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The rest of the argument is told in soliloquy.

So much the worse.

Terence studies brevity: for in the Greek these things are acted, not related.

This is so curious a piece of information, communicated by Donatus, that I am surprised that no former editors or translators have taken notice of it. If it means, that in the Greek the circumstances of the catastrophe were thrown into action, Terence may indeed have studied brevity, but he has not much consulted the entertainment of his audience. That this is the meaning of this passage in Donatus, I think is plain. The conversation, of which Bacchis here speaks, must have taken place before the opening of the play; so that it can hardly be supposed to have been introduced as a scene in the original Greek: besides, the note of Donatus immediately preceding seems to confirm this interpretation, as well as what he says soon after, conclusit narrationem fabulæ, more suo: ne hæc in futuro actu expectaremus. “He has here concluded the story of the fable, after his usual manner: that we may not expect these things to come out in a future act.”

It is not sufficient, oh thou writer of Comedy, to have said in your plan, “I will introduce a young man but weakly attached to a courtezan; he shall quit her; shall marry, and be fond of his wife; the wife shall be amiable, and her husband promise himself a happy life with her: Moreover, he shall lie by her for two months without touching her, and yet she shall prove with child. I must have a good Step-Mother, and a Courtezan of sentiment. I cannot do without a rape; and I will suppose it to be committed in the street by a young man drunk.”—Very well: Courage! Go on; huddle strange circumstances one upon another; I consent to it. Your fable will be wonderful, to be sure. But do not forget, that you must redeem all this marvellous in your plot by a multitude of common incidents that atone for it, and give it the air of probability.

The above extract from Mons. Diderot's Essay on Dramatick Poetry is a very elegant compliment to the genius of our poet, and the art displayed in the play before us. The outline of the fable is undoubtedly beautiful; but on the whole, I cannot think that outline so well filled as might be expected from the master-hand of Terence. There are many circumstances happily contrived to create an agreeable perplexity, but in other parts of the piece there prevails an uncommon coldness and want of spirit. The same ingenious French Critick has a very fine passage in the Essay above mentioned. “Although,” says he, “the quickness of the movement varies according to the different species of the Drama, yet the action always proceeds. It does not stop even between the acts. 'Tis a mass loosened from the top of a rock: its velocity increases in proportion to its descent; and it bounds from place to place, according to the obstacles which it meets with in its way.”— According to this comparison, which is, I think, as just as it is beautiful, what shall we say to the first act of this Comedy? Instead of a mass falling from a rock, it seems an unwieldy mass, which can with difficulty be heaved from the ground: or, to change the allusion, the Poet treats his fable, as the Savoyards do a clock-work figure, which they are obliged to wind up, before they can set it in motion.—And then of what does the last act consist? All the materials, which should compose it, are exhausted in the interval supposed to pass between that act and the fourth, a fault, which dramatick writers, of inferior genius to Terence, are very apt to fall into. But surely there cannot be an error more fatal to the catastrophe of a piece; nor any fault more fatal to the piece than an inanimate catastrophe: “for if,” continues Mons. Diderot, “the above comparison is just; if it is true that there will be so much less of discourse as there is more of action, there ought to be more dialogue than incident in the former acts, and more incident than dialogue in the latter.”