st him. Every year more
restrictions; Euripides with his priggishness; Socrates with his books
and his moonshine, and his supercilious ways: never resenting his
(Aristophanes') fun, nor seeming even to notice it[40], not
condescending to take exception to any but the 'tragedians;' as if he,
the author of the 'Birds,' was a mere comic poet!" Then follows a tirade
on the variety of his subjects; their depth, their significance, and the
mawkishness and pedantry which they are intended to confute.

"Drunk! yes, he owns that he is." This in answer to a look from
Balaustion, which has rebuked a too hazardous joke--"Drink is the proper
inspiration. How else was he beaten in the 'Clouds,' his masterpiece,
but that his opponent had inspired himself with drink, and he this time
had not?[41] Purity! he has learned what that is worth"--With more in
the same strain. Now, however, that his adventure is told, the tumult of
feeling in some degree subsides, and the more serious aspects of the
apology will come into play.

Balaustion and her husband, seeing the sober mood return, once more
welcome "the glory of Aristophanes" to their house, and bid him on his
side share in their solemnity, and commemorate Euripides with them. This
calls his attention to the portrait of the dead poet; those implements
of his work which were his tokens of friendship to Balaustion; the
papyrus leaf inscribed with the Herakles itself; and he cannot resist a
sneer at this again unsuccessful play. His hostess rebukes him grandly
for completing the long outrage on the living man by this petty attack
on his "supreme calm;" and as supreme calmness means death, he begins
musing on the immunities which death confers, and their injustice. "Give
him only time and he will pulverize his opponents; _he_ will show them
whether this work of his is unintelligible, or that other will not live.
But let them die; and they slink out of his reach with their malice,
stupidity, and ignorance, while survivors croak 'respect the dead' over
the hole in which they are laid. At all events, he retorts on them when
he can--unwisely perhaps, since those he flings mud at are only
immortalized by the process. Euripides knew better than to follow his
example."

Again Balaustion has her answer. "He has volleyed mud at Euripides
himself while pretending to defend the same cause: the cause of art, of
knowledge, of justice, and of truth;" and she makes his cheek burn by
reminding him of what