ere discussing the question for themselves alone. As it is,
Euripides has attacked him in the sight of the mob. His defence is
addressed to it: he uses the arguments it can understand. It does not
follow that they convey a literal statement of his own views. Euripides
is not the only man who is free from superstition. He too on occasion
can show up the gods;" and he describes the manner in which he will do
this in his next play. All that is serious in the Apology is given in
the concluding passage. "Whomever else he is hard upon, he will level
nothing worse than a harmless parody at Sophocles, for he has no grudge
against him:--

'He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith,
But, living, lets live,' (vol. xiii. p. 110.)

And all his, Aristophanes', teaching is this:--

'... accept the old,
Contest the strange! acknowledge work that's done,
Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!' (p. 111.)

He has summed up his case. Euripides must own himself beaten. If
Balaustion will not admit the defeat, let her summon her rosy strength,
and do her worst against his opponent."

Balaustion pauses for a moment before relating her answer to this
challenge: and gives us to understand that, in thus relieving her
memory, she is reproducing not only this special experience, but a great
deal of what she habitually thinks and feels; thus silencing any sense
of the improbable, which so lengthened an argument accurately
remembered, might create in the reader's mind.

Her tone is at first deprecating. "It is not for her, a mere mouse, to
argue on a footing of equality with a forest monarch like himself. It is
not for her to criticize the means by which his genius may attain its
ends. She does not forget that the poet-class is that essentially which
labours in the cause of human good. She does not forget that she is a
woman, who may recoil from methods which a man is justified in
employing. Lastly, she is a foreigner, and as such may blame many things
simply because she does not understand them. She may yet have to learn
that the tree stands firm at root, though its boughs dip and dance
before the wind. She may yet have to learn that those who witness his
plays have been previously braced to receive the good and reject the
evil in them, like the freshly-bathed hand which passes unhurt through
flame. She may judge falsely from what she sees."

"But,"