Excerpt from The Lately Discovered Fragments of Menander: Edited With English Version, Revised d104, and Critical and Explanatory Notes

When some fifteen years ago the tombs of Egypt gave back to the world the long lost Polity of Athens, I pleased myself with the hope, though not venturing to look forward to that hope being accomplished, that the same abodes of the dead might one day give into our hands a comedy of Menander. This hope has now to a great extent been realized, for muti lated and imperfect as these fragments are, they are yet of such a nature as to give the highest pleasure to those capable of enjoying them, and we know now, what we had to take on trust before, that the critics of antiquity were not mistaken in their judgment of the man, who holds the same place among the authors of the New Comedy, as Aristophanes does among those of the Old. In vigour no doubt, as might be expected, considering the degenerate age in which he flourished, he falls Short of that mighty genius, and yet judging from the specimens before us, he shows himself well entitled to be inscribed on that roll of honour, in which the great name of Aristophanes appears along with those masters of the tragic art, Sophocles and Euripides. We are now in a position to realize how correctly the ablest man of a most accomplished generation estimated the difi'erence between our author and his imitator Terence, and to appreciate the excellence of his criticism, though the verses in which it is conveyed are execrable. Indeed, much as I admire Terence (i mean his three great plays, The Eunuch, The self-tormenter, and the Woman of Andros, which I name in the order of their merit), I feel as though I could no longer relish the copy, now that I know the original. The Bacchides of Plautus, which seems to be based on the Ais {fanaraw of Menander, is no doubt a play not to be despisedrbut though I acknowledge Plautus to be a. Great.

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