Diderot has objected strongly to the principal subject which gives name to this play, and to the character of the self-tormenting father. Tragedy, he says, represents individual characters, like those of Regulus, Orestes, and Cato; but the chief characters in comedy should represent a class or species, and if they only resemble individuals, the comic drama would revert to what it was in its infancy.—“Mais on peut dire,” continues he, “que ce pere là n’est pas dans la nature. Une grande ville fourniroit a peine dans un siecle l’example d’une affliction aussi bizarre.” It is observed in the _Spectator_(309), on the other hand, that though there is not in the whole drama one passage that could raise a laugh, it is from beginning to end the most perfect picture of human life that ever was exhibited. There has been a great contest, particularly among the French critics, whether the unities of time and place be preserved in _Heautontimorumenos_. In the year 1640, Menage had a conversational dispute, on this subject, with the Abbé D’Aubignac, with whom he at that period lived on terms of the most intimate friendship. The latter, who contended for the strictest interpretation of the unities, first put his arguments in writing, but without his name, in his “Discours sur la troisieme comedie de Terence; contre ceux qui pensent qu’elle n’est pas dans les regles anciennes du poeme dramatique.” Menage answered him in his “Reponse au discours,” &c.; and, in 1650, he published both in his _Miscellanea_, without leave of the author of the _Discours_. This, and some disrespectful expressions employed in the _Reponse_, gave mortal offence to the Abbé, who, in 1655, wrote a reply to the answer, entitled “Terence Justifié, &c. contre les Erreurs de Maistre Gilles Menage, Avocat en Parlement.” This designation of _Maistre_, proved intolerable to the feelings of Menage. Hearing that the tract was full of injurious expressions, he declared publicly and solemnly, that he never would read it; but being afterwards urged to peruse it by some good-natured friends, he consulted the casuists of the Sorbonne, and the College of Jesuits, on the point of conscience; and having at last read it with their approval, he wrote a full reply, which was not published till after the death of his opponent.