lf,
in fact, on giving personal blows, instead of general and theoretical
admonitions; and even here you seem incapable of hitting fair; you libel
where you cannot honestly convict, and do not care how ignoble or how
irrelevant the libel may be. Does the poet deserve criticism as such?
Does he write bad verse, does he inculcate foul deeds? The cry is, 'he
cannot read or write;' 'he is extravagant in buying fish;' 'he allows
someone to help him with his verse, and make love to his wife in
return;' 'his uncle deals in crockery;' 'his mother sold herbs' (one of
his pet taunts against Euripides); 'he is a housebreaker, a footpad, or,
worst of all, a stranger;'"--a term of contempt which, as Balaustion
reminds him has been repeatedly bestowed upon himself.

"What have you done," she continues, "beyond devoting the gold of your
genius to work, which dross, in the person of a dozen predecessors or
contemporaries, has produced as well. Pun and parody, satire and
invective, quaintness of fancy, and elegance, have each had its
representative as successful as you. Your life-work, until this moment,
has been the record of a genius increasingly untrue to its better self.
Such satire as yours, however well intended, could advance no honest
cause. Its exaggerations make it useless for either praise or blame. Its
uselessness is proved by the result: your jokes have recoiled upon
yourself. The statues still stand which your mud has stained; the
lightning flash of truth can alone destroy them. War still continues, in
spite of the seductions with which you have invested peace. Such
improvements as are in progress take an opposite direction to that which
you prescribe. Public sense and decency are only bent on cleansing your
sty."

And now her tone changes. "Has Euripides succeeded any better? None can
say; for he spoke to a dim future above and beyond the crowd. If he
fail, you two will be fellows in adversity; and, meanwhile, I am
convinced that your wish unites with his to waft the white sail on its
way.[48] Your nature, too, is kingly." She concludes with a tribute to
the "Poet's Power," which is one with creative law, above and behind all
potencies of heaven and earth; and to that inherent royalty of truth, in
which alone she could venture to approach one so great as he. He too, as
poet, must reign by truth, if he assert his proper sway.

"Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue,
But that the other king stands sud