text:  But would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy that his language in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin that the plot was not Roman that the scene was not Roman that the customs were not Roman; he would say if he had patience to reason with his antagonist that a fashionable rake a grasping father an indulgent uncle a knavish servant an impudent ruffian and a timid clown were the same at Rome at Thebes and at Athens in London Paris or Madrid