him you must join Nevius his contemporary, and Ennius, who lived some years after him. The second age comprises Pacuvius, Cecilius, Accius, and Plautus, unless it shall be thought better to reckon Plautus with Terence, to make the third and highest age of the Latin comedy, which may properly be called the new comedy, especially with regard to Terence, who was the friend of Lelius, and the faithful copier of Menander. than can be received from names and terms, from which we have no real exemplification. The Greek Comedy is reduced only to Aristophanes. VII. Not to go too far out of our way, let us return to Aristophanes, the only poet in whom we can now find the Greek comedy. He is the single writer whom the violence of time has in some degree spared, after having buried in darkness, and almost in forgetfulness, so many great men, of whom we have nothing but the names and a few fragments, and such slight memorials as are scarcely sufficient to defend them against the enemies of the honour of antiquity; yet these memorials are like the last glimmer of the setting sun, which scarcely affords us a weak and fading light: yet from this glimmer we must endeavour to collect rays of sufficient strength to form a picture of the Greek comedy, approaching as near as possible to the truth. But the Romans, without troubling themselves with this order of succession, distinguished their comedies by the dresses† of the players. The robe, called Prætexta, with large borders of Of the personal character of Aristophanes purple, being the formal dress of magistrates in little is known; what account we can give of it their dignity and in the exercises of their office, must therefore be had from his comedies. It can the actors who had this dress gave its name to scarcely be said with certainty of what country the comedy. This is the same with that called he was: the invectives of his enemies so often Trabeata, from Trabea, the dress of the con- called in question his qualification as a citizen, suls in peace, and the generals in triumph. The that they have made it doubtful. Some said, he second species introduced the senators not in was of Rhodes, others of Egena, a little island great offices, but as private men; this was called in the neighbourhood, and all agreed that he was Togata, from Toga. The last species was named a stranger. As to himself, he said that he was Tabernaria, from the tunic, or the common the son of Philip, and born in the Cydathenian dress of the people, or rather from the mean quarter; but he confessed that some of his forhouses which were painted on the scene. There tune was in Egena, which was probably the oriis no need of mentioning the farces which took ginal seat of his family. He was, however, fortheir name and original from Atella, an ancient mally declared a citizen of Athens, upon evitown of Campania in Italy, because they differed dence, whether good or bad, upon a decisive from the low comedy only by greater licentious- judgment, and this for having made his judges ness; nor of those which were called Palliates, merry by an application of a saying of Telemafrom the Greek, a cloak, in which the Greek cha-chus, of which this is the sense: "I am, as my racters were dressed upon the Roman stage, be- mother tells me, the son of Philip; for my own cause that habit only distinguished the nation, part, I know little of the matter, for what child not the dignity or character, like those which knows his own father?" This piece of merrihave been mentioned before. To say truth, these ment did him as much good as Archias received are but trifling distinctions; for, as we shall show from the oration of Cicero,† who said that that in the following pages, comedy may be more use- poet was a Roman citizen. An honour which, fully and judiciously distinguished by the general if he had not inherited by birth, he deserved for nature of its subjects. As to the Romans, his genius. whether they had or had not, reason for these names, they have left us so little upon the subject which is come down to us, that we need not trouble ourselves with a distinction which affords us no solid satisfaction. Plautus and Terence, the only authors of whom we are in possession, give us a fuller notion of the real nature of their comedy, with respect at least to their own times, The year of Rome 514, the first year of the 135th Olympiad. + Prætexta, Togate, Tabernaria. Suet. de Claris Grammat, says that C. Gelissus, librarian to Augustus, was the author of it. * Aristophanest flourished in the age of the great men of Greece, particularly of Socrates and Euripides, both of whom he outlived. He made a great figure during the whole Peloponnesian war, not merely as a comic poet by whom the people were diverted, but as the censor of the government, as a man kept in pay by the state to reform it, and almost to act the part of the arbitrator of the public. A particular account of his Homer, Odyssey. + Orat. pro Archia Poeta. In the 85th year of the Olympiad, 437 years be fore our era, and 317 of the foundation of Rome. comedies will best let us into his personal character as a poet, and into the nature of his genius, which is what we are most interested to know. It will, however, not be amiss to prepossess our readers a little by the judgments that have been passed upon him by the critics of our own time, without forgetting one of the ancients that deserves great respect. Aristophanes censured and praised. however, according to Horace, some low jocu- VIII. "Aristophanes," says Father Rapin, " is not exact in the contrivance of his fables; his fictions are not probable; he brings real characters upon the stage too coarsely and too openly. Socrates, whom he ridicules so much in his plays, had a more delicate turn of burlesque than himself, and had his merriment without his impudence. It is true, that Aristophanes wrote amidst the confusion and licentiousness of the old comedy, and he was well acquainted with the humour of the Athenians, to whom uncommon merit always gave disgust, and therefore he made the eminent men of his time the subject of his merriment. But the too great desire which he had to delight the people by exposing worthy characters upon the stage, made him, at the same time, an unworthy man; and the turn of his genius to ridicule was disfigured and corrupted by the indelicacy and outrageousness of his manners. After all, his pleasantry consists 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 tragic and comic, 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 frag-racter of comedy. ments 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 comic poets, Plautus is ingenious in his designs, happy in his Jonceptions, and fruitful of invention. He has, Rapin omits many others for the same reason, that we have not enough of their works to qualify us for judges. While we are upon this subject, it will perhaps not displease the reader to see what that critic's opinion is of Lopes de Vega and Moliere. It will appear, that with respect to Lopes de Vega, he is rather too profuse of praise: that in speaking of Moliere, he is too parsimonious. This piece will, however, be of use to our design, when we shall examine to the bottom what it is that ought to make the cha "No man has ever had a greater genius for comedy than Lopes de Vega the Spaniard. He had a fertility of wit, joined with great beauty of conception, and a wonderful readiness of composition; for he has written more than three hundred comedies. His name alone gave reputation to his pieces; for his reputation was so well established, that a work which came from his hands, was sure to claim the approbation of the public. He had a mind too extensive to be sub❘jected to rules, or restrained by limits. For that reason he gave himself up to his own genius, on which he could always depend with confidence. When he wrote, he consulted no other laws than the taste of his auditors, and regulated his manner more by the success of his work than by the rules of reason. Thus he discarded all scruples of unity, and all the superstitions of probability." (This is certainly not said with a design to praise him, and must be connected with that which immediately follows.) "But as for the most part he endeavours at too much jocularity, and carries ridicule to too much refinement; his conceptions are often rather happy than just, and rather wild than natural; for, by subtilizing merriment too far, it becomes too nice to be true, and his beauties lose their power of striking by being too delicate and acute. "Among us, nobody has carried ridicule in comedy farther than Moliere. Our ancient comic writers brought no characters higher than servants, to make sport upon the theatre; but we are diverted upon the theatre of Moliere by marquises and people of quality. Others have exhibited in comedy no species of life above that of a citizen; but Moliere shows us all Paris, and the court. He is the only man amongst us, who has laid open those features of nature by which he is exactly marked, and may be accurately known. The beauties of his pictures are so natural, that they are felt by persons of the least discernment, and his power of pleasantry received half its force from his power of copying. His Misanthrope is, in my opinion, the most complete, and likewise the most singular character that has ever appeared upon the stage: but the disposition of his comedies is always defective some way or another. This is all which we can observe in general upon comedy." Such are the thoughts of one of the most refined judges of works of genius, from which, though they are not all oraculous, some advantages may be drawn, as they always make some approaches to truth. many dramatic pieces, which are equauy entertaining by the action and by the dialogue. The style of Aristophanes is no less pleasing than his fancy; for, besides its clearness, its vigour, and its sweetness, there is in it a certain harmony so delightful to the ear, that there is no pleasure equal to that of reading it. When he applies himself to vulgar mediocrity of style, he descends without meanness; when he attempts the sublime, he is elevated without obscurity; and no man has ever had the art 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." Plutarch's sentiment upon Aristophanes and Menander. IX. 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 trans Madame Dacier, having her mind full of the merit of Aristophanes, expresses herself in this manner: "No man had ever more discernment than he, in finding out the ridiculous, or a more ingenious manner of showing it to others.gressing the proper limits, or losing sight of His remarks are natural and easy, and, what very rarely can be found, with great copiousness he has great delicacy. To say all at once, the attic wit, of which the ancients made such boast, appears more in Aristophanes than in any other that I know of in antiquity. But what is most of all to be admired in him is, that he is always so much master of the subject before him, that, without doing any violence to himself, he finds a way to introduce naturally things which at first appeared most distant from his purpose; and even the most quick and unexpected of his desultory sallies appear the neces-ed, complies with all their turns backward and sary consequence of the foregoing incidents. This is that art which sets the dialogues of Plato above imitation, which we must consider as so Preface to Plantus. Paris, 1681. 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 turn 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. so exact a judgment upon both, that it may be fit to re-examine it. Plato, the contemporary of Aristophanes, thought very differently, at least of his genius; for, in his piece called "The Entertainment," he gives that poet a distinguished place, and makes him speak, according to his character, with Socrates himself; from which, by the way, it is apparent that this dialogue of Plato was composed before the time that Aristophanes wrote his "Clouds" against Socrates. Plato is likewise said to have sent a copy of Aristophanes to Dionysius the tyrant, with advice to read it diligently, if he would attain a complete judgment of the state of the Athenian republic. This, joined to a reflection, which he makes as ❘ and more than five after Aristophanes, has passed he returns to Aristophanes, shows that Aristophanes continued a long time to display his powers: for his poetry, says Plutarch, is a strumpet 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, 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 show 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 purer air gratifies the sense; that notwithstanding the powers of the other comic 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 gayety; and that he has not so much written for men of understanding, as for minds blackened with envy and corrupted with debauchery. Many other scholars have thought that they might depart somewhat from the opinion of Plutarch. Frischlinus, for example, one of the commentators upon Aristophanes, though he justly allows his taste to be less pure than that of Menander, has yet undertaken his defence against the outrageous censure of the ancient critic. In the first place, he condemns without mercy his ribaldry and obscenity. But this part, so worthy of contempt, and written only for the lower people, according to the remark of Boivin, bad as it is, after all is not the chief part which is left of Aristophanes. I will not say with Frischlinus, that Plutarch seems in this to contradict himself, and in reality commends the poet when he accuses him of having adapted his language to the stage; by the stage, in this place, he meant the theatre of Farces, on which low mirth and buffoonery were exhibited. plea of Frischlinus is a mere cavil; and though the poet had obtained his end, which was to divert a corrupted populace, he would not have been less a bad man, nor less a despicable poet, notwithstanding the excuse of his defender. To be able in the highest degree to divert fools and libertines, will not make a poet: it is not, therefore, by this defence that we must justify the character of Aristophanes. The depraved taste X. After such a character there seems no of the crowd, who once drove away Cratinus need of going further; and one would think that and his company, because the scenes had not low it would be better to bury for ever the memory buffoonery enough for their taste, will not justify of so hateful a writer, that makes us so poor a Aristophanes, since Menander found a way of recompense for the loss of Menander, who can-changing the taste by giving a sort of comedy, The justification of Aristophanes. not 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* 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, Brumoy has mistaken Lucretius for Virgil. This not indeed so modest as Plutarch represents it, but less licentious than before. Nor is Aristophanes better justified by the reason which he himself offers, when he says, that he exhibited debauchery upon the stage, not to corrupt the morals, but to mend them. The sight of gross faults is rather a poison than a remedy. The apologist has forgot one reason, which appears to me to be essential to a just account. As far as we can judge by appearance, Plutarch had in his hands all the plays of Aristophanes, which were at least fifty in number. In these he saw more licentiousness than has come to our hands, |