too high, this winsome model, 'not too
fair and good for human nature's daily food'?

"'Beauty wins not love for woman from the yokemate of her life:
Many an one by goodness wins it; for to each true-hearted wife,
Knit in love unto her husband, is Discretion's secret told.
These her gifts are: though her lord be all uncomely to behold,
To her heart and eyes shall he be comely, so her wit be sound;
('Tis not eyes that judge the _man_; within is true discernment found):
Whensoever he speaks, or holds his peace, shall she his sense commend,
Prompt with sweet suggestion when with speech he fain would please a friend:
Glad she is, if aught untoward hap, to show she feels his care:
Joy and sorrow of the husband aye the loyal wife will share:
Yea, if thou art sick, in spirit will thy wife be sick with thee,
Bear the half of all thy burdens--naught unsweet accounteth she:
For with those we love our duty bids us taste the cup of bliss
Not alone, the cup of sorrow also--what is love but this?'"

The ill-deserved reputation of being a misogynist which attaches to
Euripides is due, not to his own plays, but to the satire and drollery
of his rival, the comedian Aristophanes, who, in B. C. 411 or 410,
produced the _Thesmophoriazusae_, a play so cleverly constructed that,
while it seemed to defend the female sex against the charges of
Euripides, really presented them in a more disgusting light.
Aristophanes represents the world of women as thrown into consternation
and revolt through the production of the tragedies of Euripides, such as
the _Hippolytus_, wherein the female sex is so severely arraigned.
Unable to endure his accusations, an assembly of women is called at the
Thesmophoria to plan the destruction of their arch enemy. Euripides,
however, hears of the assembly, and prevails on his father-in-law,
Mnesilochus, to disguise himself as a woman and seek admittance, that he
may plead the cause of the tragedian. The humor of the debate lies in
the fact that, after several women have roundly abused Euripides for
slandering their sex, Mnesilochus, attired in rustic female garb,
eloquently reminds them of the truths which Euripides might have
divulged had he chosen to do so. One sin after another is glibly and
facetiously piled up against the feminine record, until the few
calumnies attributed to Euripides seem insignificant beside the mountain
of crimes and foibles the supposed matron heaps up against her sisters.
The picture which