ashamed to use hard words about Diderot. He was so
modest about his work, so simple and unpretending, so wholly without
restless and fretting ambitions, and so generous in his judgment of
others. He made his own dramatic experiment, he thought little enough of
it; and he was wholly above the hateful vice of sourly disparaging
competitors, whether dead or living. He knew that he was himself no
master, but he was manly enough to admire anybody who was nearer to
mastery. He was full of unaffected delight at Sedaine's busy and
pleasing little comedy, _The Philosopher without knowing it_; it was so
simple without being stiff, so eloquent without the shadow of effort or
rhetoric. After seeing it, Diderot ran off to the author to embrace him,
with many tears of joyful sympathy and gratitude. Sedaine, like Lillo,
the author of Diderot's favourite play of _George Barn__well_, was a
plain tradesman, and the success of his libretti for comic operas had
not spoiled him. He could find no more expansive words for his excited
admirer than "_Ah, Monsieur Diderot, que vous etes beau_!"[268] Diderot
was just as sensible of the originality and Aristophanic gaiety of
Colle's brilliant play, _Truth in Wine_, though Colle detested the
philosophic school from Voltaire downwards, and left behind him a
bitterly contemptuous account of _The Natural Son_.[269]

Of all comic writers, however, the author of the _Andria_ and the
_Heautontimorumenos_ was Diderot's favourite. The half dozen pages upon
Terence, which he threw off while the printer's boy waited in the
passage (1762), are one of the most easy, flowing, and delightful of his
fragments; there is such appreciation of Terence's suavity and tact, of
his just and fine judgment, of his discrimination and character. He
admits that Terence had no verve; for that he commends the young poet to
Moliere or Aristophanes, but as verve was exactly the quality most
wanting to Diderot himself, he easily forgave its absence in Terence,
and thought it amply replaced by his moderation, his truth, and his fine
taste. Colman is praised for translating Terence, for here, says
Diderot, is the lesson of which Colman's countrymen stand most in need.
The English comic writers have more verve than taste. "Vanbrugh,
Wycherley, Congreve, and some others have painted vices and foibles
with vigour; it is not either invention or warmth or gaiety or force
that is wanting to their pencil, but rather that unity in the drawin