before us a bloody Image of Revenge, in _MEDEA_; and given her dragons to convey her safe from punishment. A _PRIAM_ and _ASTYANAX_ murdered, and _CASSANDRA_ ravished; and Lust and Murder ending in the victory of him that acted them. In short, there is no indecorum in any of our modern 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 cecidere, cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus Quem penes, arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi_.