Moliere have this beautiful translucency of language: and the study of
the comic poets might be recommended, if for that only.

A singular ill fate befell the writings of Menander. What we have of him
in Terence was chosen probably to please the cultivated Romans; {8} and
is a romantic play with a comic intrigue, obtained in two instances, the
Andria and the Eunuchus, by rolling a couple of his originals into one.
The titles of certain of the lost plays indicate the comic illumining
character; a Self-pitier, a Self-chastiser, an Ill-tempered man, a
Superstitious, an Incredulous, etc., point to suggestive domestic themes.

Terence forwarded manuscript translations from Greece, that suffered
shipwreck; he, who could have restored the treasure, died on the way
home. The zealots of Byzantium completed the work of destruction. So we
have the four comedies of Terence, numbering six of Menander, with a few
sketches of plots--one of them, the Thesaurus, introduces a miser, whom
we should have liked to contrast with Harpagon--and a multitude of small
fragments of a sententious cast, fitted for quotation. Enough remains to
make his greatness felt.

Without undervaluing other writers of Comedy, I think it may be said that
Menander and Moliere stand alone specially as comic poets of the feelings
and the idea. In each of them there is a conception of the Comic that
refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the Heautontimorumenus, and
in the Misanthrope. Menander and Moliere have given the principal types
to Comedy hitherto. The Micio and Demea of the Adelphi, with their
opposing views of the proper management of youth, are still alive; the
Sganarelles and Arnolphes of the Ecole des Maris and the Ecole des
Femmes, are not all buried. Tartuffe is the father of the hypocrites;
Orgon of the dupes; Thraso, of the braggadocios; Alceste of the 'Manlys';