Plays; which, if I would excuse, I could not shadow with some Authority
from the Ancients.

"And one farther note of them, let me leave you! Tragedies and Comedies
were not writ then, as they are now, promiscuously, by the same person:
but he who found his genius bending to the one, never attempted the other
way. This is so plain, that I need not instance to you, that ARISTOPHANES,
PLAUTUS, TERENCE never, any of them, writ a Tragedy; AESCHYLUS, EURIPIDES,
SOPHOCLES, and SENECA never meddled with Comedy. The Sock and Buskin were
not worn by the same Poet. Having then so much care to excel in one kind;
very little is to be pardoned them, if they miscarried in it.

"And this would lead me to the consideration of their Wit, had not CRITES
given me sufficient warning, not to be too bold in my judgement of it;
because (the languages being dead, and many of the customs and little
accidents on which it depended lost to us [p. 518]) we are not competent
judges of it. But though I grant that, here and there, we may miss the
application of a proverb or a custom; yet, a thing well said, will be Wit
in all languages: and, though it may lose something in the translation;
yet, to him who reads it in the original, 'tis still the same. He has an
Idea of its excellency; though it cannot pass from his mind into any
other expression or words than those in which he finds it.

"When _PHAEDRIA_, in the _Eunuch_, had a command from his mistress to be
absent two days; and encouraging himself to go through with it, said,
_Tandem ego non illa caream, si opus sit, vel totum triduum? PARMENO_ to
mock the softness of his master, lifting up his hands and eyes, cries
out, as it were in admiration, _Hui! universum triduum!_ The elegancy of
which _universum_, though it cannot be rendered in our language; yet
leaves an impression of the Wit on our souls.

"But this happens seldom in him [_i.e., TERENCE_]; in PLAUTUS oftner, who
is infinitely too bold in his metaphors and coining words; out of which,
many times, his Wit is nothing. Which, questionless, was one reason why
HORACE falls upon him so severely in those verses.

"_Sed Proavi nostri Plautinos el numeros et
Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque
Ne dicam stolide_.

"For HORACE himself was cautious to obtrude [_in obtruding_] a new word
upon his readers: and makes custom and common use, the best measure of
receiving it into our writings,

"_Multa renascentur quae nunc c