she continues,[45] "let us imagine a remote future, and a
far-away place--say the Cassiterides[46]--and men and women, lonely and
ignorant--strangers in very deed--but with feelings similar to our own.
Let us suppose that some work of Zeuxis or Pheidias has been transported
to their shores, and that they are compelled to acknowledge its
excellence from its own point of view--its colouring true to nature,
though not to their own type--its unveiled forms decorous, though not
conforming to their own standard of decorum. Might they not still, and
justly, tax it on its own ground with some flaw or incongruity, which
proved the artist to have been human? And may not a stranger, judging
you in the same way, recognize in you one part of peccant humanity, poet
'three parts divine' though you be?"

"You declare comedy to be a prescriptive rite, coeval in its birth with
liberty. But the great days of Greek national life had been reached when
comedy began. You declare also that you have refined on the early
practice, and imported poetry into it. Comedy is therefore, as you
defend it, not only a new invention, but your own. And, finally, you
declare your practice of it inspired by a fixed purpose. You must stand
or fall by the degree in which this purpose has been attained."

"You would, by means of comedy, discredit war. Do you stand alone in
this endeavour?" And she quotes a beautiful passage from 'Cresphontes,'
a play written by Euripides for the same end. "And how, respectively,
have you sought your end? Euripides, by appealing to the nobler
feelings which are outraged by war; you, by expatiating on the animal
enjoyments which accompany peace. The 'Lysistrata' is your equivalent
for 'Cresphontes.' Do you imagine that its obscene allurements will
promote the cause of peace? Not till heroes have become mean
voluptuaries, and Cleonymos,[47] whom you yourself have derided, becomes
their type."

"You would discredit vice and error, hypocrisy, sophistry and untruth.
You expose the one in all its seductions, and the other in grotesque
exaggerations, which are themselves a lie; showing yourself the worst of
sophists--one who plays false to his own soul."

"You would improve on former methods of comedy. You have returned to its
lowest form. For you profess to strike at folly, not at him who commits
it: yet your tactics are precisely to belabour every act or opinion of
which you disapprove, in the form of some one man. You pride yourse