us, such as the following:--

"Love is a fawning flatterer. For he that is in love, soon as ever he
has been smitten with the kisses of the object he loves, forthwith his
substance vanishes out of doors, and melts away. 'Give me this, my
honey, if you love me.' And then Gudgeon says, 'Oh apple of my eye, both
that and still more, if you wish.' He who plunges into love perishes
more dreadfully than if he leapt from a rock. Away with you, Love, if
you please."

He is fully alive to the power of this destructive passion. In one place
Philolaches half mad with love and jealousy sees his mistress looking
into a mirror. "Ah, wretched me," he exclaims passionately, "she gave
the mirror a kiss. I wish I had a stone to break the head of that
mirror."[20]

The love of money has always been a stock subject with humorists. This
common weakness of human nature can be played upon even by those who can
produce no other wit, and many worse jokes have been made on it than the
following,--

Calidorus asks his servant, Pseudolus, to lend him a drachma.

_P._ What for?

_C._ To buy a rope to hang myself.

_P._ Who then will pay me back? Do you wish to hang yourself to
cheat me out of my drachma?

The "Concealed Treasure" turns on an old man having found a pot of gold.
He conceals it, and his nervousness lest some one should discover it is
brought out with excellent humour. He drives the cooks out of the place
with his stick. He has a battle-royal with a dunghill cock, who, he
imagines is trying to scratch for it, then thinks Strobilus has stolen
it, and calls on him to show one hand, and the other, and then the
third.

We are the more inclined to lament the utter destruction of ancient
African literature on finding that the most refined Roman dramas were
placed upon the stage by a Carthaginian, when Plautus, whose enterprize
and perseverance had given the great impetus to Latin comedy, was
approaching the end of his long life. Terence was born the last, and as
some think the greatest master in this branch of Art. He was at one time
a slave, but his literary talent was so remarkable that his master set
him free, and he became the friend of distinguished men, especially of
Scipio the younger. It must seem strange that this brilliancy should
have flashed up for a moment, and then been for ever quenched, but it
was derived from Greece and not in its nature enduring. The genius of
Menander fed the flame of Terenc