"These pieces must have been detestable, and the actors mere buffoons," exclaim the northern critics, whose imaginations have a coldness in them, like a frost in spring. But when the art of Extemporal Comedy flourished among these children of fancy, the universal pleasure these representations afforded to a whole vivacious people, and the recorded celebrity of their great actors, open a new field for the speculation of genius. It may seem more extraordinary that some of its votaries have maintained that it possessed some peculiar advantages over written compositions. When Goldoni reformed the Italian theatre by regular comedies, he found an invincible opposition from the enthusiasts of their old Comedy: for two centuries it had been the amusement of Italy, and was a species of comic entertainment which it had created. Inventive minds were fond of sketching out these outlines of pieces, and other men of genius delighted in their representation. The inspiration of national genius alone could produce this phenomenon; and these Extemporal Comedies were, indeed, indigenous to the soil. Italy, a land of _Improvisatori_, kept up from the time of their old masters, the Romans, the same fervid fancy. The ancient _Atellanæ Fabulæ_, or Atellane Farces, originated at Atella, a town in the neighbourhood of ancient Naples; and these, too, were extemporal Interludes, or, as Livy terms them, _Exodia_. We find in that historian a little interesting narrative of the theatrical history of the Romans; when the dramatic performances at Rome were becoming too sentimental and declamatory, banishing the playfulness and the mirth of Comedy, the Roman youth left these graver performances to the professed actors, and revived, perhaps in imitation of the licentious _Satyra_ of the Greeks, the ancient custom of versifying pleasantries, and throwing out jests and raillery among themselves for their own diversion.[47] These Atellan Farces were probably not so low in humour as they have been represented;[48] or at least the Roman youth, on their revival, exercised a chaster taste, for they are noticed by Cicero in a letter to his literary friend Papyrius Pætus. "But to turn from the serious to the jocose part of your letter--the strain of pleasantry you break into, immediately after having quoted the tragedy of Oenomaus, puts me in mind of the _modern method_ of introducing at the _end_ of these _graver dramatic pieces_ the _buffoon humour of our low Mimes_ instead of the _more delicate burlesque of the old Atellan Farces_."[49] This very curious passage distinctly marks out the two classes, which so many centuries after Cicero were revived in the _Pantomime_ of Italy, and in its _Extemporal Comedy_.[50]