Cum Græcis, neque in hac despectus parte jaceres.
Unum hoc maceror, et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.”
From the prologue to the Phormio we learn that a clamour had also been raised by his contemporaries against Terence, because his dialogue was insipid, and wanted that comic heightening which the taste of the age required:—
“Quas fecit fabulas,
Tenui esse oratione et scriptura levi.”
The plays of Terence, it must be admitted, are not calculated to excite immoderate laughter, but his pleasantries are brightened by all the charms of chaste and happy expression—thus resembling in some measure the humour with which we are so much delighted in the page of Addison, and which pleases the more in proportion as it is studied and contemplated. There are some parts of the Eunuchus which I think cannot be considered as altogether deficient in the vis comica, as also Demea’s climax of disasters in the Adelphi, and a scene in the Andria, founded on the misconceptions of Mysis.
The beauties of style and language, I suppose, must be considered as but secondary excellences in the drama. Were they primary merits, Terence would deserve to be placed at the head of all comic poets who have written for the stage, on account of the consummate elegance and purity of his diction. It is a singular circumstance, and without example in the literary history of any other country, that the language should have received its highest perfection, in point of elegance and grace, combined with the most perfect simplicity, from the pen of a foreigner and a slave. But it so happened, that the countryman of Hannibal, and the freedman of Terentius Lucanus, gave to the Roman tongue all those beauties, in a degree which the courtiers of the Augustan age itself did not surpass. Nor can this excellence be altogether accounted for by his intimacy with Scipio and Lælius, in whose families the Latin language was spoken with hereditary purity, since it could only have been the merit of his dramas which first [pg 205]attracted their regard; and indeed, from an anecdote above related, of what occurred while reading his Andria to a dramatic censor, it is evident that this play must have been written ere he enjoyed the sunshine of patrician patronage. For this Ineffabilis amœnitas, as it is called by Heinsius, he was equally admired by his own contemporaries and by the writers in the golden period of Roman literature. He is called by Cæsar puri sermonis amator, and Cicero characterizes him as—
“Quicquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens.”
Even in the last age of Latin poetry, and when his pure simplicity was so different from the style affected by the writers of the day, he continued to be regarded as the model of correct composition. Ausonius, in his beautiful poem addressed to his grandson, hails him on account of his style, as the ornament of Latium—
“Tu quoque qui Latium lecto sermone, Terenti,