University of Virginia Library

Non cogitas hinc longule esse? This passage, as well as the circumstances of the next scene, are a further confirmation of the scene's lying in the country.

Texentem telam studiose ipsam offendimus. This line of our author agrees almost literally with the following Greek one preserved by Le Clerc among the fragments of Menander.

Præterea una ancillula erat: ea texebat unà, pannis obsita, neglecta, immunda illuvie. This passage is equally close to the sense of the following, taken from the same book.

Le Clerc took these Greek lines from Victorius; and Victorius copied them from a book of Politian, who had written them in the margin, not (as it should seem) of his own composition, but from a fragment, which he had somewhere met with, of Menander.

Supposing the lines in question to be genuine, may we not fairly conclude that all this fine narration is a very close imitation of Menander, as well as that other beautiful one, which opens the first Act?

Terence's Comedy of the Self-Tormentor is written as if he hoped to please none but such as had as good a taste as himself. I could not but reflect upon the natural description of the innocent young woman made by the servant to his master. When I came to the house, &c.—He must be a very good actor, and draw attention rather from his own character than the words of the author, that could gain it among us for this speech, though so full of nature and good sense. Steele's Spectator, No. 502.

Here we enter upon the other part of the fable, which the poet has most artfully complicated with the main subject, by making Syrus bring Clitipho's mistress along with Antiphila. This part of the story, we know, was not in Menander.

In AUREM utramvis, otiosè ut dormias. Literally, on either EAR. A Latin proverb, used by Plautus as well as our author, and borrowed from the Greek. We have an instance of it among the fragments of the ΠΛΟΚΙΟΝ, or Necklace, of Menander. The subject of that comedy, if we may judge from the small, though precious remains of it, was much the same as that of the George Dandin of Moliere, the marriage of a poor man to a rich heiress. An extract or two, may perhaps not be disagreeable to the reader, and serve to relieve the dryness of the controversial notes to this comedy. The very first line contains the proverb.

There is another passage extant, containing part of a dialogue between the husband and an old neighbour, on the same subject; but, for the sake of variety, I shall subjoin an extract from the same comedy of a different colour.

What Menander has in the above passage considered metaphorically, our own Shakespeare has very finely realized:

A proverb to signify those, who are proud among those, who laugh at them.

Hæc arte tractabat virum, ut illius animum cupidum inopiâ accenderet. There is the same sentiment, and much of the same turn of expression in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well.

This sentiment is also finely touched upon by Ben Jonson in his Every Man in his Humour. The occasion on which it is employed by Shakespeare, is almost parallel to that in Terence, but in Ben Jonson's play it is applied to the education of youth.

I do not say that the above fine lines were struck out from this passage in Terence; but it is plain that the remainder of Knowell's speech, as the late ingenious editor of Jonson has justly observed, was borrowed from another part of our author's works, which shall be pointed out in the notes on the next comedy.

The character of Antiphila is here finely drawn, and represents innocence in perfection. There is nothing of constraint or emulation in her virtue, nor is she influenced by any consideration of the miseries likely to attend looseness or debauchery, but purely by a natural biass to virtue. Dacier.

Madam Dacier, contrary to the authority of all editions and MSS. adopts a conceit of her father's in this place, and places this speech to Clitipho, whom she supposes to have retired to a hiding-place, where he might over-hear the conversation, and from whence he peeps out to make this speech to Syrus. This she calls an agreeable jeu de theatre, and doubts not but all lovers of Terence will be obliged to her father for so ingenious a remark: but it is to be feared that critical sagacity will not be so lavish of acknowledgements as filial piety. There does not appear the least foundation for this remark in the scene, nor has the Poet given us the least room to doubt of Clitipho's being actually departed. To me, instead of an agreeable jeu de theatre, it appears a most absurd and ridiculous device; particularly vicious in this place, as it most injudiciously tends to interrupt the course of Clinia's more interesting passion, so admirably delineated in this little scene.