"the Gods provide for their own Mother'; I am
"not bound to maintain her." In another frag-
ment, quoted both by Clemens and Eufebius,
Menander breaks forth into a bolder rhapfody,
which breathes the spirit and nearly the very
words of the Hebrew prophets: a perfon (in
what drama does not appear) addreffes his com-
panion in the scene to this effect-
"If any
"man, O, Pamphilus, thinks that God will be
"well pleafed with the facrifice of multitudes
"of oxen or of goats, or of any other victims ;

or by robing his images in cloth of gold and
"purple, and decking them out with ivory and
"emeralds; that man deceives himself, and his
"imaginations are vain; let him rather study
"to conciliate God's favour by doing good to
"all men; let him abftain from violation and
"adultery; let him not commit theft or murder
"through the luft of money; nay covet not, O.
"Pamphilus, fo much even as the thread of
"another's needle, for God is ever present and
"his eye is upon thee." This will ferve in
the place of many more paffages, which might
be adduced, to prove that the comic poets of
this period were not only bold declaimers
against the vice and immorality of the age they
lived in, but that they ventured upon truths and
doctrines

doctrines in religion totally irreconcileable to the popular fuperftition and idolatries of the heathen world.

It was on the new comedy of the Greeks that the Roman writers in general founded their'sy and this they seem to have accomplished by the fervile vehicle of tranflation: It is faid that Terence alone translated all Menander's plays, and these by the loweft account amounted to eighty; fome authorities more than double them, an improbable number to have been composed by a poet, who died at the age of fifty, or very little after.

Quin et longa dies delebit fcripta Menandri,
Et quandoque levis carmina pulvis erunt.

(T. FABER.)

Menander was born at Athens, the fon of Diopethes and Hegefiftrata: He was educated in the school of Theophrastus the peripatetic, Ariftotle's fucceffor: At the early age of twenty he began to write for the ftage, and his paffions seem to have been no lefs forward and impetuous

than his genius; his attachment to the fair fex and especially to his miftrefs Glycera is upon record, and was vehement in the extreme; feve

ral of his epiftles to that celebrated courtesan, written in a very ardent ftile, were collected and made public after his decease: The celebrity of his muse, and the brilliancy of his wit were probably his chief recommendations to that lady's favour; for it should seem that nature had not been very partial to his external, befides which he fquinted moft egregiously, and was of a temper extremely irafcible: If we were to take his character as a writer from no other authorities but of the fragments, we fhould form a very different idea from that of Pliny, who fays he was omnis luxuriæ interpres, and this even Plutarch his avowed panegyrift is candid enough to admit; Ovid also fays→→→

The gay Menander charms each youthful heart, "And Love in every fable claims a part."

However this may be, the remains, which have come down to us, bear the stamp of an auftere and gloomy muse rather than of a wanton and voluptuous one; but these it must be owned prove little; Terence is fupposed to have copied all his comedies from Menander, except the Phormio and the Hecyra, and he gives us the best insight into the character of his elegant original.

All

All Greece feems to have joined in lamenting the premature loss of this celebrated poet, who unfortunately perished as he was bathing in the Piræan harbour, to which Ovid alludes in his Ibis

Comicus ut liquidis periit dum nabat in undis.

This happened in Olymp. CXXII; his first comedy, intitled Orge was performed in Olymp. CXV, which gives him fomething less than thirty years for the production of more than one hundred plays, and if we take the former account of his beginning to write for the stage at the age of twenty, it will agree with what we have before said refpecting the age at which he died.

Fatal as was the Piræan sea to the person of this lamented poet, pofterity has more cause to execrate that barbarous gulph, which has swallowed up his works; nor his alone, but thofe of above two hundred other eminent dramatic poets, whose labours are totally loft and extinguished. We have fome lines of Callimachus upon the death of Menander, who was one amongst many of his poetic furvivors, that paid the tribute of their ingenious forrow to his memory: Nor poets only, but princes bewailed his lofs, particularly Ptolemy the fon of Lagus, who loved and favoured

him very greatly, and maintained a friendly correfpondence with him till his death; fome of Menander's letters to this prince were publifhed with those addressed to his beloved Glycera.

Though many great authorities concur in placing Menander decidedly at the head of all the comic writers of his time, yet his contemporaries must have been of à different opinion, or elfe his rivals were more popular with their judges, for out of one hundred and five comedies, which Apollodorus afcribes to him, he tells us that he obtained only eight prizes, and that Philemon in particular triumphed over him in the fuffrages of the theatre very frequently. If thefe decifions were fo glaringly unjust and par tial as we are taught to believe they were, we have some sort of apology for the farcaftic queftion put to his fuccefsful competitor, when upon meeting him he said " Do you not blush, Phi"lemon, when you prevail over me?" This anecdote however at best only proves that Menander rated his own merits very highly, and that, if they were unjustly treated by those, who decided for Philemon, he laid the blame upon the wrong perfon, and betrayed a very irritable temper upon the occafion..

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