But the Athenians must have been a base people had these been the qualities which rendered him popular. They were not: on the contrary, they formed the great drawback on his reputation. His attack on Socrates caused the first cast of the Clouds to be hooted off the stage. But great and crying as were his delinquencies against morals and philosophy, his genius triumphed, and he became popular in spite of them; and in spite of them he has continued to be a favourite among scholars down to the present day. No mean amount of creative power could have achieved a triumph like this. He possessed, in fact, the quality, whatever it be, which confers vitality on the offspring of the mind. Each of his plays, however extravagant its conceptions, however improbable the plot or wild the scene or fantastic the characters, still developes a distinct cycle of existences into which the breath of everlasting life has been breathed. To every individual whom he brings upon the stage has been assigned a distinct type of character, a marked individuality, a moral and intellectual physiognomy as peculiar to himself as his mask. No man exhibits greater variety in a small compass. When he is working out a character every word tells, and his ease is infinite. Nothing appears to have proceeded from him in a hurry. Like the wind, which now rises in gusts, now sinks to a whisper, but never suggests the idea of weakness, Aristophanes may trifle, but always because he desires to trifle. Moreover, however barren the subject may be, however rugged, bleak, intractable, he pours over it the dews of poetry, and clothes it magically with flowers and verdure. Look at the comedies of the Frogs and the Birds. By whom but Aristophanes could they have been rendered tolerable? And yet what marvellous effects grow out of them in his hands! How completely is the imagination detached from the common everyday world, and sent drifting down the dreamy intoxicating streams of poetry! Not in the island of Prospero or Philoctetes, not in the savage-encircled nest of Robinson Crusoe, not in the most visionary vale that opens before us its serene bosom in the Arabian Nights, do we breathe more at large, or more fresh and wholesome air, than among the fogs and fens of Acheron, or the eternal forests of the Hoopoo king.