some peculiar advantages over written compositions.  When Goldoni reformed the Italian theatre by regular comedies, he found an invincible opposition from the enthusiasts of their old Comedy:  for two centuries it had been the amusement of Italy, and was a species of comic entertainment which it had created.  Inventive minds were fond of sketching out these outlines of pieces, and other men of genius delighted in their representation.

The inspiration of national genius alone could produce this phenomenon; and these Extemporal Comedies were, indeed, indigenous to the soil.  Italy, a land of Improvisatori, kept up from the time of their old masters, the Romans, the same fervid fancy.  The ancient Atellanae Fabulae, or Atellane Farces, originated at Atella, a town in the neighbourhood of ancient Naples; and these, too, were extemporal Interludes, or, as Livy terms them, Exodia.  We find in that historian a little interesting narrative of the theatrical history of the Romans; when the dramatic performances at Rome were becoming too sentimental and declamatory, banishing the playfulness and the mirth of Comedy, the Roman youth left these graver performances to the professed actors, and revived, perhaps in imitation of the licentious Satyra of the Greeks, the ancient custom of versifying pleasantries, and throwing out jests and raillery among themselves for their own diversion.[47] These Atellan Farces were probably not so low in humour as they have been represented;[48] or at least the Roman youth, on their revival, exercised a chaster taste, for they are noticed by Cicero in a letter to his literary friend Papyrius Paetus.  “But to turn from the serious to the jocose part of your letter—­the strain of pleasantry you break into, immediately after having quoted the tragedy of Oenomaus, puts me in mind of the modern method of introducing at the end of these graver dramatic pieces the buffoon humour of our low Mimes instead of the more delicate burlesque of the old Atellan Farces."[49] This very curious passage distinctly marks out the two classes, which so many centuries after Cicero were revived in the Pantomime of Italy, and in its Extemporal Comedy.[50]

The critics on our side of the Alps reproached the Italians for the extemporal comedies; and Marmontel rashly declared that the nation did not possess a single comedy which could endure perusal.  But he drew his notions from the low farces of the Italian theatre at Paris, and he censured what he had never read.[51] The comedies of Bibiena, Del Lasca, Del Secchi, and others, are models of classical comedy, but not the popular favourites of Italy.  Signorelli distinguishes two species of Italian comedy:  those which he calls commedie antiche ed eruditi, ancient and learned comedies; and those of commedie dell’ arte, or a soggetto, comedies suggested.—­The first were moulded on classical