Shadwell, Fielding, and Goldoni, enjoyed the advantage of studying Moliere’s Harpagon for their delineations of Goldingham, Lovegold, and Ottavio. In the miser of Shadwell there is much indecency indeed of his own invention, and some disgusting representations of city vulgarity and vice; but still he is hardly entitled to the praise of so much originality as he claims in his impudent preface.—“The foundation of this play,” says he, “I took from one of Moliere’s, called L’Avare, but that having too few persons, and too little action for an English theatre, I added to both so much, that I may call more than half of this play my own; and I think I may say, without vanity, that Moliere’s part of it has not suffered in my hands. Nor did I ever know a French comedy made use of by the worst of our poets that was not bettered by them. It is not barrenness of art or invention makes us borrow from the French, but laziness; and _this_ was the occasion of my making use of _L’Avare_.” Fielding’s _Miser_, the only one of his comedies which does him credit, is a much more agreeable play than Shadwell’s. The earlier scenes are a close imitation of Moliere, but the concluding ones are somewhat different, and the _denouement_ is perhaps improved. Mariana is in a great measure a new character, and those of the servants are rendered more prominent and important than in the French original. The miser Ottavio, in Goldoni’s _Vero Amico_, is entirely copied from Plautus and Moliere. In the Italian play, however, the character is in a great measure episodical, and the principal plot, which gives its title to the piece, and corresponds with that of Diderot’s _Fils Naturel_, has been invented by the Italian dramatist. On the whole, Moliere has succeeded best in rendering the passion of avarice hateful: Plautus and Goldoni have only made it ridiculous. The profound and poetical avarice of Jaques possesses something plaintive in its tone, which almost excites our sympathy, and never our laughter; he is represented as a worshipper of gold, somewhat as an old Persian might be of the sun, and he does not raise our contempt by the absurdities of domestic economy. But Harpagon is thoroughly detestable, and is in fact detested by his neighbours, domestics, and children. All these dramatists are accused of having exhibited rather an allegorical representation of avarice, than the living likeness of a human Being influenced by that odious propensity. “Plautus,” says Hurd, “and also Moliere, offended in this, that for the picture of the avaricious man they presented us with a fantastic unpleasing draught of the passion of avarice—I call it a fantastic draught, because it hath no archetype in nature, and it is farther an unpleasing one; from being the delineation of a simple passion, unmixed, it wants ‘The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife Gives all the strength and colour of our life.’”