MR. GROTE characterizes the comedies of Aristophanes as follows: "Never probably will the full and unshackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having Aristophanes actually before us it would have been impossible to imagine the unmeasured and unsparing license of attack assumed by the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets, private citizens, specially named--and even the women, whose life was entirely domestic--of Athens. With this universal liberty in respect of subject there is combined a poignancy of derision and satire, a fecundity of imagination and variety of turns, and a richness of poetical expression such as cannot be surpassed, and such as fully explains the admiration expressed for him by the philosopher Plato, who in other respects must have regarded him with unquestionable disapprobation. His comedies are popular in the largest sense of the word, addressed to the entire body of male citizens on a day consecrated to festivity, and providing for their amusement or derision, with a sort of drunken abundance, out of all persons or things standing in any way prominent before the public eye." [Footnote: "History or Greece," Chap. lxvii.] In his introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, REV. WILLIAM SEWELL, an English clergyman and author, observes that "Men smile when they hear the anecdote of Chrys'ostom, one of the most venerable fathers of the Church, who never went to bed without something from Aristophanes under his pillow." He adds: "But the noble tone of morals, the elevated taste, the sound political wisdom, the boldness and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of his country--all these are features in Aristophanes which, however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every reader of antiquity." Yet, while the purposes of Aristophanes were in the main praiseworthy, and the persons and things he attacked generally deserving of censure, he spared the vices of his own party and associates; and, like all satirists, for effect he often traduced character, as in the case of the virtuous Socrates. In an attack on the Sophists, in his play of the Clouds, he gives to Socrates the character of a vulgar Sophist, and holds him up to the derision of the Athenian people. But, as another has said, "Time has set all even; and 'poor Socrates,' as Aristophanes called him--as a far loftier bard has sung-- 'Poor Socrates, By what he taught, and suffered for so doing, For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now, Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.'" --MILTON. The Comedy of the "Clouds."