lican dignity; and with all their greatness, it is easy to detect
through their writings, a lamentable propensity in their muse to play
the parasite with the people. To their gratification of the public
foible, the tragic poets no doubt owed some small part of that idolatry
in which they were held by the Athenian multitude. Yet no sooner did
the comic writers appear, ridiculing those very tragic poets, than they
became still greater favourites with the people. Horace has transmitted
to us the names of three of these comic poets, cotemporaries--Cratinus,
Eupolis and Aristophanes. If there were any before them, their names are
buried in oblivion. Taking the structure of the tragedies of AEschylus
for their model, these commenced the first great era of improvement in
the comic drama. Of the comedies of Cratinus, Quintilian speaks in great
commendation; the little of his poetry, however, that remained is not
thought to justify that praise. Eupolis is related to have composed
seventeen plays at the age of seventeen years. He was put to death by
Alcibiades for defamation, and died unlamented except by a dog, which
was so faithfully attached to him that he refused to take food and
starved to death upon his master's tomb. So that of the three,
Aristophanes alone lays claim here to particular commemoration.

Perhaps there is not one character of antiquity upon which the opinions
of mankind are divided, and so opposite to each other as that of
Aristophanes. St. Chrysostom admired him so much that he always laid his
works under his pillow when he went to bed. Scaliger maintained that no
one could form a just judgment of the true Attic dialect who had not
Aristophanes by heart. Of Madame Dacier's idolatry he seems to be the
god: while the venerable Plutarch objects to him that he carried all his
thoughts beyond nature; that he wrote not to men of character but to the
mob; that his style is at once obscure, licentious, tragical, pompous
and mean--sometimes inflated and serious to bombast--sometimes
ludicrous, even to puerility; that he makes none of his personages speak
in any distinct character, so that in his scenes the son cannot be known
from the father--the citizen from the boor--the hero from the
shopkeeper, or the divine from the servant.

Whatever doubts may exist as to his talents there can be none respecting
his morals. To admit all that his panegyrists have said of his genius is
but to augment his depravity, since by the