There is a double purpose in the _Frogs_—to reform dramatic composition, and also to reform the practices of the stage. In this latter task Aristophanes shows, even more unmistakeably than in the former, that his chief aim is to raise a laugh. The Greek dramatic authors of the time had been in the habit of resorting to certain expedients of a gross and filthy character, in order to sustain the flagging interest of their plays. When Bacchus and Xanthias come on in the _Frogs_, a colloquy ensues as to the value of these expedients, and the propriety of using them. Xanthias is desirous to indulge in the usual “gags” to make the audience laugh; but Bacchus, who is anxious to reform the stage, protests against them. “Let us have no more of this sort of thing,” he says, “it is filthy and gross, and altogether unworthy of the dramatic art.” Aristophanes, however, takes good care that his two characters shall talk sufficiently about these gross practices, and he raises as much laughter by talking about them, as though he had embodied them in the dialogue and action of his play, and adopted them as his own. In the scene where Hercules pops his head out at the door and frightens Bacchus, the author forgets his high moral purpose altogether, and makes Bacchus do the very things which the _Frogs_ was written to reprobate and put down. So in the _Babylonians_ and _Acharnians_, where he attacks the demagogue Cleon, and in the _Clouds_, where he attacks Socrates, he is obviously bent upon nothing so much as the amusement of his audience at the expense of two well-known public characters. The Greek scholar, however, will judge Aristophanes by another standard. His mastery over the Attic dialect was complete, and it was all the more striking when placed in contrast with the rude Greek pronunciation and the broken Greek of foreigners. Perhaps no writer of any age combined so much exuberant wit, broad humour, playful fancy, and originality of invention, as Aristophanes. He also stands alone in his power of twisting language into new and grotesque forms. His droll imitations of animal sounds, and his eccentric verses formed of the grunts of pigs and the croaking of frogs, are quite in the spirit of our modern punning. Still it is not easy to regard him as a reformer and a regenerator of public morals, even though St. Chrysostom was wont to keep his plays under his pillow. Plutarch admired neither his puns nor his purpose. That high authority was evidently of Dr. Johnson’s opinion with respect to a punster. He regards Aristophanes’ antitheses and plays upon words as an outrage upon the language, and adds, that the “audiences which admired such a poet must have been morally and intellectually depraved.” Critics say the same thing of the audiences which admire the burlesques of the present day, but possibly with less justification.