4. COMIC POETS.--Plautus (227-184 B.C.) was a contemporary of Ennius; he was a native of Umbria, and of humble origin. Education did not overcome his vulgarity, although it produced a great effect upon his language and style. He must have lived and associated with the people whose manners he describes, hence his pictures are correct and truthful. The class from which his representations are taken consisted of clients, the sons of freedmen and the half-enfranchised natives of Italian towns. He had no aristocratic friends, like Ennius and Terence; the Roman public were his patrons, and notwithstanding their faults, his comedies retained their popularity even in the Augustan age, and were acted as late as the reign of Diocletian. Life, bustle, surprise, unexpected situations, sharp, sparkling raillery that knew no restraint nor bound, left his audience no time for dullness or weariness. Although Greek was the fountain from which he drew his stores, his wit, thought, and language were entirely Roman, and his style was Latin of the purest and most elegant kind--not, indeed, controlled by much deference to the laws of metrical harmony, but full of pith and sprightliness, bearing the stamp of colloquial vivacity, and suitable to the general briskness of his scenes. Yet in the tone of his dialogue we miss all symptoms of deference to the taste of the more polished classes of society. Almost all his comedies were adopted from the new comedy of the Greeks, and though he had studied both the old and the middle comedy, Menander and others of the same school furnished him the originals of his plots. The popularity of Plautus was not confined to Rome, either republican or imperial. Dramatic writers of modern times, as Shakspeare, Dryden, and Molière, have recognized the effectiveness of his plots, and have adopted or imitated them. About twenty of his plays are extant, among which the Captivi, the Epidicus, the Cistellaria, the Aulularia, and the Rudens are considered the best. Terence (193-158 B.C.) was a slave in the family of a Roman senator, and was probably a native of Carthage. His genius presented the rare combination of all the fine and delicate qualities which characterized Attic sentiment, without corrupting the native purity of the Latin language. The elegance and gracefulness of his style show that the conversation of the accomplished society, in which he was a welcome guest, was not lost upon his correct ear and quick intuition. So far as it can be so, comedy was, in the hands of Terence, an instrument of moral teaching. Six of his comedies only remain, of which the Andrian and the Adelphi are the most interesting. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in life, bustle, and intrigue, and in the delineation of national character, he is superior in elegance of language and refinement of taste. The justness of his reflections more than compensates for the absence of his predecessor's humor; he touches the heart as well as gratifies the intellect.