After this exposition the reader may be surprised at the respectful terms in which we have above spoken of him. But it is pretty certain that he saw clearly the true interests of his country; and there is good ground for thinking that four at least of the eleven plays now extant were written with the express view of improving its policy, or, strange as it may appear, of correcting its morals; while through them all the national faults of the Athenians are lashed with an unsparing and somewhat dangerous severity. To argue this question would transport us far from our subject, from which indeed we have already wandered wide, and far beyond our limits: and is the less necessary because it has already been fully argued in works of easy access (Mitchell, Prelim. Discourse; Schlegel, Lectures on History of Literature, Observer). On the literary merits of Aristophanes all are agreed. For power and variety of versification, he stands unrivalled; for command of the noble language in which he wrote, he is perhaps unmatched, except by Plato. His wit it would be superfluous to praise; unfortunately it is too often exercised on subjects which endure not an English dress. Nothing perhaps approaches so nearly to the usual style of his dialogue as the less refined parts of Shakspere’s comedies, but the latter want that political design which, pervading the Grecian, inclines us to forget the means in the end, and are in other respects scarcely equal to the comparison. But amidst all this ribaldry he often breaks out in a vein of pure and exalted poetry, sufficient to show that he was capable of excelling in the most elegant or dignified departments of the art, had the temper of his countrymen been such as to profit by or allow a hearing to serious admonition. One of his most celebrated comedies, ‘The Knights,’ is directed expressly to destroy the popularity of Cleon. The danger incurred by the author is evident from an anecdote related by himself, that no maskmaker could be induced to furnish a likeness of the demagogue.[88] And as no actor would perform the part, the poet himself made his first appearance on the stage in it, his face rubbed with vermilion, or the lees of wine, to imitate Cleon’s complexion, and serve in some degree for a disguise. The plot, if we may call it such, is mainly founded on the transactions at Pylos, already related, and the characters are selected accordingly.