Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/209

Rh Our author was in the year 1712 inſtalled archdeacon of Stowe, and prebend of Lincoln. He publiſhed a tranſlation of Terence’s Comedies, tranſlated by himſelf and others; but all reviſed and corrected by him and Sir Roger L’Eſtrange: To which is prefixed the life of Terence. Beſides theſe, Mr. Eachard has tranſlated three Comedies from Plautus, viz.

With critical remarks upon each play. To which he has prefixed a judicious parallel between Terence and Plautus; and for a clearer deciſion of the point, that Terence was the more polite writer of Comedy, he produces the firſt act of Plautus’s Aulularia, and the firſt act of his Miles Glorioſus, againſt the third act of Terence’s Eunuch. It ought to be obſerved (ſays Mr. Eachard) ‘That Plautus was ſomewhat poor, and made it his principal aim to pleaſe, and tickle the common people; and ſince they were almoſt always delighted with ſomething new, ſtrange, and unuſual, the better to humour them, he was not only frequently extravagant in his expreſſions, but likewiſe in his characters too, and drew them often more vicious, more covetous, and more fooliſh than they really were, and this ſo ſet the people a gazing and wondering. With theſe ſort of characters many of our modern Comedies abound, which makes them too much degenerate into farce, which ſeldom fails of pleaſing the mob.’

Mr. Eachard has, in juſtice to Mr. Dryden, given us ſome inſtances of his improvement of ,