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To speak in sum and in general, he prefers Menander by far; and as to particulars, he adds what here
ensues. Aristophanes, he saith, is importune, theatric, and
sordid in his expression; but Menander not so at all. For
the rude and vulgar person is taken with the things the
former speaketh; but the well-bred man will be quite out
of humor with them. I mean, his opposed terms, his
words of one cadence, and his derivatives. For the one
makes use of these with due observance and but seldom,
and bestows care upon them; but the other frequently,
unseasonably, and frigidly. ‘For he is much commended,’
said he, ‘for ducking the chamberlains, they being indeed
not chamberlains (ταμίαι) but bugbears (Λαμίαι).’ And
again,—‘This rascal breathes out nothing but roguery and
affidavitry;’ and ‘Beat him well in his belly with the entrails and the guts;’ and, ‘I shall laugh till I go to Laughington (Γέλαν);’ and, ‘Thou poor sharded ostracized pot,
what shall I do with thee?’ and, ‘To you women surely he
is a mad plague, for he grew up himself among these mad
worts;’—and, ‘Look here, how the moths have eaten
away my crest;’ and, ‘Bring me hither the gorgon-backed
circle of my shield;’
‘Give me the round-backed circle
of a cheese-cake;’—and much more of such like stuff.1
There is then in the structure of his words something
[p. 12]
tragic and something comic, something blustering and
something prosaic, an obscurity, a vulgarness, a turgidness, and a strutting, with a nauseous prattling and fooling
And as his style has so great varieties and dissonances in
it, so neither doth he give to his persons what is fitting and
proper to each,—as state (for instance) to a prince, force
to an orator, innocence to a woman, meanness of language
to a poor man, and sauciness to a tradesman,—but he
deals out to every person, as it were by lot, such words as
come next to his hand, and you would scarce discern
whether he that is talking be a son, a father, a peasant, a
God, an old woman, or a hero.
1 See Aristoph. Knights, 437, 455; Thesm. 455; Acharn. 1109, 1124.
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