comedies he produced during this long service of the public we do not know: twenty remain bearing his name, all which are considered to be genuine. All, with the exception probably of 'Amphitryon,' are taken from Greek originals. It is not necessary here to give a list of their titles; the most interesting of them will be noticed in their order. With Greek characters, Greek names, and Greek scenery, he gives us undoubtedly the Roman manners of his day, which are illustrated more fully in his pages than in those of the more refined Terence. Let the scene of the drama lie where it will, we are in the streets of Rome all the while. Athenians, Thebans, or Ephesians, his dramatis personæ are all of one country, just as they speak one language; they are no more real Greeks than Shakspeare's Othello is a Moor, or his Proteus a "gentleman of Verona"—except in the bill of the play. So little attempt does he make to keep up anything like an illusion on this point, that he even speaks of "triumvirs" at Thebes, builds a "Capitol" at Epidaurus, and makes his characters talk about "living like those Greeks," and "drinking like Greeks," utterly careless of the fact that they are supposed to be Greeks themselves. He is as independent of such historical and geographical trifles as our own great dramatist when he makes Hector quote Aristotle, or gives a sea-coast to Bohemia. But he has the justification which all great dramatists would fairly plead; that his characters, though distinctly national in colour, are in a wider sense citizens of the world; they speak, in whatever language, the sentiments of civilised mankind.
However coarse in many respects the matter and
