Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/316

292 acting in that capacity. The second, like so many of the new comedy plays, contained a story, not comic but romantic, with a seduction and a recognition.

Aristophanes is beyond doubt a very great writer. The wisdom of his politics, the general value of his view of life, and, above all, the Sittliche Ernst which his admirers find in his treatment of his opponents' alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet, admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it on the lowest grounds; admitting that his slanders are beyond description, and that as a rule he only attacks the poor, and the leaders of the poor—nevertheless he does it all with such exuberant high spirits, such an air of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have escaped his well-earned whipping. His most characteristic quality, perhaps, is his combination of the wildest and broadest farce on the one hand, with the most exquisite lyric beauty on the other. Of course the actual lyrics are loose and casual in workmanship; it argues mere inexperience in writing lyric verse for a critic seriously to compare them in this respect with the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides. But the genius is there, if the hard work is not.

As a dramatist, Aristophanes is careless about construction; but he has so much 'go' and lifting power that he makes the most absurd situations credible. He has a real gift for imposing on his audience's credulity. His indecency comes partly, no doubt, from that peculiarly Greek naïveté, which is the result of simple and unaffected living; partly it has no excuse to urge except