Her character is still further enlarged in _Aristophanes' Apology_. That poem, if we desire intellectual exercise, illuminated by flashings of imagination, is well worth reading, but to comprehend it fully, one must know a great deal of Athenian life and of the history of the Comic Drama. It is the defence by Aristophanes of his idea of the business, the method, and the use of Comedy. How far what he says is Browning speaking for Aristophanes, and how far it is Browning speaking for himself, is hard to tell. And it would please him to leave that purposely obscure. What is alive and intense in the poem is, first, the realisation of Athenian life in several scenes, pictured with all Browning's astonishing force of presentation, as, for instance, the feast after the play, and the grim entrance of Sophocles, black from head to foot, among the glittering and drunken revellers, to announce the death of Euripides. Secondly, there is the presentation of Aristophanes. Browning has created him for us-- And no ignoble presence! On the bulge Of the clear baldness,--all his head one brow,-- True, the veins swelled, blue network, and there surged A red from cheek to temple,--then retired As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a flame,-- Was never nursed by temperance or health. But huge the eyeballs rolled back native fire, Imperiously triumphant: nostrils wide Waited their incense; while the pursed mouth's pout Aggressive, while the beak supreme above, While the head, face, nay, pillared throat thrown back, Beard whitening under like a vinous foam, There made a glory, of such insolence-- I thought,--such domineering deity Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine For his gay brother's prow, imbrue that path Which, purpling, recognised the conqueror. Impudent and majestic: drunk, perhaps, But that's religion; sense too plainly snuffed: Still, sensuality was grown a rite.