ve, +That he says the best
Things in the World, and yet very often he says the most wretched.+
A little before he says, +_Plautus_ is ingenious in his Designs,
happy in his Imaginations, fruitful in his Invention; yet, that
there are some insipid Jests that escape from him in the Taste of
_Horace_; and his good Sayings that make the People laugh, make
sometimes the honester sort to pity him.+ The most remarkable Thing
in his Stile, is the natural and unaffected +Easiness+ of it, I mean
in opposition to +Stiffness+, which with the true +Elegance+ and
+Propriety+ of the +Latin+ Tongue in +Common Discourse+, seems
almost its distinguishing Character, and sets him above any other
+Roman+ Author in that respect. 'Tis true, +Terence+ has all these
Excellencies, and perhaps is more exact in +Propriety of Terms+, and
in his Choice of +Words+, yet his extream Closeness and great
Elaborateness, I presume, has made it somewhat less +Free+ and
+Familiar+, or at least it wou'd be so if any other Man of less
Judgment had managed it. So that what I mean is, that +Plautus+'s
Stile ought rather to be imitated for +Common Discourse+ than
+Terence+'s. +Plautus+ had the Misfortune of living in a worser Age
than +Terence+, therefore there must be a larger Allowance for his
+Obsolete Words+, his +Puns+, and +Quibbles+, as well as those Words
that were peculiar to the Theatre and his Subjects, which, if once
transplanted, wou'd never thrive elsewhere.

Next, may be consider'd our Authors +Characters+; and in that point
indeed, +Terence+ triumphs without a Rival, as was observ'd in the
+Preface+ to that Author; and for a just and close Observance of
+Nature+, perhaps no Man living ever excell'd him. It ought to be
observ'd, that +Plautus+ was somewhat poor, and made it his
principal Aim to please and tickle the Common People; and since they
were almost always delighted with something new, strange, and
unusual, the better to humour them, he was not only frequently
extravagant in his +Expressions+, but likewise in his +Characters+
too, and drew Men often more Vicious, more Covetous, more Foolish,
&c. than generally they were; and this to set the People a gazing
and wondering. With these sort of +Characters+ many of our modern
+Comedies+ abound, which makes 'em too much degenerate into +Farce+,
which seldom fail of pleasing the Mob. But our Author had not many
of these; for a great part of 'em were very true and natural, and
such as may stand t