From the review which has now been given of the comedies of Plautus, something may have been gathered of their general scope and tenor. In each plot there is sufficient action, movement, and spirit. The incidents never flag, but rapidly accelerate the catastrophe. Yet, if we regard his plays in the mass, there is a considerable, and perhaps too great, uniformity in their fables. They hinge, for the most part, on the love of some dissolute youth for a courtezan, his employment of a slave to defraud a father of a sum sufficient to supply his expensive pleasures, and the final discovery that his mistress is a free-born citizen. The charge against Plautus of uniformity in his characters, as well as in his fables, has been echoed without much consideration. The portraits of Plautus, it must be remembered, were drawn or copied at a time when the division of labour and progress of refinement had not yet given existence to those various descriptions of professions and artists—the doctor, author, attorney—in short, all those characters, whose habits, singularities, and whims, have supplied the modern Thalia with such diversified materials, and whose contrasts give to each other such relief, that no caricature is required in any individual representation. The characters of Alcmena, Euclio, and Periplectomenes, are sufficiently novel, and are not repeated in any of the other dramas; but there is ample range and variety even in those which he has most frequently employed—the avaricious old man—the debauched young fellow—the knavish slave—the braggart captain—the rapacious courtezan—the obsequious parasite—and the shameless pander. On most of these parts some observations have been made, while mentioning the different comedies in which they are introduced. The severe father and thoughtless youth, are those in which he has best succeeded, or at least they are those with which we are best pleased. The captain always appears to us exaggerated, and the change which has taken place in society and manners prevents us, perhaps, from entering fully into the characters of the slave, the parasite, and pander; but in the fathers and sons, he has shown his knowledge of our common nature, and delineated them with the truest and liveliest touches. In the former, the struggles of avarice and severity, with paternal affection, are finely wrought up and blended. Even when otherwise respectable characters, they are always represented as disliking their wives, which was not inconsistent with the manners of a Grecian state, in which marriage was merely regarded as a duty; and was a feature naturally enough exhibited on the theatre of a nation, one of whose most illustrious characters declared in the Senate, as a received maxim, that Romans married, not for the sake of domestic happiness, but to rear up soldiers for the republic.