The honours which his corrupted countrymen denied him were conferred upon Menander by strangers; for we are informed by Pliny that the king of Egypt, and the king of Macedon, as a proof of their respect, and admiration of his rare qualities, sent ambassadors to invite him to their courts; and, not contented with that compliment, sent fleets to convey him: such was the fame accompanied with which his unexampled endowments, spread his name over the remotest nations of the east. Whether it was from local attachment to his native land, or from sound philosophical wisdom and disregard of such temptations, he declined those honours, cannot now be known, though the fact is beyond doubt that he never would leave Attica. It is, however, an honourable testimony of the perfect indifference with which he bore the stupid and unjust preference given by the Athenians to his contemptible rival. It was said that he drowned himself in consequence of Philemon's victory: but this report has never been credited, being at variance with all the accounts given by the best authorities, who, on the contrary, relate that so far from being affected at the success of the other, the only notice he ever took of it was, once to ask the victor, "Philemon! do you not blush to wear that laurel?"
Of the incomparable merit of this great man, the principal evidence now existing is the unanimous praise of some of the greatest men of antiquity, since of one hundred and eight comedies which he wrote, nothing but a few fragments remain in their original state. How much the world ought to deplore the loss of those valuable compositions may be collected from the admiration in which they were held by the Romans, who, as we are assured by the ancients, maintained that their favourite TERENCE was very much inferior to Menander. Terence borrowed six or at least four of his plays from this admirable Greek poet, and those though now considered excellent are allowed by his countrymen to have lost much of the spirit of the great originals.
It cannot be doubted that he possessed to an astonishing fulness the talent so little known in the ancient world, and which has exalted our Shakspeare in lofty preeminence above the rest of mankind, of portraying nature in every condition of human life. We have heard of, and frequently read many terse and witty compliments to the genius of Shakspeare, on account of his intimacy with nature; but we know of none superior to that paid to Menander by the great Byzantian grammarian Aristophanes, who, on reading his comedies exclaimed in an ecstasy, "O MENANDER! O NATURE! WHICH OF YOU HAVE COPIED THE WORKS OF THE OTHER?" Ovid held him in no less admiration; and Plutarch has been lavish in his praise: the old rhetoricians recommend his works as the true and perfect patterns of every thing beautiful and graceful in public speaking. Quintilian advises an orator to seek in Menander for copiousness of invention, for elegance of expression, and all that universal genius which is able to accommodate itself to persons, things, and affections: but that which appears to us more decisive than any other eulogy bestowed upon him, is the opinion of Cæsar, who, praising his favourite Terence, calls him a half-Menander, thereby leaving upon record his testimony that Menander had twice the merit of the greatest comic poet of Rome.