the standards of excellence; and Latin literature, still mainly confined
to the governing class and their dependents, was struck at the root (the
word is used of Terence himself by Varro) with the fatal disease of
mediocrity.

But in Terence himself (as in Addison among English writers) this
mediocrity is, indeed, golden--a mediocrity full of grace and charm. The
unruffled smoothness of diction, the exquisite purity of language, are
qualities admirable in themselves, and are accompanied by other striking
merits; not, indeed, by dramatic force or constructive power, but by
careful and delicate portraiture of character, and by an urbanity (to use
a Latin word which expresses a peculiarly Latin quality) to which the
world owes a deep debt for having set a fashion. In some curious lines
preserved by Suetonius, Julius Caesar expresses a criticism, which we
shall find it hard to improve, on the "halved Menander," to whom his own
fastidious purity in the use of language, no less than his tact and
courtesy as a man of the world, attracted him strongly, while not
blinding him to the weakness and flaccidity of the Terentian drama. Its
effect on contemporary men of letters was immediate and irresistible. A
curious, if doubtfully authentic, story is told of the young poet when he
submitted his first play, _The Maid of Andros_, for the approval of the
Commissioners of Public Works, who were responsible for the production of
plays at the civic festivals. He was ordered to read it aloud to
Caecilius, who, since the death of Plautus, had been supreme without a
rival on the comic stage. Terence presented himself modestly while
Caecilius was at supper, and was carelessly told to sit down on a stool
in the dining-room, and begin. He had not read beyond a few verses when
Caecilius stopped him, and made him take his seat at table. After supper
was over, he heard his guest's play out with unbounded and unqualified
admiration.