An English translator of Terence remarks, “That Steele has unfolded his plot with more art than his predecessor, but is greatly his inferior in delineation of character. Simo is the most finished character in the Latin piece, but Sir John Bevil, who corresponds to him, is quite insignificant. Young Bevil is the most laboured character in the _Conscious Lovers_, but he is inferior to Pamphilus. His deceit is better managed by Terence than Steele. Bevil’s supposed consent to marry is followed by no consequence; and his honest dissimulation, as he calls it, is less reconcilable to the philosophic turn of his character, than to the natural sensibility of Pamphilus. Besides, the conduct of the latter is palliated, by being driven to it by the artful instigations of Davus, who executes the lower part of the stratagems, whereas Bevil is left entirely to his own resources.” Bevil, indeed, in spite of his refinement and formality, his admiration of the moral writers, and, “the charming vision of Mirza consulted in a morning,” is a good deal of a _Plato-Scapin_. Indiana, who corresponds to Glycerium, is introduced with more effect than the ladies in the French plays imitated from Terence. Her tearing off her ornaments, however, in a fit of despair, at the conclusion, is too violent. It is inconsistent with the rest of her character; and we feel that she would not have done so, had not the author found that the bracelet was necessary for her recognition as the daughter of Sealand. The under plot is perhaps better managed in the English than in the Latin play. Myrtle sustains a part more essential to the principal fable than Charinus; and his character is better discriminated from that of Bevil than those of the two lovers in the _Andria_. The part of Cimberton, the other lover of Lucinda, favoured by Mrs Sealand, is of Steele’s own contrivance; and of course, also, the stratagem devised by Bevil, in which Myrtle and Tom pretend to be lawyers, and Myrtle afterwards personates Sir Geoffry Cimberton, the uncle of his rival. The _Andria_ has also suggested those scenes of Moore’s _Foundling_, which relate to the love of young Belmont, and the recognition of Fidelia as the daughter of Sir Charles Raymond. _Eunuchus_.—Though, in modern times, the _Andria_ has been the most admired play of Terence, in Rome the _Eunuchus_ was by much the most popular of all his performances, and he received for it 8000 sesterces, the greatest reward which poet had ever yet obtained(302). In the _Andria_, indeed, there is much grace and delicacy, and some tenderness; but the _Eunuchus_ is so full of vivacity and fire, as almost to redeem its author from the well-known censure of Cæsar, that there was no _vis comica_ in his dramas.