Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance--remains
conjectural. For us Terence shares with his master the praise of an
amenity that is like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious; like the
face of the Andrian's young sister:

'Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra.'

The celebrated 'flens quam familiariter,' of which the closest
rendering grounds hopelessly on harsh prose, to express the sorrowful
confidingness of a young girl who has lost her sister and dearest
friend, and has but her lover left to her; 'she turned and flung herself
on his bosom, weeping as though at home there': this our instinct
tells us must be Greek, though hardly finer in Greek. Certain lines of
Terence, compared with the original fragments, show that he embellished
them; but his taste was too exquisite for him to do other than devote
his genius to the honest translation of such pieces as the above.
Menander, then; with him, through the affinity of sympathy, Terence; and
Shakespeare and Moliere have this beautiful translucency of language:
and the study of the comic poets might be recommended, if for that only.

A singular ill fate befell the writings of Menander. What we have of him
in Terence was chosen probably to please the cultivated Romans; {8} and
is a romantic play with a comic intrigue, obtained in two instances, the
Andria and the Eunuchus, by rolling a couple of his originals into one.
The titles of certain of the lost plays indicate the comic illumining
character; a Self-pitier, a Self-chastiser, an Ill-tempered man, a
Superstitious, an Incredulous, etc., point to suggestive domestic
themes.

Terence forwarded manuscript translations from Greece, that suffered
shipwreck; he, who could have restored the treasure, died on the way
home. The zealots of Byzantium completed the work of destruction. So we
have the four comedies of Terence, numbering six of Menander, with a few
sketches of plots--one of them, the Thesaurus, introduces a miser, whom
we should have liked to contrast with Harpagon--and a multitude of small
fragments of a sententious cast, fitted for quotation. Enough remains to
make his greatness felt.

Without undervaluing other writers of Comedy, I think it may be said
that Menander and Moliere stand alone specially as comic poets of the
feelings and the idea. In each of them there is a conception of
the Comic that refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the
Heautontimorumenus, and in the Misanthrope. Menander