The great comic writer, as the example of Molière proves, need not be a poet. But the mere overflow of careless poetic power which is manifested by Aristophanes would have sufficed to set up any ordinary tragedian or lyrist. In plastic mastery of language only two Greek writers can vie with him, Plato and Homer. In the easy grace and native harmony of his verse he outsings all the tragedians, even that Aeschylus whom he praised as the man who had written the most exquisite songs of any poet of the time. In his blank verse he easily strikes every note, from that of the urbane, unaffected, colloquial Attic, to parody of high or subtle tragic diction hardly distinguishable from its model. He can adapt his metres to the expression of every shade of feeling. He has short, snapping, fiery trochees, like sparks from their own holm oak, to represent the choler of the Acharnians; eager, joyous glyconics to bundle up a sycophant and hustle him off the stage, or for the young knights of Athens celebrating Phormio's sea fights, and chanting, horse-taming Poseidon, Pallas, guardian of the State, and Victory, companion of the dance; the quickstep march of the trochaic tetrameter to tell how the Attic wasps, true children of the soil, charged the Persians at Marathon; and above all--the chosen vehicle of his wildest conceits, his most audacious fancies, and his strongest appeals to the better judgment of the citizens--the anapæstic tetrameter, that "resonant and triumphant" metre of which even Mr. Swinburne's anapæsts can reproduce only a faint and far-off echo. But he has more than the opulent diction and the singing voice of the poet. He has the key to fairy-land, a feeling for nature which we thought romantic and modern, and in his lyrics the native wood-notes wild of his own 'Mousa lochmaia' (the muse of the coppice). The chorus of the Mystæ in the 'Frogs,' the rustic idyl of the 'Peace,' the songs of the girls in the 'Lysistrata,' the call of the nightingale, the hymns of the 'Clouds,' the speech of the "Just Reason," and the grand chorus of birds, reveal Aristophanes as not only the first comic writer of Greece, but as one of the very greatest of her poets. Among the many editions of Aristophanes, those most useful to the student and the general reader are doubtless the text edited by Bergk (2 vols., 1867), and the translations of the five most famous plays by John Hookham Frere, to be found in his complete works. [Illustration: Signature: PAUL SHOREY] THE ORIGIN OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR From 'The Acharnians': Frere's Translation DICÆOPOLIS Be not surprised, most excellent spectators, If I that am a beggar have presumed To claim an audience upon public matters, Even in a comedy; for comedy Is conversant in all the rules of justice, And can distinguish betwixt right and wrong.