s a charm
unknown before, and obtained for them the suffrage of the most
enlightened, witty, and judicious men of his age, though for the same
reason they were, as Hamlet says, caviere to the multitude, and never
did please the corrupted and malicious multitude of Athens. With a wit
as brilliant and acute as that of Aristophanes, and perhaps as capable
of vitious coarseness and ribaldry, he kept it in correction, and
scorned to disgrace his compositions with illiberal personal aspersions,
or indecent, obscene, or satirical reflections; but endeavoured to make
his comedies pictures of real life, replete with refined useful
instruction, and sagacious observation, conveyed through the medium of
natural elegant dialogue. His writings, though they did not draw the
regards of the million with such irresistible and congenial attraction
as those of Aristophanes, had the power in some measure to rescue comedy
from the unbridled licentiousness and profligacy which, for fifty years
before, had rendered it a public nuisance. The multitude, however, he
could not, during his lifetime reclaim; for a miserable cotemporary of
his, named Philemon, a coarse writer of broad farce, who afterwards died
of a fit of laughter at seeing a jackass eat figs, continued by
intrigues and his natural influence with the mob, to carry away some
prizes from him; though he was so mean and contemptible a poet that his
very name would have been forgotten, and long since sunk in eternal
oblivion, if it had not been buoyed up by the simple fact of his
entering the lists against Menander.

The honours which his corrupted countrymen denied him were conferred
upon Menander by strangers; for we are informed by Pliny that the king
of Egypt, and the king of Macedon, as a proof of their respect, and
admiration of his rare qualities, sent ambassadors to invite him to
their courts; and, not contented with that compliment, sent fleets to
convey him: such was the fame accompanied with which his unexampled
endowments, spread his name over the remotest nations of the east.
Whether it was from local attachment to his native land, or from sound
philosophical wisdom and disregard of such temptations, he declined
those honours, cannot now be known, though the fact is beyond doubt that
he never would leave Attica. It is, however, an honourable testimony of
the perfect indifference with which he bore the stupid and unjust
preference given by the Athenians to his contemptible ri