It is a long stride from Aristophanes to the young men who write the satirical dramatic pieces of the present day—and yet but one step. It might be a safe thing to say that that one step is from the sublime to the ridiculous; but it would scarcely be just. In one important respect Aristophanes and the burlesque writers of the present day are, like Cæsar and Pompey in the estimation of the learned negro, very much alike, especially Aristophanes. Aristophanes, who was certainly the father of the burlesque, claimed to have a moral purpose in his buffoonery; but any one who reads over his _Frogs_ or _Clouds_ must inevitably arrive at the conclusion of the candid German critic, Mueller—that in every word he wrote, and every piece of “business” he set down, the Greek author had it chiefly in view to make his audience laugh. George the Third may have been excused for regarding Wilkes as a Wilkesite; but no one knew, or ought to have known, better than Aristophanes, that Socrates was not a sophist. The burlesque writers of our day crack jokes upon Alderman Carden and Mr. Tupper, not with any hope, or design, of making the one a juster magistrate, or the other a better poet, but simply to get a laugh for the actors and for themselves. That Aristophanes had often no other aim is abundantly proved in every scene of the _Frogs_ and the _Clouds_. In the former, he claimed to have a very high purpose—nothing less than the reform of the Greek drama, which, though then only in its infancy, was said to be in a state of decline. We, in these days, deplore the decline of the drama when the stage is more than two thousand years old. Aristophanes lamented its decline when it was yet associated with wine lees and a cart. We talk fondly and regretfully of the good old days of Kemble and Kean. Aristophanes and his fellows talked of the good old times of Æschylus and Euripides. No doubt the critics in Euripides’ day sighed for the past glories of the age of Thespis. But let us see how Aristophanes set about reforming the Greek drama by means of his burlesques. In the _Frogs_, which is especially devoted to that object, we find Bacchus lamenting the decline of the tragic art. He has a great longing for Euripides, and determines to visit the infernal world and bring that much-regretted poet back to earth. He sets out in company with his servant, Xanthias, crosses the Acherusian lake in Charon’s boat, serenaded on his way by a chorus of frogs, and arrives in the Shades. Here he finds Æschylus and Euripides, and proposes that they should give him a taste of their quality. Pluto takes the chair, and the two poets stand opposite to each other and deliver the most pompous specimens of their poetical powers. They sing, they declaim, and each tries to outdo the other in fine words and ponderous sentences. They are both so very grand and so very heavy, that Bacchus is quite unable to decide between them. In this difficulty he calls for a pair of scales,