D'un avare souvent tracé sur son modèle;
Et mille fois un fat, finement exprimé,
Méconnut le portrait sur lui-mème formé.
In this new glass, whilst each himself survey'd,
He sat with pleasure, though himself was play'd:
The miser grinn'd whilst avarice was drawn,
Nor thought the faithful likeness was his own;
His own dear self no imag'd fool could find,
But saw a thousand other fops design'd.[205]
This may properly be called fine comedy, and is that of Menander. Of one hundred and eighty, or rather eighty plays, according to Suidas, composed by him, all of which Terence is said to have translated, there remain only a few fragments. We may form a judgment of the merit of the originals from the excellence of the copy. Quintilian, in speaking of Menander, is not afraid to say,[206] that with the beauty of his works, and the height of his reputation, he obscured, or rather obliterated, the fame of all other writers in the same way. He observes in another passage,[207] that his own times were not so just to his merit as they ought to have been, which has been the fate of many others; but that he was sufficiently made amends by the favourable opinion of posterity. And indeed Philemon, a comic poet, who flourished about the same period, though older than Menander, was preferred before him.