Aristophanes replies that it had not been his intention to turn art's fabric upside down and invent an entirely new species of comedy. That sort of thing can be done by one who has turned his back on life, friendly faces, sympathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his Salaminian cave. This may be regarded, on the whole, as a good bit of defence on Aristophanes' part. It is equivalent to his saying that there was no use in his trying to be anything for which his genius had not fitted him. This chimes in, again, with such authoritative criticism as Murray's, who declares: "The general value of his view of life, and, above all, his treatment of his opponent's alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it on the lowest grounds, admitting that his slanders are beyond description and that, as a rule, he only attacks the poor and the leaders of the poor, nevertheless he does it all with such exhuberant high spirits, such an air of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have escaped his well-earned whipping." Much of Aristophanes' defence consists in slurring at Euripides, against whom he waxes more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays furnish numerous illustrations of his rivalry with Euripides, yet curiously enough, as critics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates Euripides to a noteworthy extent, so much so that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word to describe the style of the two--Euripid-Aristophanize. Judging from his parodies on Euripides, he must certainly have read and reread his plays until he knew them practically by heart. Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her in this poem, is the lyric girl developed into splendid womanhood. She has a large heart and a large brain, as well as imagination and strong ethical fervor. Her intense feeling at the fall of Athens, which had been the ideal to her of greatness, and her reverential love for Euripides, her charity toward Aristophanes the man, if not toward his work, show how deep and far-reaching her sympathies were. Again, her imagination flashes forth in her picturesque descriptions of the ruined Athens and her prophetic picture of the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise in its place, in her telling portraiture of Aristophanes and his entrance into her house, as well as in many another passage. Her intellect shines out in her clever management of the argument with Aristophanes, and her ethical fervor in her denunciations of the moral depravity of certain of the plays.