all the different articles for which the brother of his son’s wife will require money, and the accumulating rage of Argante at each new _item_. Some scenes, however, have been added, as that where Leandre, thinking Scapin had betrayed him, and desiring him to confess, obtains a catalogue of all the _Fourberies_ he had committed since he entered his service, which is taken from an Italian piece entitled _Pantalone, Padre di Famiglia_. He has also introduced from the _Pedant Joué_ of Cyrano Bergerac, the device of Scapin for extorting money from Geronte, which consists in pretending that his son, having accidentally gone on board a Turkish galley, had been detained, and would be inevitably carried captive to Algiers, unless instantly ransomed. In this scene, which is the best of the play, the struggle between habitual avarice and parental tenderness, and the constant exclamation, “_Que diable alloit il faire dans cette galere du Turc_,” are extremely amusing. Boileau has reproached Moliere for having “Sans honte à Terence allié Tabarin,” in allusion to the scene where Scapin persuades Geronte that the brother, accompanied by a set of bullies, is in search of him, and stuffs him, for concealment, into a sack, which he afterwards beats with a stick. This is compounded of two scenes in the French farces, the _Piphagne_ and the _Francisquine_ of Tabarin, and, like the originals from which it is derived, is quite farcical and extravagant:— “Dans ce sac ridicule ou Scapin s’enveloppe, Je ne reconnois plus l’auteur du Misanthrope(320).” The chief improvement which Moliere has made on Terence is the reservation of the discovery to the end; but the double discovery is improbable. The introduction of Hyacinthe and Zerbinette on the stage, is just as unsuccessful as the attempt of Baron to present us, in his _Andrienne_, with a lady corresponding to Glycerium. Moliere’s Hyacinthe is quite insipid and uninteresting, while Zerbinette retains too much of the Egyptian, and is too much delighted with the cheats of Scapin, to become the wife of an honest man. From the above sketches some idea may have been formed of Terence’s plots, most of which were taken from the Greek stage, on which he knew they had already pleased. He has given proofs, however, of his taste and judgment, in the additions and alterations made on those borrowed subjects; and I doubt not, had he lived an age later, when all the arts were in full glory at Rome, and the empire at its height of power and splendour, he would have found domestic subjects sufficient to supply his scene with interest and variety, and would no longer have accounted it a greater merit—“Græcas transferre quam proprias scribere.”