This is a very subtle contrivance. Davus intends that the birth of Pamphilus’s child shall be reported to Chremes to alarm him, (as we see Act V. Scene I. page 82,) and, therefore, that Simo may not suspect him, he persuades him that Glycera is contriving to spread reports of Pamphilus’s engagements to her. M. Baron has entirely omitted the incident of the birth of the child. He introduces Sosia again to fill up the chasm. In a scene between Simo, Davus, and Chremes, the latter is induced to renew his consent to the marriage, by overhearing a conversation between Simo and Davus; in which, as in the original, the slave invents a tale that Pamphilus and Glycera are at variance.
Sir R. Steele varies the third act altogether; he makes it turn wholly on the underplot, of which the chief personages are Lucinda, and her two lovers Myrtle and Cimberton: the latter is a pedantic coxcomb, and added to the original characters by the English poet.
And to provide a child at the same time, thinking that unless you should see a child, the marriage would not be impeded.
——“Et puerum ut adferret simul;
Hoc nisi fit puerum ut tu videas, nil moventur nuptiæ.”
Moventur, in this passage, does not mean to move forward: but signifies to move back with disturbance, to hinder, or to disorder, and is used instead of perturbantur. Moveo is very unfrequently though sometimes employed in this sense. I shall cite one passage from Horace, where it has the same meaning as in the before-mentioned line from Terence.
——“Censorque moveret
Appius, ingenuo si non essem patre natus.”
He to whom I owe my birth was free,