It is said by Voltaire, with his usual liveliness, “We shall never again behold the time, when a Duke de la Rochefoucault might go from the conversation of a Pascal or Arnauld, to the theatre of Corneille.”  This reflection may be more justly applied to the ancients, and it may with much greater truth be said; “The age will never again return, when a Pericles, after walking with Plato in a portico, built by Phidias, and painted by Apelles, might repair to hear a pleading of Demosthenes, or a tragedy of Sophocles.”

I shall next examine the other part of Addison’s assertion, that the moderns excell the ancients in all the arts of Ridicule, and assign the reasons of this supposed excellence.

No.  CXXXIII.  Tuesday, February 12. 1754.

At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudeveres sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stule, mirati; si modo ego et vos
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto. 

          
                                                                                HOR.

“And yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear;
Gay were his jests, his numbers charm’d their ear.” 
Let me not say too lavishly they prais’d;
But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas’d,
If you or I with taste are haply blest,
To know a clownish from a courtly jest. 

          
                                                                      FRANCIS.

The fondness I have so frequently manifested for the ancients, has not so far blinded my judgment, as to render me unable to discern, or unwilling to acknowledge, the superiority of the moderns, in pieces of Humour and Ridicule.  I shall, therefore, confirm the general assertion of Addison, part of which hath already been examined.

Comedy, Satire, and Burlesque, being the three chief branches of ridicule, it is necessary for us to compare together the most admired performances of the ancients and moderns, in these three kinds of writing, to qualify us justly to censure or commend, as the beauties or blemishes of each party may deserve.

As Aristophanes wrote to please the multitude, at a time when the licentiousness of the Athenians was boundless, his pleasantries are coarse and impolite, his characters extravagantly forced, and distorted with unnatural deformity, like the monstrous caricaturas of Callot.  He is full of the grossest obscenity, indecency, and inurbanity; and as the populace always delight to hear their superiors abused and misrepresented, he scatters the rankest calumnies on the wisest and worthiest personages of his country.  His style is unequal, occasioned by a frequent introduction of parodies on Sophocles and Euripides.  It is, however, certain, that he abounds in artful allusions to the state of Athens at the time when he wrote; and, perhaps, he is more valuable, considered as a political satirist than a writer of comedy.