The superior, sneering official has not escaped shrewd knocks from the wits of every age. There is a type of mind which, under every form of government, pushes to the front by sheer lack of virtue. Wherever life has become sufficiently mechanical to support a bureaucracy, there will the Poloniuses and Shallows gather, and, wherever there is an official caste, there will be satirists or torture-chambers.[12] Yet, though the self-complacent magistrate has been the butt of the ages, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and perhaps Flaubert, have alone revealed his essential nullity, because they alone have looked for something essential beneath the accidental. Nothing could be simpler than the character of Polonius; nothing could be more subtle. A rap here, a stab there, and the soul of a minister is exposed. We have come to see, we scarcely know how, that, if he ever had one, he has lost it. Some idea of the simplicity and subtlety of the Aristophanic method may be gathered from the following scene, but to illustrate the extravagance and beauty of the form, or the profundity of the conception, no quotation can suffice. Lysistrata has unfolded her famous scheme for stopping the war: there is to be a sympathetic strike; the women of all the combatant states, principals and allies, are to withhold their services until the war has been stopped: LYSISTRATA [_ending a speech_]. Then shall the people revere us and honour us, givers of Joy, and givers of Peace. MAGISTRATE. Tell us the mode and the means of your doing it. LYS. First we will stop the disorderly crew, Soldiers in arms promenading and marketing. STRATYLLIS [_leader of the chorus of women_]. Yea, by divine Aphrodite, 'tis true. LYS. Now in the market you see them like Corybants, jangling about with their armour of mail. Fiercely they stalk in the midst of the crockery, sternly parade by the cabbage and kail. MAG. Right, for a soldier should always be soldierly! LYS. Troth, 'tis a mighty ridiculous jest, Watching them haggle for shrimps in the market-place, grimly accoutred with shield and with crest. * * * * * STRAT. Comes, like a Tereus, a Thracian irregular, shaking his dart and his target to boot; Off runs a shopgirl, appalled at the sight of him, down he sits soldierly, gobbles her fruit. MAG. You, I presume, could adroitly and gingerly settle this intricate, tangled concern: You in a trice could relieve our perplexities. LYS. Certainly. MAG. How? permit me to learn. LYS. Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity, thus with her hands disentangles a skein.