So much for the plot of the _Adelphi_, and the incidents by which the conclusion is brought about. With regard to the characters of the piece, Æschinus is an excellent delineation of the elegant ease and indifference of a fine gentleman. In one scene, however, he is represented as a lover, full of tenderness, and keenly alive to all the anxieties, fears, and emotions of the passion by which he is affected. In the parts of Demea and Micio, the author has violated the precept of Horace with regard to a dramatic character: —— “Servetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.” During four acts, however, the churlishness of Demea is well contrasted with the mildness of Micio, whose fondness and partiality for his adopted son are extremely pleasing. “One great theatrical resource,” says Gibbon, “is the opposition and contrast of characters which thus display each other. The severity of Demea, and easiness of Micio, throw mutual light; and we could not be so well acquainted with the misanthropy of Alceste, were it not for the fashionable complaisant character of Philinte(311).” Accordingly, in the modern drama, we often find, that if one of the lovers be a gay companion, the other is grave and serious; like Frankly and Bellamy, in the _Suspicious Husband_, or Absolute and Faulkland in the _Rivals_. Yet in the _Adelphi_, the contrast, perhaps, is too direct, and too constantly obtruded on the attention of the audience. It has the appearance of what is called antithesis in writing, and, in the conduct of the drama, has the same effect as that figure in composition. Diderot, in his _Essay on Dramatic Poetry_, also objects to these two contrasted characters, that, being drawn with equal force, the moral intention of the drama is rendered equivocal; and that we have something of the same feeling which every one has experienced while reading the _Misanthrope_ of Moliere, in which we can never tell whether Alceste or Philinte is most in the right, or, more properly speaking, farthest in the wrong.—“On diroit,” continues he, “au commencement du cinquieme acte des _Adelphes_, que l’auteur, embarassé du contraste qu’il avoit etabli, a été contraint d’abandonner son but et de renverser l’interet de sa piece. Mais qu’est il arrivé: c’est qu’on ne scait plus a qui s’interesser; et qu’apres avoit eté pour Micion contre Demea, on finit sans savoir pour qui l’on est. On desireroit presque un troisieme pere qui tint le milieu entre ces deux personnages, et qui en fit connoitre le vice.”