The _Aulularia_ being a play of character, I have been led to compare the most celebrated imitations of it rather in the exhibition of the miserly character than in the incidents of the piece. Many of the latter which occur in the _Avare_, have not been borrowed from Plautus, yet are not of Moliere’s invention. Thus he has added from the _Pedant Joué_ of Cyrano Bergerac that part of the plot which consists in the love of the miser and his son for the same woman, as also that which relates to Valere, a young gentleman in love with the miser’s daughter, who had got into his service in disguise, and who, when the miser lost his money, which his son’s servant had stolen, was accused by another servant of having purloined it. Moliere’s notion of the miser’s prodigal son borrowing money from a usurer, and the usurer afterwards proving to be his father, is from _La Belle Plaideuse_, a comedy of Bois-Robert. In an Italian piece, _Le Case Svaligiate_, prior to the time of Moliere, and in the harlequin taste, Scapin persuades Pantaloon that the young beauty with whom he is captivated returns his love, that she sets a particular value on old age, and dislikes youthful admirers, whence Pantaloon is induced to give his purse to the flatterer. Frosine attacks the vanity of Harpagon in the same manner, but he, though not unmoved by the flattery, retains his money. Moliere has availed himself of a number of other Italian dramas of the same description for scattered remarks and situations. The name of Harpagon has been suggested to him by the continuation of Codrus Urceus, where Strobilus says that the masters of the present day are so avaricious, that they may be called Harpies or Harpagons: “Tenaces nimium dominos nostra ætas Tulit, quos Harpagones vocare soleo.” I do not know where Moliere received the hint of the _denouement_ of his piece. The conclusion of the _Aulularia_, as already mentioned, is not extant, but it could not have been so improbable and inartificial as the discovery of Valere and Marianne for the children of Thomas D’Alburci, who, under the name of Anselme, had courted the miser’s daughter.