It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, does some special pleading here. As we have seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in Athens, did have warm admirers in his own day; consequently there is nothing out of the way in portraying one of his contemporaries as an admirer. Furthermore, Balaustion does not represent him as a savior of his age. She sees only too clearly that in the narrow sense of convincing his age he has not been a success. What is her vision of the spiritual Athens which is to arise but a confession of this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that she might be prophetic of a time when Euripides will be recognized as the true power. Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time perceives these things. One should be careful in judging of the poem as good modern criticism not to be entirely guided by the opinions of Balaustion. It should never be forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which Aristophanes is allowed to speak for himself at great length, and whatever can be accepted as good argument for himself upon his own ground should be set over against the sweeping strictures of Balaustion. Indeed it may turn out that Browning has, after all, said for him the most exculpatory word of any critic, for he has so presented his case as to show that he considers him the outcome of the undeveloped phase of morals then existing for which he is hardly responsible because the higher light has not yet broken in upon him. This is evidenced especially in the strange combination in him of a frank belief in a life of the senses which goes along with a puritanical reverence for the gods, and a hatred of anything that falls within his own definition of vice. To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for re-expressing an opinion elsewhere printed, which states as clearly as I am able to do my conviction of where the play stands as criticism, like all dramatic work, this poem aims to present the actual spirit of the time in which the actors moved upon the stage of life, and to reproduce something of their mental and emotional natures. Any criticism of the poets who figure in the poem, or of the larger question of the quarrel between tragedy and comedy, should be deduced indirectly, as implied in the sympathetic presentation of both sides, not based exclusively upon direct expressions of opinion on either side. So regarded it would seem that Browning was able to appreciate the genius of Aristophanes as well as that of Euripides, but that he considered Aristophanes to have value chiefly in relation to his age, as the artistic mouthpiece of its long-established usages, while Euripides had caught the breath of the future, and was the mirror of the prophetic impulses of his age rather than of its dominant civilization.