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Originality cannot be affirmed of either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed by the circumstance that, while the younger poet reproduced the agreeableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander, such as the -Stichus-, the -Cistellaria-, the -Bacchides-, probably preserve far more of the flowing charm of the original than the comedies of the "-dimidiatus Menander-." And, while the aesthetic critic cannot recognize an improvement in the transition from the coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating morality of Terence.

Originality cannot be affirmed of either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed by the circumstance that, while the younger poet reproduced the agreeableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander, such as the -Stichus-, the -Cistellaria-, the -Bacchides-, probably preserve far more of the flowing charm of the original than the comedies of the "-dimidiatus Menander-." And, while the aesthetic critic cannot recognize an improvement in the transition from the coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating morality of Terence.