Vient d’un fils amoureux gourmander l’imprudence;
De quel air cet amant ecoute ses leçons,
Et court chez sa maitresse oublier ces chansons:
Ce n’est pas un portrait, un image semblable;
C’est un amant, un fils, un pere veritable(322).”
The characters, too, of Terence are never overstrained by ridicule, which,
if too much affected, produces creatures of the fancy, which for a while
may be more diverting than portraits drawn from nature, but can never be
so permanently pleasing. This constitutes the great difference between
Plautus and Terence, as also between the new and old comedy of the Greeks.
The old comedy presented scenes of uninterrupted gaiety and raillery and
ridicule, and nothing was spared which could become the object of sarcasm.
The dramatic school which succeeded it attracted applause by beauty of
situation and moral sentiment. In like manner, Terence makes us almost
serious by the interest and affection which he excites for his characters.
In the _Andria_ we are touched with all Pamphilus’ concern, we feel all
his reflections to be just, and pity his perplexity. The characters of
Terence, indeed, are of the same description with those of Plautus; but
his slaves and parasites and captains are not so farcical, nor his panders
and courtezans so coarse, as those of his predecessor. The slave-dealers
in the _Adelphi_ and _Phormio_ are rather merchants greedy of gain than
shameless agents of vice, and are not very different from Madame La
Ressource, in Regnard’s elegant comedy, _Le Joueur_. His courtezans,
instead of being invariably wicked and rapacious, are often represented as
good and beneficent. It was a courtezan who received the dying mother of
the Andrian, and, while expiring herself, affectionately intrusted the
orphan to the generous protection of Pamphilus. It is a courtezan who, in
the _Eunuchus_, discovers the family of the young Pamphila, and, in the
_Hecyra_, brings about the understanding essential to the happiness of
all. From their mode of life, and not interposing much beyond their
domestic circle, the manners of modest women were not generally painted
with any great taste by the ancients; but Terence may perhaps be
considered as an exception. Nausistrata is an excellent picture of a
matron not of the highest rank or dignity, as is also Sostrata in the
_Hecyra_.
The style of wit and humour must of course correspond with that of the
characters and manners. Accordingly, the plays of Terence are not much
calculated to excite ludicrous emotions, and have been regarded as
deficient in comic force. His muse is of the most perfect and elegant
proportions, but she fails in animation, and spirit. It was for this want
of the _vis comica_ that Terence was upbraided by Julius Cæsar, in lines
which, in other respects, bear a just tribute of applause to this elegant
dramatist:—
“Tu quoque tu in summis, O dimidiate Menander,
Poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator:
Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret vis
Comica, ut æquato virtus polleret honore
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 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,
Comis, et adstricto percurris pulpita socco,
Ad nova vix memorem diverbia coge senectam(323).”
Among all the Latin writers, indeed, from Ennius to Ausonius, we meet with
nothing so simple, so full of grace and delicacy—in fine, nothing that can
be compared to the comedies of Terence for elegance of dialogue—presenting
a constant flow of easy, genteel, unaffected discourse, which never
subsides into vulgarity or grossness, and never rises higher than the
ordinary level of polite conversation. Of this, indeed, he was so careful,
that when he employed any sentence which he had found in the tragic poets,
he stripped it of that air of grandeur and majesty, which rendered it
unsuitable for common life, and comedy. In reading the dialogue of Simo in
the _Andria_, and of Micio in the _Adelphi_, we almost think we are
listening to the conversation of Scipio Africanus, and the _mitis
sapientia Læli_. The narratives, in particular, possess a beautiful and
picturesque simplicity. Cicero, in his treatise _De Oratore_, has bestowed
prodigious applause on that with which the _Andria_ commences. “The
picture,” he observes, “of the manners of Pamphilus—the death and funeral
of Chrysis—and the grief of her supposed sister, are all represented in
the most delightful colours.”—Diderot, speaking of the style of Terence,
says, “C’est une onde pure et transparente, qui coule toujours egalement,
et qui ne prend de vitesse, que ce qu’elle en reçoit de la pente et du
terrein. Point d’esprit, nul etalage de sentiment, aucune sentence qui ait
l’air epigrammatique, jamais de ces definitions qui ne seroient placées
que dans Nicole ou la Rochefoucauld.”
As to what may be strictly called the poetical style of Terence, it has
been generally allowed that he has used very great liberties in his
versification(324). Politian divided his plays (which in the MSS. resemble
prose) into lines, but a separation was afterwards more correctly made by
Erasmus. Priscian says, that Terence used more licenses than any other
writer. Bentley, after Priscian, admitted every variety of Iambic and
Trochaic measure; and such was the apparent number of irregular
quantities, and mixture of different species of verse, that Westerhovius
declares, that in order to reduce the lines to their original accuracy, it
would be necessary to evoke Lælius and Scipio from the shades. Mr Hawkins,
in his late Inquiry into the Nature of Greek and Latin poetry, has
attempted to show that the whole doctrine of poetical licenses is contrary
to reason and common sense; that no such deviation from the laws of
prosody could ever have been introduced by Terence; and that where his
verses apparently require licenses, they are either corrupt and
ill-regulated, or may be reduced to the proper standard, on the system of
admitting that all equivalent feet may come in room of the fundamental
feet or measures. On these principles, by changing the situation of the
quantities, by allowing that one long syllable may stand for two short, or
_vice versa_, there will not be occasion for a single poetical license,
which is in fact nothing less than a breach of the rules of prosody.
After having considered the plays of Plautus and of Terence, one is
naturally led to institute a comparison between these two celebrated
dramatists. People, in general, are very apt to judge of the talents of
poets by the absolute merits of their works, without at all taking into
view the relative circumstances of their age and situation, or the
progress of improvement during the period in which they lived. No one
recollects that Tasso’s _Rinaldo_ was composed in ten months, and at the
age of seventeen; and, in like manner, we are apt to forget the difference
between writing comedies while labouring at a mill, and basking in the
Alban villa of Scipio or Lælius. The improvement, too, of the times,
brought the works of Terence to perfection and maturity, as much as his
own genius. It is evident, that he was chiefly desirous to recommend
himself to the approbation of a select few, who were possessed of true wit
and judgment, and the dread of whose censure ever kept him within the
bounds of correct taste; while the sole object of Plautus, on the other
hand, was to excite the merriment of an audience of little refinement. If,
then, we merely consider the intrinsic merit of their productions, without
reference to the circumstances or situation of the authors, still Plautus
will be accounted superior in that vivacity of action, and variety of
incident, which raise curiosity, and hurry on the mind to the conclusion.
We delight, on the contrary, to linger on every scene, almost on every
sentence, of Terence. Sometimes there are chasms in Plautus’s fables, and
the incidents do not properly adhere—in Terence, all the links of the
action depend on each other. Plautus has more variety in his exhibition of
characters and manners, but his pictures are often overcharged, while
those of Terence are never more highly coloured than becomes the modesty
of nature. Plautus’s sentences have a peculiar smartness, which conveys
the thought with clearness, and strikes the imagination strongly, so that
the mind is excited to attention, and retains the idea with pleasure; but
they are often forced and affected, and of a description little used in
the commerce of the world; whereas every word in Terence has direct
relation to the business of life, and the feelings of mankind. The
language of Plautus is more rich and luxuriant than that of Terence, but
is far from being so equal, uniform, and chaste. It is often stained with
vulgarity, and sometimes swells beyond the limits of comic dialogue, while
that of Terence is _puro simillimus amni_. The verses of Plautus are, as
he himself calls them, _numeri innumeri_; and Hermann declares, that, at
least as now printed, _omni vitiorum genere abundant_(325). Terence
attends more to elegance and delicacy in the expression of passion—Plautus
to comic expression. In fact, the great object of Plautus seems to have
been to excite laughter among the audience, and in this object he
completely succeeded; but for its attainment he has sacrificed many graces
and beauties of the drama. There are two sorts of humour—one consisting in
words and action, the other in matter. Now, Terence abounds chiefly in the
last species, Plautus in the first; and the pleasantries of the older
dramatist, which were so often flat, low, or extravagant, finally drew
down the censure of Horace, while his successor was extolled by that
poetical critic as the most consummate master of dramatic art. “In short,”
says Crusius, “Plautus is more gay, Terence more chaste—the first has more
genius and fire, the latter more manners and solidity. Plautus excels in
low comedy and ridicule, Terence in drawing just characters, and
maintaining them to the last. The plots of both are artful, but Terence’s
are more apt to languish, whilst Plautus’s spirit maintains the action
with vigour. His invention was greatest; Terence’s, art and management.
Plautus gives the stronger, Terence a more elegant delight. Plautus
appears the better comedian of the two, as Terence the finer poet. The
former has more compass and variety, the latter more regularity and truth,
in his characters. Plautus shone most on the stage; Terence pleases best
in the closet. Men of refined taste would prefer Terence; Plautus diverted
both patrician and plebeian(326).”
Some intimations of particular plays, both of Plautus and Terence, have
already been pointed out; but independently of more obvious plagiarisms,
these dramatists were the models of all comic writers in the different
nations of Europe, at the first revival of the drama. Their works were the
prototypes of the regular Italian comedy, as it appeared in the plays of
Ariosto, Aretine, Ludovico Dolce, and Battista Porta. In these, the
captain and parasite are almost constantly introduced, with addition of
the _pedante_, who is usually the pedagogue of the young _innamorato_.
Such erudite plays were the only printed dramas (though the _Commedie
dell’ Arte_ were acted for the amusement of the vulgar,) till the
beginning of the 17th century, when Flaminio Scala first _published_ his
_Commedie dell’ Arte_. The old Latin plays were also the models of the
earliest dramas in Spain, previous to the introduction of the comedy of
intrigue, which was invented by Lopez de Rueda, and perfected by Calderon.
We find the first traces of the Spanish drama in a close imitation of the
_Amphitryon_, in 1515, by Villalobos, the physician of Charles V., which
was immediately succeeded by a version of Terence, by Pedro de Abril, and
translations of the Portuguese comedies of Vasconcellos(327), which were
themselves written in the manner of Plautus. There is likewise a good deal
of the spirit of Plautus and Terence in the old English comedy,
particularly in the characters. A panegyrist on Randolph’s _Jealous
Lovers_, which was published in 1632, says, “that it should be conserved
in some great library, that if through chance or injury of time, Plautus
and Terence should be lost, their united merit might be recognized. For,
in this play, thou hast drawn the pander, the gull, the jealous lover, the
doating father, the shark, and the crust wife.”
The consideration of the servile manner in which the dramatists, as well
as novelists, of one country, have copied from their predecessors in
another, may be adduced in some degree as a proof of the old philosophical
aphorism, _Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu_; and
also of the incapacity of the most active and fertile imagination, greatly
to diversify the common characters and incidents of life. One would
suppose, previous to examination, that the varieties, both of character
and situation, would be boundless; but on review, we find a Plautus
copying from the Greek comic writers, and, in turn, even an Ariosto
scarcely diverging from the track of Plautus. When we see the same
characters only in new dresses, performing the same actions, and repeating
the same jests, we are tempted to exclaim, that everything is weary,
stale, flat, and unprofitable, and are taught a lesson of melancholy, even
from the Mask of Mirth.
While Plautus, Cæcilius, Afranius, and Terence, raised the comic drama to
high perfection and celebrity, Pacuvius and Attius attempted, with
considerable success, the noblest subjects of the Greek tragedies.
PACUVIUS,
who was the nephew of Ennius(328), by a sister of that poet, was born at
Brundusium, in the year 534. At Rome he became intimately acquainted with
Lælius, who, in Cicero’s treatise _De Amicitiâ_, calls Pacuvius his host
and friend: He also enjoyed, like Terence, the intimacy of Scipio
Africanus; but he did not profit so much as the comic writer by his
acquaintance with these illustrious Romans for the improvement of his
style. There is an idle story, that Pacuvius had three wives, all of whom
successively hanged themselves on the same tree; and that lamenting this
to Attius, who was married, he begged for a slip of it to plant in his own
garden(329); an anecdote which has been very seriously confuted by Annibal
di Leo, in his learned Memoir on Pacuvius. This poet also employed himself
in painting: he was one of the first of the Romans who attained any degree
of eminence in that elegant art, and particularly distinguished himself by
the picture which he executed for the temple of Hercules, in the _Forum
Boarium_(330). He published his last piece at the age of eighty(331);
after which, being oppressed with old age, and afflicted with perpetual
bodily illness, he retired, for the enjoyment of its soft air and mild
winters, to Tarentum(332), where he died, having nearly completed his
ninetieth year(333). An elegant epitaph, supposed to have been written by
himself, is quoted, with much commendation, by Aulus Gellius, who calls it
_verecundissimum et purissimum_(334). It appears to have been inscribed on
a tombstone which stood by the side of a public road, according to a
custom of the Romans, who placed their monuments near highways, that the
spot where their remains were deposited might attract observation, and the
departed spirit receive the valediction of passing travellers:
“Adolescens, tametsi properas, hoc te saxum rogat,
Uti ad se aspicias; deinde, quod scriptum est, legas.
Hic sunt poetæ Marcei Pacuviei sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses—Vale(335).”
Though a few fragments of the tragedies of Pacuvius remain, our opinion of
his dramatic merits can be formed only at second hand, from the
observations of those critics who wrote while his works were yet extant.
Cicero, though he blames his style, and characterizes him as a poet _male
loquutus_(336), places him on the same level for tragedy as Ennius for
epic poetry, or Cæcilius for comedy; and he mentions, in his treatise _De
Oratore_, that his verses were by many considered as highly laboured and
adorned.—“Omnes apud hunc ornati elaboratique sunt versus.” It was in this
laboured polish of versification, and skill in the dramatic conduct of the
scene, that the excellence of Pacuvius chiefly consisted; for so the lines
of Horace have been usually interpreted, where, speaking of the public
opinion entertained concerning the different dramatic writers of Rome, he
says,—
“Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior: aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Attius alti.”
And the same meaning must be affixed to the passage in Quintilian,—“Virium
tamen Attio plus tribuitur; Pacuvium videri doctiorem, qui esse docti
adfectant, volunt(337).” Most other Latin critics, though on the whole
they seem to prefer Attius, allow Pacuvius to be the more correct writer.
The names are still preserved of about 20 tragedies of
Pacuvius—_Anchises_, _Antiope_, _Armorum Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Chryses_,
_Dulorestes_, _Hermione_, _Iliona_, _Medus_, _Medea_, _Niptra_, _Orestes
et Pylades_, _Paulus_, _Peribœa_, _Tantalus_, _Teucer_, _Thyestes_. Of
these the _Antiope_ was one of the most distinguished. It was regarded by
Cicero as a great national tragedy, and an honour to the Roman name.—“Quis
enim,” says he, “tam inimicus pene nomini Romano est, qui Ennii Medeam,
aut Antiopam Pacuvii, spernat, aut rejiciat?” Persius, however, ridicules
a passage in this tragedy, where Antiope talks of propping her melancholy
heart with misfortunes, by which she means, (I suppose,) that she
fortunately had so many griefs all around her heart, that it was well
bolstered up, and would not break or bend so easily as it must have done,
had it been supported by fewer distresses—
“Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiope, ærumnis cor luctificabile fulta.”
The _Armorum Judicium_ was translated from Æschylus. With regard to the
_Dulorestes_, (Orestes Servus,) there has been a good deal of discussion
and difficulty. Nævius, Ennius, and Attius, are all said to have written
tragedies which bore the title of _Dulorestes_; but a late German writer
has attempted, at great length, to show that this is a misconception; and
that all the fragments, which have been classed with the remains of these
three dramatic poets, belong to the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius, who was in
truth the only Latin poet who wrote a tragedy with this appellation. What
the tenor or subject of the play, however, may have been, he admits is
difficult to determine, as the different passages, still extant, refer to
very different periods of the life of Orestes; which, I think, is rather
adverse to his idea, that all these fragments were written by the same
person, and belonged to the same tragedy, unless, indeed, Pacuvius had
utterly set at defiance the observance of the celebrated unities of the
ancient drama. On the whole, however, he agrees with Thomas Stanley, in
his remarks on the _Chœphoræ_ of Æschylus, that the subject of the
_Chœphoræ_, which is the vengeance taken by Orestes on the murderers of
his father, is also that of the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius(338). Some of the
fragments refer to this as an object not yet accomplished:—
“Utinam nunc maturescam ingenio, ut meum patrem
Ulcisci queam.” ——
The _Hermione_ turned on the murder of Pyrrhus by Orestes at the
instigation of Hermione. Cicero, in his Treatise _De Amicitia_, mentions,
in the person of Lælius, the repeated acclamations which had recently
echoed through the theatre at the representation of the _new play_ of his
friend Pacuvius, in that scene where Pylades and Orestes are introduced
before the king, who, being ignorant which of them is Orestes, whom he had
predetermined should be put to death, each insists, in order to save the
life of his friend, that he himself is the real person in question. Delrio
alleges that the _new play_ here alluded to by Cicero was the _Hermione_;
but that play, as well as the _Dulorestes_, related to much earlier events
than the friendly contest between Pylades and Orestes, which took place at
the court of Thoas, King of Tauris, and was the concluding scene in the
dramatic life of Orestes, being long subsequent to the murder of his
mother, his trial in presence of the Argives, or absolution at Athens
before the Areopagus. Accordingly, Tiraboschi states positively that this
_new play_ of Pacuvius, which obtained so much applause, was his _Pylades
et Orestes_(339).
In the _Iliona_, the scene where the shade of Polydorus, who had been
assassinated by the King of Thrace, appears to his sister Iliona, was long
the favourite of a Roman audience, who seem to have indulged in the same
partiality for such spectacles as we still entertain for the goblins in
_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_.