forget his love in the delusion fostered by Merygreeke, that Goodluck and Custance desire to live in peace with him because they fear him. The lie is in harmony with poetic justice. Merygreeke has been characterized[320] as "the Artotrogos of Plautus, the standing figure of the parasite of the Greek new comedy and its Latin reproductions." But, though Merygreeke was doubtless originally planned as the parasite of the play, and though here and there to the very end of the play we find allusions which corroborate this, I note, first, that the classical parasite[321] lacks the element of modern humour, of witty but, after all, good-natured enjoyment of the mischief which he stirs up; secondly, that Merygreeke is free from endless and--to us--tedious allusions to the "stomach"; and, thirdly, from the vulgar, and almost uninteresting, selfishness, revealed in such words as these of Gnatho: Principio ego vos credere ambos hoc mi vehementer volo _Me huius quicquid faciam id facere maxume causa mea_. I may be mistaken, but I cannot find that the classical parasite has any _fine_ touch of the humour that is inseparable from "humanity," from good nature. The classical parasite is, on account of this deficiency, distinctly inferior to this modern creation. As completely as in Merygreeke's case, Udall disarms the moralist in the case of Roister himself, whose lying[322] and bragging, whose cowardice, matched only by his vanity, cannot possibly be regarded as setting a bad example, because they have reached dimensions which are grotesque and plainly ridiculous. They result only in the propagation of his folly, and that is allowed to reap its--poor--external fruit: Roister is "invited" to the banquet (and Roister has constitutionally a good "stomach"), and he is made to believe that he is a much "dreaded lion." Fate has fortunately not pressed the mirror into his hands. He is saved the sight of the ass's ears visible to every one else.[323] And as kind as Fate is his "friend" Merygreeke, who never reveals to him his absolute wretchedness, and who has to the last the satisfaction of knowing Roister a "glad man." Here was a great danger for a less skilful writer than Udall--a danger of marring our enjoyment of Merygreeke's part by inserting traits of a finer or grosser brutality, a danger of spoiling the whole feast by some drop of malice. The element of conscious humiliation is absent; the pathetic is consequently avoided.