"To go no further than TERENCE. You find in the _Eunuch_, _ANTIPHO_ entering, single, in the midst of the Third Act, after _CHREMES_ and _PYTHIAS_ were gone off. In the same play, you have likewise _DORIAS_ beginning the Fourth Act alone; and after she has made a relation of what was done at the soldier's entertainment (which, by the way, was very inartificial to do; because she was presumed to speak directly to the Audience, and to acquaint them with what was necessary to be known: but yet should have been so contrived by the Poet as to have been told by persons of the Drama to one another, and so by them, to have come to the knowledge of the people), she quits the Stage: and _PHAEDRIA_ enters next, alone likewise. He also gives you an account of himself, and of his returning from the country, in monologue: to which unnatural way of Narration, TERENCE is subject in all his Plays. "In his _Adelphi_ or 'Brothers,' _SYRUS_ and _DEMEA_ enter after the Scene was broken by the departure of _SOSTRATA_, _GETA_, and _CANTHARA_; and, indeed, you can scarce look into any of his Comedies, where you will not presently discover the same interruption. "And as they have failed both in [the] laying of the Plots, and managing of them, swerving from the Rules of their own Art, by misrepresenting Nature to us, in which they have ill satisfied one intention of a Play, which was Delight: so in the Instructive part [pp. 513, 582-4], they have erred worse. Instead of punishing vice, and rewarding virtue; they have often shown a prosperous wickedness, and an unhappy piety. They have set 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.