Aristophanes might say that if his warnings had been followed there would
have been no such thing as a mercenary Greek expedition under Cyrus.
Athens, however, was on a landslip, falling; none could arrest it. To
gaze back, to uphold the old times, was a most natural conservatism, and
fruitless. The aloe had bloomed. Whether right or wrong in his politics
and his criticisms, and bearing in mind the instruments he played on and
the audience he had to win, there is an idea in his comedies: it is the
Idea of Good Citizenship.

He is not likely to be revived. He stands, like Shakespeare, an
unapproachable. Swift says of him, with a loving chuckle:

'But as for Comic Aristophanes,
The dog too witty and too profane is.'

Aristophanes was 'profane,' under satiric direction, unlike his rivals
Cratinus, Phrynichus, Ameipsias, Eupolis, and others, if we are to
believe him, who in their extraordinary Donnybrook Fair of the day of
Comedy, thumped one another and everybody else with absolute heartiness,
as he did, but aimed at small game, and dragged forth particular women,
which he did not. He is an aggregate of many men, all of a certain
greatness. We may build up a conception of his powers if we mount
Rabelais upon Hudibras, lift him with the songfulness of Shelley, give
him a vein of Heinrich Heine, and cover him with the mantle of the Anti-
Jacobin, adding (that there may be some Irish in him) a dash of Grattan,
before he is in motion.

But such efforts at conceiving one great one by incorporation of minors
are vain, and cry for excuse. Supposing Wilkes for leading man in a
country constantly plunging into war under some plumed Lamachus, with